Tipping elements in the Earth’s climate system
- Author
- T. M. Lenton, H. Held, E. Kriegler, J. W. Hall, W. Lucht, S. Rahmstorf, H. J. Schellnhuber
- Year
- 2008
- Type
- journal article
- Category
- Sustentabilidad
Lenton and colleagues (2008) identify and rank the parts of the Earth's climate system, called 'tipping elements,' that risk being pushed into a different state once human-caused warming crosses a critical threshold. The paper discusses which of these are most policy-relevant and how early warning of an approaching threshold might be developed.
This paper introduces the concept of 'tipping elements': large-scale components of the Earth's climate system that can be shifted into a qualitatively different state by a small disturbance, once a critical threshold is crossed. The authors evaluate which parts of the climate system are policy-relevant tipping elements under human-caused (anthropogenic) warming, and where their thresholds may lie. Using expert judgment, they rank these elements by their sensitivity to global warming and by how uncertain the underlying physical mechanisms are, and they discuss how early warning systems might be developed to detect a system approaching such a threshold.
Credits: Lenton, T. M., Held, H., Kriegler, E., Hall, J. W., Lucht, W., Rahmstorf, S., & Schellnhuber, H. J. (2008). Tipping elements in the Earth's climate system. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(6), 1786–1793. http://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0705414105
Where to find it
Academic papers