How Tipping Points Warp our Proceptions and Projections
The next 10 years very well could determine the fate of the next 50. Tipping points can’t be visualized by clinging to the sense of stability we have now, as they hold the potential to fundamentally change ecosystems’ role in stabilizing and storing carbon. Tipping points are the underpinnings of a very different world; a solemn symbol that the effects of the climate breakdown won’t be seasonal or regulated away, they’ll be here to stay and make up our new reality for generations to come. Shrouded in the uncertainty of their magnitude, projecting sureness and oversimplifying their effects will prove counterproductive as we monitor and try to understand their evolving impacts. But as each tipping point rewires our biosphere, our emissions could move into an exponential and irreversible state. The new IPCC report shows the increased focus on the potential of climatic tipping points, a clear signal of the need to better integrate them into how we think about our shared future.
To understand tipping points imagine rolling a ball up a hill, if you push the ball up a bit, it simply rolls back into your hands. But once you reach the top, the tiniest extra breeze will push ball out of your control. Once that happens it’s natural position isn’t to return to it’s normal state, much the way our natural world has been perfectly crafted to do, but to accelerate in it’s roll down a new direction. Tipping points are much the same, as Tim Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter articulates; “subsystems of the Earth system that are at least continental in scale and can be switched – under certain circumstances – into a qualitatively different state by small perturbations”. One of the key things to remember is once this system has shifted, it doesn’t naturally return its prior state or carbon cycle. There’s around 10 potential environmental tipping points and prominent feedback loops, we can loosely categorize them into three categories. 1. Ice; which includes both glaciers with water underneath it such as Antarctica, or with land such as in the Himalayas where the majority of earth’s fresh water is stored. 2. Earth; mainly organics that hold carbon such as forests, peat bogs or permafrost. 3. Water; which includes all of the life nestled inside it and the way it flows throughout our earth.
Glaciers are More than Just Ice.
Glaciers, simultaneously the dominating brand for the climate crisis and yet somehow its least relatable and emotive topic. Nice job PR team. The Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheet are on course be filled melted anywhere from 20 to 40 years from now or in climate terms, at 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. The IPCC report, the UN report which most modeling and discussion is based on, explains how it’s so susceptible; “bedrock that largely lies below sea level and [is] in contact with ocean heat, making [it] vulnerable to rapid and irreversible ice loss”. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet has previously disappeared and reformed in the past 100,000 years, but other climate-related events make it more significant this time around. Surface Albedo Feedback is another compounding, self-perpetuating loop look that impacts glaciers as darker surfaces are exposed from melting, which attracts increasing amounts of heat.
These knock-on effects happen on land as well. A classic example of compounding is the rapid melting of Himalayan glaciers contributing to a shift in the Indian Monsoon season, heavier more concentrated rains, and drier ground, which then absorbs less of the water, leaving the aquifers less replenished, and ultimately worsening the severe droughts in India and South Asia. These all have an immense impact on the societies who’ve been dependant on this water source for 100s of years, both in terms of draught, crops, and forced migration, all sociological feedback loops which we’ll discuss in the next article. But for now, a starting place for understanding the human side of the draught can already be Chennai, Cape Town, Rome, and California, where drought and crop-induced migration out of Nepal and the Middle East has already begun. All of those are worth a google if just so you stop picturing polar bears when you think about the climate crisis.
Oceans Turn to Water
Coral reefs are another connection in the chain, not only are they a massive carbon sink, the label for an ecosystem that absorbs more carbon than it emits, but they protect coastlines from the increasing strength and frequency of tropical storms and are the source of essential nutrients for marine food chains. When the UN talks about fishless oceans by 2040, it’s not just about overfishing and plastics but the feedback from the 95-99% of coral reefs dying off with a 2C rise in temperature. Thanks to the enormous excess of reactive nitrogen from industrial fertilizer, hyper fertilization leads to increased algae blooms, consuming the available oxygen turning large regions into dead zones. This reactive nitrogen (300x more effective at trapping heat than carbon) then sinks, waiting to be resurfaced into the atmosphere by the ocean currents.
