Iceland’s Climate Council warns AMOC collapse demands action now
Iceland’s Climate Council (Loftslagsráð) has urged the Minister of Environment, Energy and Climate to dramatically scale up emissions cuts in response to mounting evidence that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) — the ocean current system that keeps the North Atlantic relatively mild — is weakening and could collapse.
In a memo dated April 29 and addressed directly to the minister, the council warns that recent research has narrowed earlier uncertainties and now points to a weakening of roughly 50% before the end of the century. How much further weakening the system can absorb before it stops altogether remains unknown.
The consequences for Iceland, the council writes, could be severe and irreversible.
A tipping point that arrives before the crisis does
Central to the council’s argument is the warning that AMOC may cross a tipping point well before it actually collapses. Once that threshold is passed, a shutdown becomes highly likely or effectively unavoidable, even if the full collapse takes decades to play out. Monitoring systems, in other words, are likely to confirm the worst only after the window for prevention has closed.
That reframing is the basis for the council’s central message to the government: waiting for certainty is not a strategy. By the time the evidence is conclusive, it will be too late to prevent the outcome.
What the council is asking for
The memo calls on the government to take several steps without delay.
The council argues that the only realistic way to reduce the risk of AMOC weakening or collapse is to defend the most ambitious goals of the Paris Agreement and pursue rapid, targeted emissions reductions, paired with expanded carbon removal. That should include both nature-based solutions and recognized technological approaches to capturing, storing and using carbon. Iceland, the council adds, should lead by example at home and push the case forcefully in international forums.
The memo also revisits the Icelandic government’s earlier decision to classify AMOC weakening and collapse as a national security matter. The council says authorities now need to spell out clearly what that classification actually entails in policy terms and to show why placing the issue in a security framework was meaningful rather than symbolic.
That security framing has already produced some institutional follow-through. Last autumn, the government placed possible AMOC collapse on the agenda of the National Security Council, and the Minister of Environment, Energy and Climate appointed a working group on climate tipping points with a particular focus on AMOC. The group is tasked with compiling current scientific understanding of possible changes to the circulation and their consequences for Iceland in a memo to the minister and with shaping a vision for the government’s response. Its members include experts from the University of Iceland, the Icelandic Meteorological Office and the Marine and Freshwater Research Institute.
A more thorough impact assessment is also overdue, according to the memo. The council calls for a formal risk assessment along with analysis of the economic and social consequences of a weakening or collapsing AMOC, including effects on investment and long-term economic development.
