Like various ice sheets around the world, many climate-regulating systems are currently being pushed to their limit. The effect (ice melting) fuels its very cause (warming temperatures), creating a feedback loop leading to more and more warming that then prevents ice from forming and covering the dark water. Dark water absorbs drastically more energy than ice and contributes to further warming. These are millions of square miles of ice that, when melted, expose dark ocean waters to sunlight. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) explains in its latest report, they’re “a critical threshold beyond which a system reorganizes, often abruptly and/or irreversibly.”įor a real-world example, think of rising temperatures increasingly melting Arctic sea ice. In essence, that’s what climate change tipping points are. This movement simultaneously knocks you off and leaves you unable to stop its descent.
At first, walking on it with complete stability.īut then, you reach the middle, and the seesaw naturally topples over in the other direction. Picture this: you’re carefully tip-toeing your way up a seesaw. So, what exactly are climate tipping points and what does the latest science about them suggest? To say the least, this could be a game-changer in the fight for our planet.Īnd while the scientific community doesn’t yet have all the answers surrounding climate tipping points – like at what exact temperatures they might occur, at what rate we might see changes, or how they might impact each other – one thing is certain: they’re a risk we can’t afford to ignore. Crossing these points threatens to irreversibly disrupt the natural systems that have kept Earth’s climate relatively stable for thousands of years. If you’ve been reading the climate headlines recently, odds are you’ve heard about “tipping points” - and for good reason. Now, scientists worry that we’re pushing them toward irreversible change.
Octo| 8:00 AM What are climate change tipping points? A handful of natural systems - think the Amazon rainforest and Antarctic ice sheets, for example - have kept Earth’s climate relatively stable over the past 11,700 years.