Paul Beckwith – Apr 21, 2024
I chat about tipping point cascades in the climate system and Early Warming Signals that show we are rapidly approaching a multitude of tipping points.
A good analogy is that of dominos, we often think of one chain of dominos, where one topples the next, and so on until they all fall down. Some tipping points are like this, but the AMOC collapse would be more like parallel chains of dominos, where one domino tipping hits 2 or 3 other dominos simultaneously, causing a multitude of tipping chains, which is a greatly magnified effect.
Let’s say the first thing that tips is the Arctic Sea Ice loss and then massive Greenland Ice Sheet calving. This would inject large amounts of fresh water into the Arctic, and the lighter water could shut down the AMOC. This would cool the whole high-latitude Northern hemisphere. Thus, it would stabilize and regrow Arctic Sea Ice, Greenland, and slow down and even reverse permafrost loss. The Southern Hemisphere would warm, the ITCZ would shift southward, tropical monsoons would shift southward, the ENSO would likely change to a near permanent El Niño, and we would really be in a different world. Eventually, the warming in the north would re-establish itself and come to dominate the cooling effects with a vengeance.
Via statistical analysis on the dynamics of system change, we have various Early Warning System (EWS) indicators that give us some clues as to how close we are to thresholds of various Earth system tipping elements. Importantly, most systems exhibit a critical slowing down as they lose resilience when we near threshold of tipping; this is reflected in an increase in the autocorrelation functions. I chat about the many tipping elements that are showing these EWS signs in an alarming way.
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