Phys.org September 11, 2022
Climate tipping points (CTPs) occur when change in large parts of the climate system become self-perpetuating beyond a warming threshold. Triggering CTPs leads to significant, policy-relevant impacts, including substantial sea level rise from collapsing ice sheets, dieback of biodiverse biomes such as the Amazon rainforest or warm-water corals, and carbon release from thawing permafrost. An international team of researchers (Sweden, UK, Germany) provides a comprehensive reassessment of all the nine policy-relevant tipping elements and their CTPs that were originally identified by Lenton et al. (2008). The team updated assessment of the most important climate tipping elements and their potential tipping points, including their temperature thresholds, time scales, and impacts. Their analysis indicates that even global warming of 1°C, a threshold that we already have passed, puts us at risk by triggering some tipping points… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLEÂ
The location of climate tipping elements in the cryosphere (blue)… Credit: SCIENCE, 9 Sep 2022, Vol 377, Issue 6611