Could a drastic change in Atlantic Ocean currents leave Chicago high and dry? Yes

The sun rises over fishing boats in the Atlantic Ocean, Sept. 8, 2022, off of Kennebunkport, Maine. A system of ocean currents that carries heat northward across the North Atlantic could collapse during this century, according to a new study. (Robert F. Bukaty/AP)

Last week’s Chicago heat wave was not a cheery time to think about the central United States getting hotter and dryer.

But that’s what researchers at the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute say could happen if an important system of oceanic currents called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation suddenly shuts down irreversibly — perhaps within two years, perhaps by midcentury, maybe at the century’s end.