Senior scientists have warned serious disruption to the Gulf Stream ocean currents that are crucial in controlling global climate must be avoided “at all costs”.

The alert follows the revelation in research published in the journal Nature that the system is at its weakest ever recorded.

Past collapses of the giant network have seen some of the most extreme impacts in climate history, with western Europe particularly vulnerable to a descent into freezing winters.

A significantly weakened system is also likely to cause more severe storms in Europe, faster sea level rise on the east coast of the US and increasing drought in the Sahel in Africa.

The Guardian newspaper reports the new research worries scientists because of the huge impact global warming has already had on the currents and the unpredictability of a future “tipping point”.

The currents that bring warm Atlantic water northwards towards the pole, where they cool, sink and return southwards, is the most significant control on northern hemisphere climate outside the atmosphere.

However, the system, formally called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), has weakened by 15 per cent since 1950, thanks to melting Greenland ice and ocean warming making sea water less dense and more buoyant.

This represents a massive slowdown, equivalent to halting all the world’s rivers three times over, or stopping the greatest river, the Amazon, 15 times. Such weakening has not been seen in at least the last 1600 years, which is as far back as researchers have analysed so far.

At the same time, the new analyses show the weakening is accelerating.

“From the study of past climate, we know changes in the AMOC have been some of the most abrupt and impactful events in the history of climate,” said Professor Stefan Rahmstorf, at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and one of the world’s leading oceanographers, who led some of the new research.

During the last Ice Age, winter temperatures changed by up to 10 degrees Celsius within three years in some places.

“We are dealing with a system that in some aspects is highly non-linear, so fiddling with it is very dangerous, because you may well trigger some surprises,” he said.

“I wish I knew where this critical tipping point is, but that is unfortunately just what we don’t know. We should avoid disrupting the AMOC at all costs.

“It is one more reason why we should stop global warming as soon as possible.”

Oceanographer Dr Peter Spooner, at University College London, shares the concern: “The extent of the changes we have discovered comes as a surprise to many, including myself, and points to significant changes in the future.”

A collapse in the AMOC would mean far less heat reaching western Europe and plunge the region into very severe winters, the kind of scenario depicted in an extreme fashion in the movie The Day After Tomorrow.

A widespread collapse of deep-sea ecosystems has also been seen in the past.

However, as the AMOC weakens, it might actually increase summer heatwaves.

That is because it takes time for the cooling of the northern waters to also cause cooling over the adjacent lands.

However, the cooler waters affect the atmosphere in a way that helps warm air to flood into Europe from the south, a situation already seen in 2015.

Other new research this week showed that Greenland’s massive ice cap is melting at the fastest rate for at least 450 years.

This influx will continue to weaken the AMOC into the future until human-caused climate change is halted, but scientists do not know how fast the weakening will be or when it reaches the point of collapse.

However, Professor Rahmstorf said the United Nations sponsored Paris Agreement reached in 2015 offers some hope if its ambition is increased and achieved.

“If we can keep the temperature rise to well below 2.0°C as agreed in the Paris Agreement, I think we run a small risk of crossing this collapse tipping point.”