If Warming Exceeds 1.5 °C Earth’s Climate Will Face Risk of No Return
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August 14, 2024
The world’s climate is teetering on the brink, and no one knows which way it will fall.
A new model of Earth’s climate system suggests that if global warming surpasses the main goal of the Paris Agreement, it could set off a series of tipping points from which it will be very hard, if not impossible, to return.
On our current climate trajectory, the risk of surpassing one of four tipping points by 2300 could reach 45 percent.
The findings come at a critical point in the climate crisis.
Last year, for the very first time, all 365 days in the year exceeded 1°C above pre-industrial levels, bringing the planet uncomfortably close to exceeding the Paris Agreement threshold of 1.5 °C of warming above pre-industrial levels.
Some experts think our decisions in the next few years will make or break that goal. Others argue we overshot it years ago.
The current research was led by climate scientists, Tessa Möller and Annika Ernest Högner, at the University of Potsdam in Germany.
It investigates four possible points of ‘no return’ – when parts of the climate system reach a critical threshold that leads to even more severe and rapid climate change.
These include the collapses of the Atlantic Ocean’s main current system, the Amazon rainforest, the Greenland ice sheet, and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
https://www.sciencealert.com/earths-climate-faces-risk-of-no-return-if-warming-exceeds-1-5-c
