A study reveals that predicting climate tipping points, such as those affecting the AMOC and polar ice sheets, is highly uncertain due to data limitations. Despite this, reducing greenhouse gas emissions remains critical, as climate instability grows with warming.
A recent study in Science Advances indicates that the current uncertainties are too significant to precisely predict when critical components of the Earth system, such as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), polar ice sheets, or tropical rainforests, might reach tipping points.
These tipping events, which might unfold in response to human-caused global warming, are characterized by rapid, irreversible climate changes with potentially catastrophic consequences. However, as the new study shows, predicting when these events will occur is more difficult than previously thought.
Climate scientists from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) have identified three primary sources of uncertainty. First, predictions rely on assumptions regarding the underlying physical mechanisms, as well as regarding future human actions to extrapolate past data into the future. These assumptions can be overly simplistic and lead to significant errors.
Second, long-term, direct observations of the climate system are rare and the Earth system components in question may not be suitably represented by the data. Third, historical climate data is incomplete. Huge data gaps, especially for the longer past, and the methods used to fill these gaps can introduce errors in the statistics used to predict possible tipping times.
Case Study: The AMOC
To illustrate their findings, the authors examined the AMOC, a crucial ocean current system. Previous predictions from historical data suggested a collapse could occur between 2025 and 2095. However, the new study revealed that the uncertainties are so large that these predictions are not reliable. Using different fingerprints and data sets, predicted tipping times for the AMOC ranged from 2050 to 8065 even if the underlying mechanistic assumptions were true. Knowing that the AMOC might tip somewhere within a 6000-year window isn’t practically useful, and this large range highlights the complexity and uncertainty involved in such predictions.
The researchers conclude that while the idea of predicting climate tipping points is appealing, the reality is fraught with uncertainties. The current methods and data are not up to the task. “Our research is both a wake-up call and a cautionary tale,” says lead author Maya Ben-Yami. “There are things we still can’t predict, and we need to invest in better data and a more in-depth understanding of the systems in question. The stakes are too high to rely on shaky predictions.”
While the study by Ben-Yami and colleagues shows that we cannot reliably predict tipping events, the possibility of such events cannot be ruled out either. The authors also stress that statistical methods are still very good at telling us which parts of the climate have become more unstable. This includes not only the AMOC, but also the Amazon rainforest and ice sheets. “The large uncertainties imply that we need to be even more cautious than if we were able to precisely estimate a tipping time. We still need to do everything we can to reduce our impact on the climate, first and foremost by cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Even if we can’t predict tipping times, the probability for key Earth system components to tip still increases with every tenth of a degree of warming,” concludes co-author Niklas Boers.
Reference: “Uncertainties too large to predict tipping times of major Earth system components from historical data” by Maya Ben-Yami, Andreas Morr, Sebastian Bathiany and Niklas Boers, 2 August 2024, Science Advances.
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adl4841
This research is part of the ClimTip project, which aims to enhance our understanding of climate tipping points.
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11 Comments
“Despite this, reducing greenhouse gas emissions remains critical, as climate instability grows with warming.”
A search for the above quote, in the original Science Advances article, does not find it; even the words “climate instability’ cannot be found. It appears that it was added by someone trying to summarize the peer-reviewed article with an editorial comment that cannot be attributed to the authors. “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”
“These tipping events, which might unfold in response to human-caused global warming, are characterized by rapid, irreversible climate changes with potentially catastrophic consequences.”
The claim of irreversibility is a key element of concern about so-called ‘tipping points.’ Yet, historical evidence indicates that they are quite rare and special, not being in the same category as we are concerned about, namely runaway warming. Earth has gone through several different ‘hot house’ and ‘ice house’ phases and has always recovered, long before there were even humans. Indeed, many of the events appear to be elements of cyclicity.
The only thing that comes to mind in the way of an event that we haven’t ‘recovered’ from, and wouldn’t want to, is the release of large quantities of oxygen from photosynthetic organisms. Humans had no hand in that! While extinctions change the composition of the ecosystems, life has always come back. The arrow of evolution appears to move in the direction of greater complexity and intelligence.
