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Mar 2024

Risk of triggering multiple climate tipping points

Source: Middle East Insurance Review | Nov 2022

Even if countries meet the goals of the Paris Climate agreement, global warming could still trigger several climate tipping points that would drastically change life on the Earth, according to a new research.
 
The new study, ‘Exceeding 1.5°C global warming could trigger multiple climate tipping points’, published in the journal Science in September 2022 indicates that even the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping global warming at 1.5°C is not enough to fully avoid some of the dangerous effects of climate change.
 
Climate tipping points (CTPs) are junctures in the climate system that, when crossed, can usher in irreversible changes.
 
The 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.
 
The researchers considered 16 of these tipping elements and determined that at current levels of global heating, the world “already lies within the lower end of five (climate tipping point)  uncertainty ranges”.
 
These include the massive sea-level rise from irreversible collapse of the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets, the degradation of biodiverse biomes like the Amazon rainforest or warm-water coral reefs, and greenhouse gas emissions thawing permafrost.
 
If the world meets the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels, the researchers said four of these trigger events become likely and five more become possible.
 
The research has revealed that more trigger events become likely and possible with each tenth of a degree of further warming past 1.5 degree Celsius.
 
The United Nations had warned in 2021 that the Earth could warm by more than 2.7°C by the end of the 21st century unless countries further cut greenhouse gas emissions. The planet has already warmed 1.1°C above pre-industrial levels. M 
 
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