Between this summer’s biblical floods, apocalyptic fires and life-threatening heat domes, people are starting to wonder whether we’ve lurched over some sort of climate tipping point. Climate scientists and ecologists who study tipping points say what we’re seeing are merely extreme events amplified by global warming. But they’ve been warning about the risk of climate tipping points for years. Now people are listening.
Research published last year in Science suggests the risk of a global tipping point that triggers accelerated climate warming starts to become significant once average worldwide temperatures rise 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. That’s likely to happen in the 2030s.
In popular usage, tipping points refer to anything that changes suddenly. In science, it usually refers to a straw-that-broke-the-camel’s-back phenomenon, where a small change in input makes a big difference in outcome.