Intelligent robots are probably a greater long-term threat to existing life than any claimed anthropogenic warming. The remnant radiation from a nuclear holocaust might sterilize the surface for a very long time, but the surviving cockroaches would probably become cannibalistic and diversify by evolution. We have never been closer to a nuclear war, and yet people seem unconcerned and worry about a slow warming, that should it continue, may melt the Greenland Ice Sheet (in 10-20,000-years) back to what it was during the Eemian.
I am reminded of a Frank and Ernest cartoon many years ago: The two of them are sitting on a park bench and one of them says, “I have to get my priorities in order. But, first, I have a lot of other things I am going to do.”
For many, science is both good and bad. For many, it is a god. Missing from the unpredictability formulas assumed, is the certainty of the end of times, when the earth passes away. Talk about a warning!
Ignored by many. Laughed at by scientists. In text for thousands of years. The event horizon unknown but, signs of that time multiply.
Yes, we can make changes to alter
The repercussions of man’s impact
Upon his environment, but that is comparable in process to the sewage treatment systems for cities, which when they fail, pollute
our environment and the infrastructure fails, rapidly.
In the last days, many will mourn and gnashing their teeth bit it will be too late.
“We have never been closer to a nuclear war, ”
I couldn’t agree more, other than possibly during the Cuban missile crisis. However, with water shortages looking to increase as the world’s population grows with its attendant religious bigotry, a slowly developing tipping point could indeed trigger the final stupidity of H sapiens; although maybe cockroaches would survive. The key tipping point is the human tolerance for discomfort and what the have-nots are prepared to put up with when compared with the we-wants-the-lot.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/two-minutes-to-midnight/vi-BB1mNn2a?ocid=winp1taskbar&cvid=9961bd3b0d534301a063d9650e540e1e&ei=93
“Using different fingerprints and data sets, predicted tipping times for the AMOC ranged from 2050 to 8065 even if the underlying mechanistic assumptions were true.”
We don’t even know if those “underlying mechanistic assumptions” are valid, or if there are things we are unaware of that play a role. It is largely speculative conjecture of the type that Mark Twain was thinking of when he said, “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”
Well, it was time to boost the skeptics who tried to convice us that climate change was not real, now that all the attemps by the likes of Exxon at last seemed to have been overcome, and the reality of climate change began to become part of the global consiousness. So now science comes to the rescue to change the idea that we are in real danger. This is not the first article which tries to change the mood, and it won’t be the last. It was and is predictable; warnings will slowly evaporate, and the skeptics can see light at the end of the tunnel. We will pay all the price for that.
“We will pay all the price for that.”
Your confidence in being right is admirable, but puzzling. Even the evidence for correlation between CO2 and temperature is poor for all scales except the last 100-years. Even the effect of the CO2 feedback cycle suggests that the net causation may be inverted.
“We still need to do everything we can to reduce our impact on the climate, first and foremost by cutting greenhouse gas emissions.”
Cutting CO2 emissions will take none of the CO2 already added out of the atmosphere to lower global temperatures. But what that strategy will do is make it even harder to continue the energy transition to renewables and EVs simply because conventional ICE vehicles do all of that work. There are no EVs involved with construction and installation of solar or wind farm projects. So, with the science apparently not settled yet, more oil will be needed and used. There is no realistic alternative.
Was .2% for all of live until 2Million years ago – when if slowly fell to the present .04%. If dumbbells, screaming ‘the sky is falling,’ were to lower it to .02%, all plant would die.
See, cutting CO2 is exactly the same as cutting Oxygen to animals. That’s the cycle, they breathe out and we breathe in. Methane is a different story – but only dummies think CO2 is causing problems.
Sorry to be abrupt – I’ve written nice letters to the industry paid to kick this stuff out. It’s getting old.
Methane is converted to CO2 in less than 10-years. However, it is questionable whether CO2 has a lifetime of thousands of years, as is often claimed.