Sentences with phrase «trigger abrupt climate change»

Given our understanding of the climate system and the mechanisms involved in abrupt climate change, this committee concludes that human activities could trigger abrupt climate change.

New research shows that small fluctuations in the sizes of ice sheets during the last ice age were enough to trigger abrupt climate change.

Enormous amounts of freshwater were released into the North Atlantic following deglaciation, and an influx of freshwater into the North Atlantic Deep Water formation zone can potentially trigger abrupt climate changes.

Not exact matches

Project leader Enno Schefuß from the MARUM — Center for Marine Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen, Germany, adds: «The project was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in the priority programme «Integrated Analysis of Interglacial Climate Dynamics (INTERDYNAMIC)» with the aim to identify potential mechanisms triggering abrupt changes under current climatic conditions.

You do seem not quite up to date with current thinking on abrupt climate changes (now I'm referring to your polemic question «Were all of these triggered by Lake Agassiz dam bursts?»

You do seem not quite up to date with current thinking on abrupt climate changes (now I'm referring to your polemic question «Were all of these triggered by Lake Agassiz dam bursts?»

The first report knew, and commented on, the possibilities of gradual climate change pushing ecosystems or economies over thresholds and triggering abrupt responses, but the new report focuses on such tipping points in our societies and environment.

Even the relatively staid IPCC has warned of such a scenario: «The possibility of abrupt climate change and / or abrupt changes in the Earth system triggered by climate change, with potentially catastrophic consequences, can not be ruled out.

Furthermore, such an increase might be enough, the Stern Review explains, to trigger a shutdown of the ocean's thermohaline circulation warming Western Europe, creating abrupt climate change, thereby plunging Western Europe into Siberian - like conditions.

I have read the NAS link you provided and I agree with it, especially when it says abrupt climate change is most likely triggered by forcing changes [I said something like that on my first February 10 post here].

The scientists stress that more work is needed to determine whether changes in ocean circulation initiated the abrupt climate changes or were an intermediary effect initially triggered by something else.

It is the potential for effects like this to trigger abrupt changes in the global climate that scientists will be studying, he told reporters today.

He spoke with journalist Kim Martineau about his latest book, «The Great Ocean Conveyor: Discovering the Trigger for Abrupt Climate Change.»

As if this were not daunting enough, in 2002 the US National Academies of Science not only endorsed the IPCC's conclusions but produced a new report entitled Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable surprises, which argued that global warming may trigger «large, abrupt and unwelcome regional or global climatic events» such as severe droughts and fAbrupt Climate Change: Inevitable surprises, which argued that global warming may trigger «large, abrupt and unwelcome regional or global climatic events» such as severe droughts and fabrupt and unwelcome regional or global climatic events» such as severe droughts and floods.

That's because the risk of triggering abrupt changes in the climate system — such as rapid sea level rise or widespread droughts — becomes high above one of two degrees warming.

Previous reviews (6 ⇓ ⇓ ⇓ — 10) have defined «abrupt climate change» as occurring «when the climate system is forced to cross some threshold, triggering a transition to a new state at a rate determined by the climate system itself and faster than the cause» (8), which is a case of bifurcation (i.e., one that focuses on equilibrium properties, implying some degree of irreversibility).

This is central to the ability to improve the quantitative understanding of the thresholds that can trigger abrupt changes and the probability distribution changes of the extreme climate events with the slow varying climate states and forcings that can be monitored.

Such abrupt state changes are well - documented for ecosystems at many scales, and can be triggered by a variety of forcing factors — including pollution, resource extraction, deforestation, and other land use changes — with climate change being only one of them (Scheffer et al., 2009; Lenton et al., 2008; Barnosky et al., 2012).

Third, lack of quantitative understanding of the thresholds that trigger abrupt changes and causes of extreme climate events has limited our ability to provide process - based assessments of the risk of abrupt changes.

Technically, an abrupt climate change occurs when the climate system is forced to cross some threshold, triggering a transition to a new state at a rate determined by the climate system itself and faster than the cause.

The text below discusses the evidence for: (1) abrupt changes in the circulation and (2) steady changes in the circulation that may, in turn, trigger relatively abrupt changes in climate in regions of large spatial gradients in surface weather.

Such rainfall regimes cover nearly half of the global land, where either a gradual climate change across the ecosystem thresholds or a strong perturbation due to either extreme climate events, land use, or diseases could trigger abrupt ecosystem changes.

The causes of abrupt climate changes have not been clearly established, but the triggering of events is likely to be the result of multiple natural processes.

The dynamical mechanism — control variables that push the system past a threshold triggering a cascade of changes — is the key to understanding the changing trajectory of 20th century, the current hiatus, abrupt variability over the Holocene and longer and the uncertainties in anticipating 21st century climate evolution and longer.

abrupt climate change occurring «over periods as short as decades or years,» which could be brought on by positive feedbacks triggered by such events as ice sheet collapse on a large scale, the collapse of part of the Gulf Stream, dieback of the Amazon forest, or coral reef die - off.

Both abrupt changes in the physical climate system and steady changes in climate that can trigger abrupt changes in other physical, biological, and human systems present possible threats to nature and society.