AMOC: The Tipping Point for Our Climate – Why It’s Critical to Protect Earth’s Vital Heat Transport System
Climate running AMOC? Or rather, the climate will run amok if the AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation) collapses. It’s one of earth’s vital systems for circulating heat. It’s a network of ocean currents that pull warm ocean currents north and circulates cooler arctic waters south. It impacts how much oxygen and C02 are in the ocean and even affects tropical rainfall.
Justus Lehtisaari and Operaatio Arktis are working to spread the science and importance of AMOC to policymakers to better protect our planet’s essential heat transport system.
Check out their report – (unlike most scientific reports, it was designed with an artful eye)
Artic – Endgame
Great article in The Guardian about AMOC.
The world is not prepared for climate tipping points. We can work together to better prepare when we better understand the underlying science.
Podcast Transcript
Jacob: Welcome to Impact Stories. I’m here with Justus. Please introduce yourself.
Justus: Hi everyone and greetings from Finland. My name is Justus Lehtisaari and I’m head of international cooperation at a youth-led climate strategy agency here in Finland called Operaatio Arktis.
Jacob: Tell me about the good you’re trying to make in the world.
Justus: We are trying to fight climate change in a nutshell. We started this project three years ago. We realized that we are already facing quite drastic changes in the earth. So we started this project, especially looking at the ice caps and realizing that, for example, we might lose the Arctic sea ice before 2030. So we might be losing the Arctic sea ice in five years and we might be approaching climate tipping points in the cryosphere. So we started to look into these things three years ago, and then we founded this NGO called Operaatio Arktis here in Finland and trying to put more emphasis on trying to preserve the cryosphere.
But now we are focusing on other climate tipping points especially AMOC is quite a big thing here in Northern Europe and also some things in Antarctica as well, big glaciers. mainly.
Jacob: Tell me what AMOC [00:01:00] represents
Justus: AMOC it’s a short version of Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. And it’s this big ocean circulation that comes from the South and it comes to the Northern hemisphere and it turns and goes back South. And what basically it is, it’s like a conveyor belt that brings warm air mainly to the North. And then it conveys and cools the South. And what now latest science shows us is that it has been slowing down drastically and we know that, for example, that AMOC has a tipping point, which means that it might collapse. We don’t know exactly where it is, but we know that it has been slowing down and we know it has a tipping point and we know that we are approaching that tipping point quite fast at the moment. And if that happens in Northern Europe, in Finland, where I live, the temperatures would actually drop. So it’s quite counterintuitive that here in Finland fighting climate change or trying to prepare for climate change means that we actually, Might have to prepare for colder temperatures as well.
So, AMOC is quite a big thing here in Northern Europe. And also it’s, it doesn’t mean that the Northern Hemisphere or Northern Europe [00:02:00] would only cool, but it would mean that the air that is coming to the North would stock up in the South as well. So it’s kind of this balancing system. as well.
Jacob: What are the specific actions you’re trying to encourage people to take?
Justus: We have done this kind of awareness-raising, of course, but that’s not our main job at the moment. Our goal is a bit more specific. It’s aimed more towards policymakers and the stakeholder leaders here in Finland. And also the vision is to do this larger in whole Europe and in the whole world.
But what we are trying to do is try to bring the message to those policymakers. For example, I was in the Arctic Circle Assembly a couple of months ago in Iceland and one big scientist called Stefan Ramsdorff, he handed out this paper from a group of scientists to the Nordic Council of Ministers saying that they should take the risk of AMOC collapse more seriously.
And what we are trying to do is that for example, here in Finland, now we are gathering a stakeholder forum and to bring key leaders together to discuss and find ways of how we could tackle the possible slowdown or collapse of AMOC, for [00:03:00] example, but AMOC is not the only thing that we are focusing on.
It’s of course a big thing, but we also have other issues, and all of these climate tipping points are connected together because one of the drivers of AMOC and why AMOC has been slowing down because of the Greenlandic ice sheet has been melting. So you can’t really have one tipping point, but you have to consider all of them together as well.
We are trying to get Finnish policymakers, for example, the environmental minister to have actual strategies of how we should approach these climate tipping points because at the moment those don’t really exist. So we are kind of trying to fill a gap.
Jacob: Have there been any positive milestones that you can point to that this approach is working or that this coalition building is moving in the right direction?
Justus: Well, our focus on AMOC has been quite new actually, because we started only two years ago. So we are quite a new organization. But I think what kind of differs from other actors in the environmental field is that we are not turning away from the discussion of climate interventions or so-called geoengineering. [00:04:00] And we are not promoting that we should use these things to tackle climate change. But we are saying that we need to have a discussion on those things and have a coherent risk analysis. If those could play any role, basically just so we can have informed decision-making on these things, because climate change is quite a dire issue and it has gotten ever more dire this year, for example. Just came out news today that this year was again, the hottest year on Earth.
Every action we take to slow down climate change is a good action, but we don’t really know where the possible tipping point of AMOC could be, or if it’s not even tipping, or if it’s slowing down and the science is quite fresh. And that’s why we are even speaking about AMOC because now there has been lately more and more studies that are raising the issue of AMOC.
So basically, the more we get scientific knowledge on these things, the more it also comes into public discourse as well. So I think the main driver here has been these new studies on AMOC lately. Because I think we didn’t take AMOC as that big a problem before these new studies that have come [00:05:00] in, past years.
Jacob: What was that point when you realized you wanted to focus your career on doing good?
Justus: Well, I think I’ve always been quite a curious child. I studied political history here in Finland and we had a professor and I think he said it really well. But basically he said that every generation has, kind of their issue or battle that defines that generation. And I think for my generation it has been the climate and especially before the COVID pandemic, climate was a big thing.
