models overestimate the impact of freshwater forcing on AMOC. To complicate the issue of positive and negative feedbacks on temperature and salinity, the wind-driven component of AMOC is still not fully constrained. A relatively larger role of atmospheric forcing would lead to less dependency on the thermohaline factors listed above, and would render AMOC less vulnerable to temperature and salinity changes under global warming. Multiple equilibria versus single equilibrium As well as paleoceanographic reconstruction, the mechanism and likelihood of collapse has been investigated using climate models. Earth Models of Intermediate Complexity (EMICs) have historically predicted a modern AMOC to have multiple equilibria, characterised as warm, cold and shutdown modes. This is in contrast to more comprehensive models, which bias towards a stable AMOC characterised by a single equilibrium. However, doubt is cast upon this stability by a modelled northward freshwater flux which is at odds with observations. An unphysical northward flux in models acts as a negative feedback on overturning and falsely biases towards stability. On the other hand, it was also suggested that the stationary freshwater forcing used in the classic EMICs is too simplistic, and a 2022 study which modified a Stommel's Bifurcation EMIC to use more realistic transient freshwater flux found that this change delayed tipping behavior in the model by over 1000 years. The study suggested that this simulation is more consistent with the reconstructions of AMOC response to Meltwater pulse 1A, when a similarly long delay was observed. Impacts of a slowdown Don Chambers from the University of South Florida College of Marine Science mentioned: "The major effect of a slowing AMOC is expected to be cooler winters and summers around the North Atlantic, and small regional increases in sea level on the North American coast." James Hansen and Makiko Sato stated: A 2005 paper suggested that a severe AMOC slowdown would collapse North Atlantic plankton counts to less than half of their pre-disruption biomass due to the increased stratification and the severe drop in nutrient exchange amongst the ocean layers. In 2019, a study suggested that the observed ~10% decline in the phytoplankton productivity in the North Atlantic may provide evidence for this hypothesis. Downturn of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation has been tied to extreme regional sea level rise. A 2015 paper simulated global ocean changes under AMOC slowdown and collapse scenarios and found that it would greatly decrease dissolved oxygen content in