A new study co-authored by Yale climate scientist Alexey Fedorov offers intriguing possibilities about the future of Arctic warming through the end of this century.

For the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Fedorov and his colleagues looked at the influence of a key Atlantic Ocean water circulation system—the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC)—on accelerated warming in the Artic region (relative to the rest of the globe) known as Arctic amplification.

AMOC, which includes the Gulfstream and other ocean currents in the Atlantic, is critically important to a variety of global climate factors, whereas Arctic amplification is one of the salient features of global warming.

The researchers said that if AMOC slows down, as some scientists believe has already begun to occur, it has the potential to moderate Arctic warming by 2°C by the end of the 21st century.

The finding underscores the influential role of ocean currents in global climate regulation and is vital for formulating effective climate responses to greenhouse gas increases, the authors say.

"It also shows how tightly different components of the climate system are linked to each other," Fedorov said.

The authors of the study, along with Fedorov, are Yu-Chi Lee and Wei Liu of the University of California-Riverside, Nicole Feldl of the University of California-Santa Cruz, and Patrick Taylor of the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.