2024's Climate Tipping Points

2023 was the world's hottest year on record. The European Union's climate service has revealed that last year was about 1.48°C warmer than the world's long-term average. In 2015 196 countries signed the Paris Agreement pledging to limit global heating to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F). It seems likely that this promise will be broken very, very quickly. 

The European Space Agency's interactive map Climate tipping points in Earth’s climate system, reveals why we should be very worried about the unprecedented pace of global heating. The map shows the temperature increases needed to trigger irreversible shifts in different ecosystems around the world. 

In climate science, a tipping point is a critical threshold that, when crossed, will lead to even faster, possibly irreversible changes in the Earth's climate. Once tipping points are crossed they accelerate even further the pace of global heating with severe consequences for life on Earth.

For example, according to ESA's map, at under 2°C of global heating the Greenland Ice Sheet will pass its tipping point leading to its eventual collapse. The result will be rising sea levels which will cause devastation to coastal regions around the world. At around 2°C of global heating dieback of the Amazon Rainforest is likely to be triggered. This will result in "widespread and self-reinforcing forest drying, (tipping) the rainforest into a degraded, savanna-like state".

ESA's map includes information on a number of other trigger-points for the world's atmospheric, oceanic and other ecosystems.

Carbon Brief has identified Nine Tipping Points That Could Be Triggered By Climate Change. As well as Amazon rain-forest dieback and Greenland ice sheet disintegration this list includes West African & Indian monsoon shifts (with devastating effects to both regions' agriculture) and irreversible changes to the Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic Current (permanently changing the climates of Europe and parts of North America).