Tipping points in the Earth’s climate system

Lenton, Held, Kriegler, Hall, Lucht, Rahmstorf, and Schellnhuber's 2008 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences introduces the term "tipping element" to describe large-scale components of the Earth system that may pass a tipping point, a critical threshold at which a small perturbation can qualitatively change the state or trajectory of the whole system. The authors compile and assess a list of policy-relevant tipping elements under anthropogenic climate forcing, drawing on expert elicitation involving 52 scientists to rank these elements by their sensitivity to warming and by the uncertainty surrounding the physical mechanisms involved. The paper finds that several major Earth system components, including Arctic sea ice, the Greenland ice sheet, and the Amazon rainforest, could approach critical transitions within this century. It also discusses how early warning systems could be developed to detect the proximity of some tipping points by monitoring how a system's response to change evolves before an irreversible shift occurs. Credits: Lenton, T. e. (12 de 02 de 2008). Tipping points in the Earth's climate system. PNAS, 105(6), 1786-1793. Obtenido de PNAS.