Hugin & Munin Journal

For years, the possibility of a collapse of the Atlantic ocean circulation system occupied a familiar mental category: serious, but distant. It was the kind of climate risk that resurfaced periodically and could still be filed away as too uncertain, too remote or too dependent on disputed models to influence present decisions. That framing is becoming harder to maintain. Scientists have not suddenly agreed that collapse is imminent, and no new study has produced a reliable countdown. The more important change is that severe weakening now appears more plausible than the average of earlier model projections suggested, while newer work also indicates that AMOC stability may depend on the rate and pathway of forcing rather than on a single fixed warming threshold. A 2026 study used present-day observations to constrain climate-model projections of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC. Its strongest-performing method estimated that the circulation could weaken by abo...

For decades, many global supply chains rewarded efficiency above almost everything else: lean inventories, concentrated production, specialised suppliers, and infrastructure operating close to capacity. The logic is easy to understand. Spare capacity costs money, additional suppliers complicate procurement, and stock that sits unused looks inefficient. Under ordinary conditions, such systems can work remarkably well. Their weakness appears when the conditions stop being ordinary. A supply chain cannot be judged only by what it costs while every component is available and every route remains open. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine forced Europe to confront one concentrated energy dependency. The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz in 2026 then tested whether Europe had built genuine resilience or merely exchanged a visible dependence on Russian pipelines for a less visible exposure to global shipping, LNG markets, and common chokepoints. Editorial update, 22 September 2026: Thi...