Tag: tipping points

bookmark_borderTipping Points and the Domino Effect

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By Daniel Brouse and Sidd Mukherjee
September 2022 – August 2023 (Updated April 2025)

Understanding Tipping Points

Tipping points and feedback loops are key factors in determining the rate of acceleration of climate change. When one tipping point is breached and triggers others to fall, the result is known as the Domino Effect.

To explain: push a glass slowly toward the edge of a table. Eventually, no matter how cautious you are, it will reach a critical point where it tips over and falls. Once the tipping point is crossed, the fall is inevitable—regardless of your intentions or beliefs.

Climate tipping points operate the same way. They are not a matter of opinion, but of science. Once breached, they lead to rapid, self-perpetuating change that is difficult—often impossible—to reverse.

What Are Climate Tipping Points?

Climate tipping points mark thresholds in Earth’s systems beyond which change becomes self-sustaining. These shifts push the climate into a new and often irreversible state—without requiring further human influence.

Many of these tipping points have already been crossed. For instance:

  • Methane released from beneath melting Arctic ice cannot be re-sequestered.

  • Alpine glaciers formed over 25,000 years ago are gone and will not return for millennia.

  • Permafrost is thawing across the Northern Hemisphere, from Alaska to Siberia, unleashing carbon and methane, destabilizing landscapes, and destroying ecosystems.

The Iberdrola Group reports, “Melting Siberian permafrost is turning tundra into muddy, barren terrain, starving local wildlife. Water bodies vanish as their bases thaw, worsening drought conditions.”

These are not isolated incidents. They mark the formation of positive feedback loops—like methane release accelerating further warming, which causes more methane to be released. The cycle feeds itself.

Evidence of Crossed Tipping Points

In 2019, Professor Tim Lenton of the University of Exeter warned:

“A decade ago we identified a suite of potential tipping points in the Earth system. Now we see evidence that over half of them have been activated… It is no longer responsible to wait and see.”

Some already-active or dangerously close tipping points include:

  • Greenland and East Antarctic Ice Sheet collapse

  • Mountain glacier loss

  • Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC)

  • Amazon rainforest dieback

  • Arctic sea ice loss

  • Boreal forest degradation

  • Permafrost thaw

  • Warm-water coral bleaching

  • West Antarctic Ice Sheet instability

AMOC Tipping Point Crossed?
Until recently, the collapse of the AMOC was projected centuries away. But in July 2023, Nature Communications published “Warning of a forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation.” The data now projects AMOC collapse around 2050 under current emissions scenarios.

This collapse could accelerate sea level rise along the U.S. East Coast, intensify storms in Europe, and increase drought in West Africa. Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf warned:

“Climate history shows AMOC changes have led to some of the most abrupt and extreme temperature shifts. We must avoid disrupting it at all costs.”

Feedback Loops and Cascading Tipping Points

In Climate Change: How Long Is “Ever”?, we wrote:

“Extreme weather will increase. Coastlines will vanish. The most troubling shift, however, is the emergence of feedback loops—where plants and carbon sinks die off, accelerating warming independently of human activity.”

Sidd Mukherjee noted:

“That’s just one study. The window is between 2025 and 2095. I suspect we’ll be seeing many unpleasant surprises before then.”

The Domino Effect
When one tipping point triggers another, the domino effect begins. For example:

  • Melting mountain glaciers contribute to sea level rise.

  • This rise disrupts ocean circulation (AMOC).

  • AMOC disruption weakens rainfall in the Amazon.

  • Amazon dieback reduces carbon sequestration, amplifying global warming.

The Journal Science study “Triggering Multiple Climate Tipping Points” confirms:

“Even 1°C of global warming—the level we’ve already exceeded—risks triggering multiple tipping points.”

Each tenth of a degree beyond this increases the risk dramatically. Yet the world is on track for 2–3°C of warming—well above the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C goal.

Cascading Crisis: Tipping Points Triggering Tipping Points

Climate scientist Sidd Mukherjee warned:

“Remember: these thresholds come with error bars. What we think might tip at 1.5°C may already be tipped at 1°C.”

This appears to be happening now.

For example:

  • Sea ice loss exposes darker ocean surfaces.

  • These absorb more heat, leading to more ice loss.

  • This heat also accelerates methane release from thawing permafrost.

  • Thawing permafrost releases yet more methane, feeding the loop.

In July 2023, the global temperature briefly reached 3°C above pre-industrial levels—an unprecedented and alarming milestone.

Conclusion: The Window is Closing

Adapted from Exceeding 1.5℃ Global Warming Could Trigger Multiple Climate Tipping Points (Sept. 2022):

We are now living with the reality of crossed tipping points. Some systems—like AMOC, Arctic sea ice, and permafrost—may already be in irreversible decline. These shifts will affect the Earth for thousands of years, regardless of future emissions cuts.

The imperative is clear: We must act not only to reduce emissions, but to halt the cascade of tipping points before they spiral out of control.

Tipping points and feedback loops are parts of an equation that determine the rate of acceleration in climate change.

The Human Induced Climate Change Experiment

bookmark_borderCanadian Wildfires: Over the Tipping Point

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by Daniel Brouse
August 28, 2024

A study published in the Journal Nature found Canada’s 2023 wildfires released more carbon into the atmosphere than the annual emissions of all but three countries, underscoring a troubling trend. A new study raises serious concerns that Canada’s forests, long considered crucial carbon sinks, may no longer reliably absorb carbon in the long term.

This signals a dangerous acceleration of global warming, pushing us over a tipping point. Permafrost, once thought to be a stable, frozen barrier, is now thawing and burning year-round, releasing even more carbon and methane into the atmosphere. The resulting domino effect exacerbates climate instability, leading to more extreme weather, rising sea levels, and declining air quality.

