Earth barrelling towards multiple ‘irreversible’ climate tipping points under current warming rate, study says

What a joke! This analysis was not an analysis of any facts. It was a digest of previous Warmist articles. It found that previous articles from Warmists predicted various disasters. Anybody could have told them that without the need for an "analysis"

The Earth’s current warming rate due to greenhouse gas emissions could lead to the planet crossing several “irreversible” and “dangerous” climate tipping points by the 2030s, a new study warned.

The research, published on Friday in the journal Science in advance of a major conference at the University of Exeter, calls for limiting additional warming “as much as possible” as risks of irreversible damage to the planet increase with each tenth of a degree of further warming.

“Our new work provides compelling evidence that the world must radically accelerate decarbonising the economy to limit the risk of crossing climate tipping points,” Tim Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter, said in a statement.

Climate tipping points, researchers say, are threshold conditions on the planet beyond which climate change becomes irreversible and “self-perpetuating.”

“These changes may lead to abrupt, irreversible, and dangerous impacts with serious implications for humanity,” scientists warned in the study.

In the new research, scientists conducted a comprehensive review of over 200 papers published since 2008, and developed an updated assessment of the most important climate tipping points, including their temperature thresholds, time scales, as well as impacts.

These include the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, widespread abrupt permafrost thaw, and massive die-off of tropical coral reefs.

The research found that 16 major systems involved in regulating the planet’s climate – so-called “tipping elements” – “have the potential” to cross tipping points where their changes can become self-sustaining and likely irreversible.

It suggested that even if the global temperature stopped rising, once the ice sheet, ocean, or rainforest passed a tipping point, it would carry on changing to a new state.

Five of the sixteen known tipping points may be triggered even at today’s temperatures, scientists say.

They say four of these move from “possible events” to “likely” at a global warming scenario of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and five more become possible around this level of heating.

“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,” study lead author David Armstrong McKay from the University of Exeter says. “The world is already at risk of some tipping points. As global temperatures rise further, more tipping points become possible.” Dr McKay adds.

Limiting warming to well below 2°C and preferably 1.5°C, a goal that nations agreed to at the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, is not enough to fully avoid dangerous climate change, scientists warn.

The new research finds that the risks of tipping point increase markedly in the ”Paris range” of 1.5-2°C warming, with even higher risks beyond 2°C.

https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/climate-tipping-points-irreversible-2030-b2163433.html

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