Sentences with phrase «irreversible tipping points such»

This could prevent catastrophic, irreversible tipping points such as the melting of Arctic sea ice and the Greenland ice sheet, and buy time for implementation of critical strategies to cut long - lived greenhouse gas emissions.

Reducing emissions of the short - lived climate forcers black carbon and tropospheric ozone — soot and smog — has been identified by scientists as the most effective strategy to slow Arctic warming and melting in the near term, forestalling potentially irreversible tipping points such as the melting, while the world works to reduce emissions of GHGs.

Not exact matches

Researchers such as James Hansen, a leading climate scientist at NASA, believe that global warming is accelerating and may be approaching a tipping point, a point at which climate change acquires a momentum that makes it irreversible.

While such «tipping points» (Kemp, 2005) are impossible to identify without substantial uncertainties, they may lead to irreversible effects such as biodiversity loss or, at the very least, impacts that have a slow recovery (e.g., on soils and corals).

We also underestimated the potential importance of strong feedbacks, such as the thawing of the permafrost to release methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, as well as tipping points beyond which some changes in the climate may become effectively irreversible.»