Even if the world somehow manages to limit global warming to
An international team of researchers studied 16climate tipping points - when the side effects of warming are irreversible, self-perpetuating and quite severe. As a result, scientists have calculated the approximate temperature thresholds at which they will work. Neither is considered likely at the current rate of temperature rise. But warming of just a few tenths of a degree would make four of them more likely.
The four factors are:
— Irreversible destruction of the Greenland ice sheets;
- Accelerated loss of tropical coral reefs around the world;
– Melting northern permafrost, which releases huge amounts of greenhouse gases buried in the frozen ground;
— Melting of the West Antarctic ice sheets in Greenland.
These four tipping points threaten the Earth atwarming by 1.5°C, that's 0.3°C warmer than now. According to some forecasts, current climate policy will lead to warming of about 2.7 °C since pre-industrial times.
"Let's hope we're wrong," he said.study co-author Tim Lenton, an earth systems specialist at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, in an interview with The Associated Press. “There is a chance that these tipping points cannot be avoided. So it's very important that we think a little more about how we're going to adapt to the consequences."
The concept of tipping points already existsmore than a decade, but in the course of the new study, scientists have paid special attention to the study of temperature thresholds, when they will work and what effect they will have on people and the Earth.
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