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is the conveyor belt for our oceans, water goes north, cools and gets saltier. But AMOC is interesting because it’s the only tipping point that actually has a cooling effect. While regional differences do vary, the weakening of the AMOC could offset some warming effects. But just like most climate repercussions, they don’t happen in a simple blanket manner and anything on this scale is bound to have effects we haven’t considered. West African monsoon shift, a less obvious effect, is one that many scientists are watching as another feedback loop
Nature’s Safety Net Begins to Breaks Down
The Amazon and Boreal forest diebacks have produced outrageous sounding titles such as “Amazon to become a savanna”. At first glance, it seems like hysteria, but what they’re referring to is the Amazon, a forest twice the size of India, eventually moving from a carbon sink (sucking in C02, net negative) to a carbon emitter (net positive). Around 20% of the Amazon basin has become a net source of CO2, not just from deforestation, but declining rainfall and reduced transpiration (something a bit too dull to cover right now). And while yes, C02 does help fertilize plants to grow stronger, there is very little relevant evidence showing that this will do enough to compensate for the current vegetation in the Amazon as we’re already seeing tree composition favor dryer species. Some studies estimate the tipping point is around 40% tree loss, but when factored in with the changing climate, new studies say it could be closer to 20%-25% loss by 2050. Yale 360 has currently got us approaching 20 percent. One of natures greatest works of art is the interconnected nature of forests, one of natures greatest works of artecosystems, it’s hard to know all the implications of one of our in carbon, suddenly begins producing it.
Permafrost is just soil that’s frozen all year round and loaded up full of organic goodies, lots of different things have died in it, and as it thaws, microbes wake up and break all that down. Currently, there is a debate over is how much of what’s stored in the Alaskan and Russian permafrost reserves is methane and how much of it is carbon. And while we can have a truly riveting debate about percentages, what we do know is its release is very susceptible to other tipping points. Some say it will happen more gradually but some point to a concept called the “compost bomb” where internal heat generation becomes the main driver to further thaw more permafrost, creating an internal feedback loop. And we could throw out some scary stats like how there is around twice as much carbon in permafrost than is currently in the Earth’s atmosphere or how the last of the 5 mass extinctions on earth came from large scale methane release into the atmosphere, but I don’t have time for more context so I’m just going to leave this in a sarcastic format.
Side note, when Emily, the other co-founder of CFB, read through this she pointed out how economically speaking permafrost and ocean methane hydrates are the two tipping points that’ll f*** us up the most and by a lot…so maybe I shouldn’t leave it as a sarcastic note.
Here’s a fun filled chart to summarize the tipping points along with a few extras…cause how much fun are charts with small text.
Urgency in Uncertainty
The intended message here isn’t the isolated and absolute nature of climate science, but exactly the opposite. We must be humble in our knowledge and remember that each of the symptoms of the climate breakdown doesn’t play out in a vacuum. Prof Mat Collins, coordinating lead author on the “Extremes, Abrupt Changes and Managing Risks” chapter of the (IPCC), beautifully illustrates; “As you approach the edge of the cliff, a small random gust of wind is more likely to blow you over the edge. This is more prevalent in biological systems. A strong marine heatwave in one year can wipe out a large coral ecosystem for many decades – or, perhaps, even permanently. The heatwave is a result of natural fluctuations, but becomes more likely and more extreme with an increasing average trend.” Something to watch out for is how our brain can understand predictions as certainty. But implied certainty as to the exact impacts and numbers, which as we covered earlier is nearly impossible and much of the time oversimplifies the problem, can manifest into complacency from companies and governments as they focus too much on reaching the exact number versus doing what’s really necessary.
But maybe the argument goes the other way. Maybe we’re stretching it, as we’ve mentioned there’s lots of margin for error in grand predictions. The point we’re trying to convey is even if it’s a possibility (maybe even a thoroughly researched and high probability possibility) is it not worth acting on? Cambridge climate scientist, Mike Hulme, reaffirms, “given its huge impact and irreversible nature… to err on the side of danger is not a responsible option.” 2050 is often thrown around as a date for negative repercussions to come to fruition; however, plenty will change on the pathway there and we must consistently remind to pinch ourselves on how horrible we as humans are at conceptualizing time. That’ll be near the year my kids are supposed to be going to their senior prom, learning to drive my car and inevitably crashing it. Most of the work we can do to protect 2050 must happen in the next 10 years. Keeping a close eye on how the compounds, compound, and factoring in the unknown is a humbling start. No one thing can prevent any of these tipping points from happening as they result from a culmination of all our actions. At first thought this is demotivating, but at second glance you realize that also means every action you take contributes to making sure we never hit them. So go on, pressure the systems you interact with every day (your career, your boss, the businesses you rely on), talk about it to those you love, take action.
This is apart of both our buzzwords explained series, where we breakdown the most important climate buzzwords, and our feedback loops series. Read more from buzzwords explained and feedback loops.
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