They say ignorance is bliss, but in the case of climate change, what we don’t know will most definitely hurt us. The common narrative is one where the world slowly heats up, the ocean levels slowly rise, and the planet slowly becomes uninhabitable. The truth is that for decades, scientists have been trying to tell us that that’s not how climates change.

A climate hypothesis that will keep you up at night. Imagine you’re in a canoe — another passenger keeps rocking the canoe from side to side, the canoe tipping more to each side every time. Eventually, it’ll tip just a hair too far and completely and swiftly flip over. That’s how scientists believe climate change works. Not a slow, gradual process, but one that could mean 3.4 mn people dying within a year.

There are a lot of different ways the canoe can flip. The most likely event to kick off the cascading failure of the ecosystem is the abrupt collapse of the Atlantic Ocean current. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) transports warm water, among other things, from Africa up north, regulating the global climate by distributing heat and energy around the planet. It’s important for a lot of different reasons, but most pertinently, it keeps Europe habitable.

Here’s how: The salinity of the warm water on the surface of the oceans is due to evaporation. As that water travels north and cools, it sinks because high salinity increases its density, and travels back south along the bottom of the ocean. Cold freshwater from melting ice caps in the north would change both the salinity and the temperature of the nearest parts of the ocean and disrupt the AMOC.

Out of the frying pan… Europe is the fastest warming continent in the world, according to the European Environment Agency. Not only do these changes threaten Europe’s food security, ecosystems, and water resources, but the health of its inhabitants has been suffering. In 2022, over 61k people died due to high temperatures over the summer. According to the Agency’s report, these effects have reached critical levels, and could become catastrophic without fast changes.

…and into the freezer. When the AMOC current slows down, the transfer of heat that Europe relies on will come to a halt. For reference, the UK is at the same latitude as Siberia (yes, we checked). With no heat being transferred, it’s possible that the UK will adopt the same environment as the Russian territory, parts of which can reach -73°C. The island will no longer have arable land, and its agricultural output will stall completely. The uninhabitability of certain countries due to climate change and the economic impacts that will follow will likely cause mass migration at a level that we can only begin to fathom, with the World Bank predicting that 140 mn will be displaced by 2050.

Danger is just around the corner: Not just as a result of evaporation, but in terms of economic viability. If the Suez Canal is affected by current unrest in the Red Sea imagine the scenario where there is increased water flow from the Indian Ocean or the Northern Sea Route (usually only accessible from July to October) that will become ice-free all year round…our canal will lose traffic from China and Europe.

Air travel will become more dangerous. In a study published last year, scientists found that turbulence has gotten 55% worse alongside the adverse effects of climate change since the late 70s. This is due to the increase in hotter air, which means that wind speeds and directions change more violently. Air circulation is continuously becoming less predictable, which leads to bumpier flights, making turbulence the most common cause of airline accidents. While that doesn’t necessarily mean that airplane crashes will become more common, we may be seeing more people injure their spines, break their limbs, and sustain paralyzing injuries due to turbulence.

Heat makes us more irritable. Yes, it's a thing: It is a scientific fact that people become moreviolent when temperatures rise. 56 different studies stipulated that increased temperatures cause an uptick in one-on-one scraps and larger more organized violence like war. Richard Larrick, who studied the effect of heat on aggression levels of baseball players, told the Washington Post that heat “[increases] anger and [makes] thoughts of aggression increase.” Luckily, the hottest year on record also coincided with the Ice Bucket Challenge.

Say goodbye to your morning cup of coffee. Coffee-growing land could decline by 50% within the next two decades, says a study. Brazil, the world’s largest coffee exporter, has already seen certain strains of the bean fail due to unstable weather. Coffee, alongside avocados and cashews, need a stable climate to grow, and will be the first goods to go. This would also threaten the livelihoods of the mns of people whose incomes depend on these products.

Mummies will decompose: After 7k years of preservation, some mummies from the Atacama Desert in Chile have started to degrade … while they were being kept in a museum. Rising humidity levels due to climate change has encouraged the growth of bacteria that digests the mummies, some even decomposing to a black ooze. Other historical artifacts, like Italy’s marble statues, or Siberia’s frozen tombs, will be affected as well.

Forget summers in Sahel. Rising sea levels are already wiping away large swathes of beaches around the globe, but that may not be the only threat to the North Coast communities. Animals are migrating to find more suitable living environments — that includes jellyfish. And sharks. Both of which are developing a taste for mediterranean waters, it seems.

Drop the chopsticks and put away the soy sauce. Oceans taking the brunt of the climate crisis is no surprise. The ocean absorbs 93% of all the heat being trapped by greenhouse gasses, and 30% of the carbon dioxide released from burning fossil fuels. The increase of marine heat wave frequencies has increased by more than a third, and is killing off plankton and fish by the hundreds of thousands. Sushi, already considered a delicacy in some places, will become even more rare (and even more expensive).

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