But I wasn’t so much focused maybe on climate per se. In the beginning, when I was studying politics, I was actually super interested in the Arctic and I went to study and live in Iceland for a year and there I saw the reality of what climate change actually means in the Arctic.
And living there, I saw it also from a political perspective, like seeing all of these political strategies and how people are speaking about opening sea lanes and stuff like this. And then I kind of realized that. Climate change and the melting of the Arctic is accepted as a political reality, and it’s not really [00:06:00] challenged.
It’s more like we are speaking about that we need to stop climate change in the Arctic, but then at the same time, people are kind of preparing for opening sea lanes and stuff like this. So, that fact start to annoy me a bit, we’re like, yeah, we speak about mitigating climate change, but then we have all of these plans, like ideas of what we can do when the Arctic melts.
So that started to annoy me quite a lot. And when my time in Iceland was over and I moved back to Finland, I found this organization and I just hopped in as a volunteer and that’s how we worked for a couple of years of kind of just working as a volunteer group.
Jacob: Now how are you structured?
Justus: We are structured quite horizontally. We are 11 people, young people working in Helsinki. We have an office space, we have roles like an executive director, I’m a head of international cooperation. And so we take responsibility, but we are structured quite horizontally because we started or stemmed from the climate movement.
So we kind of inherited also the ways of trying to work in a democratized way, but also trying to be more structured. It’s good to have structure so there is [00:07:00] responsibilities and you know what you are doing, but it’s also good to have this mentality of decision making that you are trying to listen to each other and respect each other’s opinions as well.
Jacob: What does your organization need right now? What is the biggest hurdle you’re facing?
Justus: What do we need right now? I would say the first thing is it’s a long holiday, it has been quite a rough rough autumn. But I think what we need now is a good response from policymakers.
I think that’s what we want. And that’s what we are trying to do and convey this message and bring different stakeholders together. We were actually just today, we got more funding for this project that we are doing here in Finland, which is super happy news. So financially when you are working in the NGO, there could be more money always, but financially we are actually doing now okay. Which is super nice because it hasn’t always been like this, but I think what we need at the moment most is just to get the policymakers to listen and take this thing seriously that we are facing with climate.
Jacob: What have you done so far to get policymakers to listen?
Justus: We did this ca ouple years ago one [00:08:00] of the first things when we started, we wrote this report card called Arctic Endgame which was basically to showcase the knowledge that we have gathered and put it in plain sight for people to understand.
Because when we were meeting with people they always ask, Oh, where can I read more about this? Because there are not so many people in Finland working with this topic. So instead of sending different articles that are hard to read and people don’t read them because they are boring and so we decided that let’s write our own piece with the knowledge that we have, and let’s hand them that when we meet.
And then we also organized this event called Arctic Momentum. Which was a three-day event here in Helsinki with lots of international scientists, policymakers here in Finland, and also indigenous leaders from the Arctic coming together to discuss. What our role has been is this group trying to build bridges to different directions and bridge different stakeholders together and also just asking politicians to meet and different people to meet.
Jacob: What kind of hope do you have for the future? What are you most looking forward to right now?
Justus: I’m not super hopeful about the future. I mean, of course, we will [00:09:00] survive somehow. Somebody will always survive, but like I feel it, complicated working with climate and major global issues is, and even with communications with climate is always trying to give this sense of hope in the end.
I am not, this might be super like my Finnish pessimistic mentality sitting here in the dark in Helsinki and say that I don’t believe in hope. But what I’m trying to say is that I believe in moral responsibility to try to do the right thing and I think instead of offering baseless hope.
I think it’s important to do what you feel is right regardless if you are not believing if you will succeed or not. Of course, I believe, and I want to believe we are succeeding, but I think more important than hope is to try to do the right thing and believing in the process of that.
Jacob: If you had one admonition or one invitation for listeners, what’s one thing they could do specifically with your efforts right now?
Justus: I think the major problem, of course, is climate change. And I think it’s hard if you don’t have time, but I think we should try to pay more attention to climate. [00:10:00] Individual actions are super important, but I believe more important is trying to come together and organize around issues you find important. So what I plead to people to do is to come together. Sit down for a while and actually look into the newest science of climate change and realize that we are facing quite tough times if we don’t act. And our actions have been lacking behind for tens of years. It’s sad to say, I was in a Cop a couple of weeks ago, for example, the discussions we’re having now, they should have been done like 30 years ago, like even before I was born. So I think we are really starting to face the consequences of our inaction already. And that also requires that we need a new mentality to approach this problem of climate change at the moment as well.
Jacob: And if someone was interested in learning more or doing more to help support your organization, where’s the best place for them to find you online?
Justus: We are online. We have some keynote speeches that we have had, from the Arctic Momentum, we have them on YouTube. Then [00:11:00] on our web page there is lots of resources, for example, the repor,t and then we are every now and then publishing some writings there. We are, of course, active on LinkedIn where you can follow upcoming events and stuff. And then of course, on Instagram, we have more visual content as well.
Jacob: Any last words before I let you go?
Justus: My two key messages always is that. Take climate change seriously, as I think we all should know at this point, but we haven’t done it so far. And then the second is that this goes with everything in life. I think if you have time and you see a problem, Try to find like-minded people and start to work together and you can make wonders. Awareness raising is important, but truly believe that it’s the committed individuals that can make a real change.
Jacob: Justus, thank you for the work that you’re doing, and wish you all the success with that.
Justus: Yeah. Thanks. It was great.
Jacob: Thank you.
Learn more about ISSIMO Story Agency Here