Sentences with phrase «tipping element»

Here we focus on policy - relevant potential future tipping elements in the climate system.

We have identified partial rankings of tipping elements from the collection of expert responses.

Given our identification of policy - relevant tipping elements in the climate system, how do we decide which pose the greatest threat to society and, therefore, need the greatest attention?

Here we combine a critical review of the literature with the results of the workshop to compile a short list of potential policy - relevant future tipping elements in the climate system.

Question marks indicate systems whose status as tipping elements is particularly uncertain.

We remind the reader that we considered other candidate tipping elements, which are not listed here because they did not meet conditions 2 — 4 for policy relevance.

Because the number of experts commenting on individual pairs of tipping elements varied widely, those rankings could not be established with equal credibility.

For sensitivity to global mean warming, we find where the more sensitive tipping element is to the left.

The IPCC provides a thorough overview of mitigation (105) and adaptation (106) work upon which such a policy assessment of tipping elements could be built.

Map of potential policy - relevant tipping elements in the climate system, updated from ref.

It seems wise to assume that we have not yet identified all potential policy - relevant tipping elements.

Question marks indicate systems whose status as tipping elements are particularly uncertain.

A rigorous study of potential tipping elements in human socioeconomic systems would also be welcome, especially to address whether and how a rapid societal transition toward sustainability could be triggered, given that some models suggest there exists a tipping point for the transition to a low - carbon - energy system (111).

and the examples that he thinks have the potential to be large scale tipping elements are: Arctic sea - ice, a reorganisation of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation, melt of the Greenland or West Antarctic Ice Sheets, dieback of the Amazon rainforest, a greening of the Sahara, Indian summer monsoon collapse, boreal forest dieback and ocean methane hydrates.

Policy analysis and implementation will be extremely challenging given the nonconvexities in the human - environment system (109) that will be enhanced by tipping elements, as well as the need to handle intergenerational justice and interpersonal equity over long periods and under conditions of uncertainty (110).

«As global warming approaches and exceeds 2 - degrees Celsius, there is a risk of triggering nonlinear tipping elements.

One useful way of classifying tipping elements is in terms of the time, T, over which a qualitative change is observed: (i) rapid, abrupt, or spasmodic tipping occurs if the observation time is very small compared with TP (but T ≠ 0); (ii) gradual or episodic tipping occurs if the observation time is intermediate (e.g., of order TP); and (iii) slow or asymptotic tipping occurs if the observation time is very long (in particular, T → TE).

Thus, we focus on the consequences of decisions enacted within this century that trigger a qualitative change within this millennium, and we exclude tipping elements whose fate is decided after 2100.

Given the large uncertainty that remains about tipping elements, there is an urgent need to improve our understanding of the underlying physical mechanisms determining their behavior, so that policy makers are able «to avoid the unmanageable, and to manage the unavoidable» (112).

Concerning the uncertainty about the physical mechanisms that may give rise to tipping points, we find where the more uncertain tipping element is to the left.

Hence, a systematic search for further tipping elements should be undertaken, drawing on both paleodata and multimodel ensemble studies.

Such past transitions may highlight potential tipping elements under anthropogenic forcing, but the boundary conditions under which they occurred were different from today, and anthropogenic forcing is generally more rapid and often different in pattern (11).

Establishing early warning systems for various tipping elements would clearly be desirable, but can ρcrit be anticipated before we reach it?

On the basis of previous experience (99), we used the aforementioned workshop to initiate an elicitation of expert opinions on, among other things, six potential tipping elements listed in Table 1: reorganization of the Atlantic THC, melt of the GIS, disintegration of the WAIS, Amazon rainforest dieback, dieback of boreal forests, and shift of the ENSO regime to an El Niño - like mean state.

Figure: Map of the most important tipping elements in the Earth System overlain on global population density.

These features are the so - called tipping elements (TEs), a class of objects rigorously defined by Lenton et al. (7).

and the examples that he thinks have the potential to be large scale tipping elements are: Arctic sea - ice, a reorganisation of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation, melt of the Greenland or West Antarctic Ice Sheets, dieback of the Amazon rainforest, a greening of the Sahara, Indian summer monsoon collapse, boreal forest dieback and ocean methane hydrates.

Policy - relevant potential future tipping elements in the climate system and (below the empty line) candidates that we considered but failed to make the short list *

In the questionnaire, experts were asked for a pairwise comparison of tipping elements in terms of (i) their sensitivity to global mean temperature increase and (ii) the uncertainty about the underlying physical mechanisms.

We define the subset of policy - relevant tipping elements by adding to condition 1 the following conditions:

Nevertheless, increasing political demand to define and justify binding temperature targets, as well as wider societal interest in nonlinear climate changes, makes it timely to review potential tipping elements in the climate system under anthropogenic forcing (5)(Fig. 1).

«The Amazon rainforest is one of the tipping elements in the Earth system,» says lead - author Delphine Clara Zemp who conducted the study at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany.

Article: Stolbova, V., E. Surovyatkina, B. Bookhagen, and J. Kurths (2016): Tipping elements of the Indian monsoon: Prediction of onset and withdrawal.

The Lenton et al «Tipping Elements» paper from earlier this year puts more emphasis on it than AR4.

There have been long debates about whether the AMOC could collapse, which would constitute a tipping element in the Earth system.

What are the potential policy - relevant tipping elements of the Earth system?

The first step is to asses the sensitivity of each tipping element to global warming and the associated uncertainties, including the confidence of the community in the argument for tipping element status.

Such greening of the Sahara / Sahel is a rare example of a beneficial potential tipping element.

The archetypal example of a tipping element, the THC appears to be a less immediate threat, but the long - term fate of the THC under significant warming remains a source of concern (99).

Given the scale of potential impacts from tipping elements, we anticipate that they will shift the balance toward stronger mitigation and demand adaptation concepts beyond incremental approaches (107, 108).

Here we restrict ourselves to tipping elements that may be accessed by human activities and are potentially relevant to current policy.

Conditions 2 — 4 give our definition of a policy - relevant tipping element an ethical dimension, which is inevitable because a focus on policy requires the inclusion of normative judgements.

Tipping elements in the Earth's climate system.

We have formulated a much broader definition of a tipping element, because (i) we wish to include nonclimatic variables; (ii) there may be cases where the transition is slower than the anthropogenic forcing causing it; (iii) there may be no abruptness, but a slight change in control may have a qualitative impact in the future; and (iv) for several important phase changes, state - of - the - art models differ as to whether the transition is reversible or irreversible (in principle).