SCIENCE ARTICLE: Exceeding 1.5°C global warming could trigger multiple climate tipping points

Scientists call for concerted effort to forecast points of no return for ice, weather patterns, and ecosystems

Climate tipping points are conditions beyond which changes in a part of the climate system become self-perpetuating. These changes may lead to abrupt, irreversible, and dangerous impacts with serious implications for humanity.

A new study made by an international pool researchers and published in the journal Science, presents an assessment of the most important climate tipping elements and their potential tipping points, including their temperature thresholds, time scales, and impacts.

This study shows that five of the sixteen tipping points 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.

Researchers also indicate that Earth may have already left a ‘safe’ climate state when temperatures exceeded approximately 1°C warming.

This study provides strong scientific support for the Paris Agreement and associated efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°C, because it shows that the risk of tipping points escalates beyond this level.

To have a 50% chance of achieving 1.5°C and thus limiting tipping point risks, global greenhouse gas emissions must be cut by half by 2030, reaching net-zero by 2050.

A conclusion of the research is therefore that even the United Nations’ Paris Agreement goal to limit warming to well-below 2°C and preferably 1.5°C is not enough to fully avoid dangerous climate change.

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