The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), one of
Earth’s major ocean circulation systems, redistributes heat on our
planet and has a major impact on climate. Its past and future strength
are therefore of major interest, but the system is not easily
measured. In my presentation I will present a consistent picture of
the evolution of the AMOC over different time scales and from
different sources: From the about 15 years of direct continuous
observational data, over reanalysis products and ship measurements to
temperature and ocean sediment proxy data. The overview shows that
while the AMOC displays a large amount of natural variability over the
different time scales, its behaviour over the last one to two hundred
years is unprecedented compared to the last 1,600 years and it is
fairly certain that the AMOC over the last decades has been weaker
than ever before in that time period.