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Risk of passing multiple climate tipping points escalates above 1.5°C global warming

September 11, 2022

Risk of passing multiple climate tipping points escalates above 1.5°C global warming

09/09/2022 – Multiple climate tipping points could be triggered if global temperature rises beyond 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, according to a major new analysis published in the journal Science. Even at current levels of global heating the world is already at risk of passing five dangerous climate tipping points, and risks increase with each tenth of a degree of further warming. An international research team synthesised evidence for tipping points, their temperature thresholds, timescales, and impacts from a comprehensive review of over 200 papers published since 2008, when climate tipping points were first rigorously defined.
Risk of passing multiple climate tipping points escalates above 1.5°C global warming
Tipping points world map. Figure by Biermann/PIK, based on Armstrong McKay et al, 2020

The research, published in advance of a major conference “Tipping Points: from climate crisis to positive transformation” at the University of Exeter (12-14th September), concludes human emissions have already pushed Earth into the tipping points danger zone. Five of the sixteen may be triggered at today’s temperatures: the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, widespread abrupt permafrost thaw, collapse of convection in the Labrador Sea, and massive die-off of tropical coral reefs. Four of these move from possible events to likely at 1.5°C global warming, with five more becoming possible around this level of heating.

Lead author David Armstrong McKay from Stockholm Resilience Centre, University of Exeter, and the Earth Commission says, “We can see signs of destabilisation already in parts of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, in permafrost regions, the Amazon rainforest, and potentially the Atlantic overturning circulation as well.”

“The chance of crossing tipping points can be reduced by rapidly cutting greenhouse gas emissions”

“The world is already at risk of some tipping points. As global temperatures rise further, more tipping points become possible.” he adds. “The chance of crossing tipping points can be reduced by rapidly cutting greenhouse gas emissions, starting immediately.”

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Climate change slows onset of next ice age

January 18, 2016

Climate change slows onset of next ice age

Jokulsarlon_lake,_Iceland

Relic of the last ice age: Jökulsárlón, one of Iceland’s glacial lakes
Image: Kenneth Muir via Wikimedia Commons

The planet’s inexorable warming means there will be no new ice age for at least the next 100,000 years, scientists say.

LONDON, 18 January, 2016 – Human beings have not just started to leave a unique geological stratum that will announce their existence long after the species has been extinguished. They may have altered a climate cycle that has been stable for millions of years and even cancelled – or certainly postponed – the next Ice Age.

Andrey Ganopolski and colleagues from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany report in Nature that they took a look at the conditions that determined the geologically recent cycle of Ice Ages.

The advance and retreat of vast glaciers over geological time are the consequence of a mix of factors involving sea, mountains, atmosphere, vegetation and the distribution of continents around the globe. 

But ultimately what determines the rhythm of these events is what climate scientists call insolation: how much sun the Earth actually gets in a summer. The Earth’s orbit is not a perfect circle but an ellipse, and the shape of the ellipse and the angle of the Earth’s tilt on its axis change subtly and imperceptibly over cycles lasting tens of thousands of years, which in turn alters the amount of sunshine striking the northern hemisphere. 

And if the atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide are not high when the total insolation is near its lowest point, great thick sheets of ice begin to advance over Europe, Asia and North America. 

This is enough to explain the last eight Ice Ages. The sequence is punctuated by “interglacials” that tend to last roughly 10,000 years before the ice advances once more. 

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