Scientists have warned that the Earth could be hit by flash floods and a giant freeze as the Gulf Stream is on the verge of collapsing.

The film The Day After Tomorrow, which depicts a climate catastrophe, could well become a reality. The Gulf Stream has been declining for more than 100 years, and experts from the University of California, Riverside, are now predicting that it won’t be long before we see entire cities engulfed by ice and snow. 

Professor Wei Liu, an author of the study, said: “This work shows the AMOC has been weakening for more than a century. That trend is likely to continue if greenhouse gases keep rising.”

The Gulf Stream is a small part of a wider network of currents, called Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOS) and labelled as ‘the conveyor belt of the ocean’.

The current moves warm, salty water near the ocean’s surface from the tropics to the northern hemisphere, keeping Europe, the UK, and the US East Coast temperate.

However, if the AMOC collapses, large parts of Europe could experience a deep freeze, with the UK experiencing temperatures as low as -30C.

In addition to evidence of greenhouse gases potentially remaining on the rise, researchers uncovered a bizarre patch of cold water, around 1,000 miles wide, south of Greenland and Iceland. 

However, the ‘stubborn’ patch has withstood global warming for over a century, stirring debate among scientists.

Now, a connection has finally been made to the weakening of the AMOC, thanks to the new study, published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.

Professor Wei Liu said: “People have been asking why this cold spot exists; we found the most likely answer is a weakening AMOC.”

The lead author and a colleage studied around 100 years of salinity and temperature data, to understand the strength of the AMOC. When the current slows down, less heat and salt reaches the North Atlantic, resulting in surface waters that are cooler, fresher, and less salty.

They found that the only models that replicated a weakened AMOC matched the real-world data, suggesting that a weakened AMOC was the only possible root of the suspicious patch.

The professor described the correlation as “very robust”. He added: “If you look at the observations and compare them with all the simulations, only the weakened-AMOC scenario reproduces the cooling in this one region.”

Until the new uncovering, climate scientists had believed the random cool patch was caused by atmospheric factors, such as aerosol pollution. However, computer models that tested the theory have previously failed to replicate the actual, observed cooling, as experts have been able to do now with their proven AMOC theory.

According to the team, the study strengthens future climate forecasts, especially those concerning Europe, where the impact of the AMOC is most pronounced.

Previous studies have provided evidence of the AMOC’s weakening. However, the mysterious patch in the Atlantic provides physical, tangible evidence.