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    "title": "Stommel: two stable circulation regimes under the same external conditions",
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        "description": "The box model uses specified temperature/salinity forcing, exchange and feedback assumptions. Multiple equilibria and their stability belong to that idealized system, not a complete global ocean circulation forecast. Parameter dependence and basin/forcing simplifications matter. Later observations, spatial models and tipping analyses receive separate credit.",
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          "citation": "Henry Stommel, Thermohaline Convection with Two Stable Regimes of Flow — complete1961physical-model article",
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      "statement": "# Stommel: two stable circulation regimes under the same external conditions\n\nStommel shows that a symmetric idealized heat-and-salt convection system can admit two locally stable flow regimes, with a separating unstable equilibrium and parameter-dependent transitions.\n\nThe same external conditions need not select a single circulation. Temperature and salinity change fluid density in opposing ways, and they relax at different rates. If density differences also drive exchange between two well-mixed vessels, that feedback can support either a temperature-dominated or a salinity-dominated circulation, with opposite flow directions. A third steady state is unstable. The model makes multiple equilibria and history-dependent transitions concrete enough to analyse, while explicitly stopping short of a direct description of real ocean circulation. Different parameters can leave only one stable regime. This is a contribution about a physical mechanism and its possible consequences, not a measured forecast of an Atlantic tipping threshold.\n\n## Scientific scope\n\nThe box model uses specified temperature/salinity forcing, exchange and feedback assumptions. Multiple equilibria and their stability belong to that idealized system, not a complete global ocean circulation forecast. Parameter dependence and basin/forcing simplifications matter. Later observations, spatial models and tipping analyses receive separate credit.\n\n## People and systems\n\nHenry Stommel\n\n\n\n## Original sources\n\n- [Henry Stommel, Thermohaline Convection with Two Stable Regimes of Flow — complete1961physical-model article](https://courses.seas.harvard.edu/climate/eli/Courses/EPS131/Sources/07-AMOC/Papers/Stommel-1961.pdf)\n",
      "summary": "Stommel shows that a symmetric idealized heat-and-salt convection system can admit two locally stable flow regimes, with a separating unstable equilibrium and parameter-dependent transitions.\n\nThe same external conditions need not select a single circulation. Temperature and salinity change fluid density in opposing ways, and they relax at different rates. If density differences also drive exchange between two well-mixed vessels, that feedback can support either a temperature-dominated or a salinity-dominated circulation, with opposite flow directions. A third steady state is unstable. The model makes multiple equilibria and history-dependent transitions concrete enough to analyse, while explicitly stopping short of a direct description of real ocean circulation. Different parameters can leave only one stable regime. This is a contribution about a physical mechanism and its possible consequences, not a measured forecast of an Atlantic tipping threshold.",
      "title": "Stommel: two stable circulation regimes under the same external conditions"
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