These human-driven changes are not just ecological crises — they pose direct threats to human health, increasing the likelihood of premature death due to heatwaves, pollution, and the cascading impacts of an increasingly volatile climate.

The Study: Carbon emissions from the 2023 Canadian wildfires

Abstract
The 2023 Canadian forest fires have been extreme in scale and intensity with more than seven times the average annual area burned compared to the previous four decades. Here, we quantify the carbon emissions from these fires from May to September 2023 on the basis of inverse modelling of satellite carbon monoxide observations. We find that the magnitude of the carbon emissions is 647 TgC (570–727 TgC), comparable to the annual fossil fuel emissions of large nations, with only India, China and the USA releasing more carbon per year. We find that widespread hot–dry weather was a principal driver of fire spread, with 2023 being the warmest and driest year since at least 1980. Although temperatures were extreme relative to the historical record, climate projections indicate that these temperatures are likely to be typical during the 2050s, even under a moderate climate mitigation scenario (shared socioeconomic pathway, SSP 2–4.5). Such conditions are likely to drive increased fire activity and suppress carbon uptake by Canadian forests, adding to concerns about the long-term durability of these forests as a carbon sink.

About Feedback Loops and Tipping Points

Tipping cascades have emerged between biogeophysical and social-ecological systems. This Domino Effect is causing climate change to accelerate at an exponential rate.

Tipping points are Critical Milestones that directly impact the rate of acceleration in climate change by multiplying the number and intensity of feedback loops. Identifying and understanding these tipping points is crucial for climate science and policymaking. Crossing multiple tipping points could lead to a domino effect, resulting in a much more rapid and severe climate change than currently projected.

Tipping Points

Push a glass toward the edge of a table and eventually it will fall off on its own. No matter how slowly or meticulously you push… no matter how you weight or fill the glass, it will reach a tipping point and fall off before being pushed completely off the table. No matter whether you believe the glass is half-empty or half-full, when the tipping point is reached it will plummet out-of-control to its end. This is science not fate, faith, nor belief. Human induced climate change has resulted in environmental tipping points being breached.

Tipping points, when crossed, trigger self-sustaining feedback loops that are no longer dependent on human activity. Similar to when a domino topples over hitting two more dominoes that in turn fall hitting more dominoes. Thus, the name The Domino Effect. It can also be visualized as The Snowball Effect. A tipping point is like a snowball rolling down a hill growing in mass and velocity (momentum). When a tipping point is crossed, it results in cumulative and reinforced global warming.

The Human Induced Climate Change Experiment

bookmark_borderCoral Reefs’ Tipping Point

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by Daniel Brouse
February 14, 2024

Coral reefs confront unprecedented challenges arising from various stressors, many of which are directly tied to human activities. Some of these stressors possess critical tipping points, surpassing which can lead to the collapse of coral ecosystems. According to the European Geosciences Union’s statement on January 2, 2024, specific tipping points include a temperature increase of 1.2℃ above pre-industrial levels and atmospheric CO2 concentrations exceeding 350 parts per million. Disturbingly, as of February 2024, the Earth’s yearly average temperature has already risen to +1.5℃, underscoring the urgency of addressing climate-related threats to coral reefs.

Climate change is having significant and detrimental effects on coral reefs around the world. Some of the key impacts include:

  1. Coral Bleaching:
    • One of the most immediate and visible impacts of climate change on coral reefs is coral bleaching. Elevated sea temperatures cause corals to expel the symbiotic algae (zooxanthellae) living within their tissues. Without these algae, corals lose their vibrant colors and become more susceptible to stress, disease, and death. While corals can recover from mild bleaching events, severe or prolonged bleaching can lead to widespread coral mortality.
  2. Ocean Acidification:
    • Increased carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere not only contribute to global warming but also lead to ocean acidification. The absorption of excess CO2 by the oceans results in a decrease in pH, making the water more acidic. This acidification can weaken coral skeletons and hinder the ability of corals to build and maintain their calcium carbonate structures.
  3. Sea Level Rise:
    • Rising global temperatures contribute to the melting of polar ice caps and glaciers, causing sea levels to rise. Elevated sea levels can lead to increased stress on coral reefs, especially those located in shallow waters. This can result in reduced sunlight reaching the corals and increased sedimentation, impacting their growth and survival.
  4. Extreme Weather Events:
    • Climate change is linked to an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, such as hurricanes and cyclones. These events can physically damage coral reefs by causing coral breakage, dislodgment, and destruction of the reef structure. The recovery time for damaged reefs is often extended, making them more vulnerable to subsequent disturbances.
  5. Changes in Ocean Circulation:
    • Climate change can alter ocean currents and circulation patterns. Changes in water flow can affect the distribution of nutrients and impact the resilience of coral reefs. Some regions may experience altered temperature regimes, nutrient imbalances, and disruptions in the supply of food sources for corals and their associated ecosystems.
  6. Shifts in Coral Species Distribution:
    • As sea temperatures change and habitats are modified, the distribution of coral species may shift. Some species may migrate to cooler waters, while others may struggle to adapt or face local extinctions. These shifts can disrupt the balance of ecosystems and affect the biodiversity associated with coral reefs.

The cumulative impact of these climate-related stressors poses a severe threat to coral reefs worldwide. It’s crucial to address the root causes of climate change and implement conservation measures to enhance the resilience of coral ecosystems. Protection of coral reefs involves both local and global efforts, including sustainable fishing practices, marine protected areas, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and promoting coral reef restoration initiatives.

Coral reef ecosystems can be influenced by several feedback loops that contribute to reaching tipping points. These feedback loops often involve interactions between various environmental stressors and the responses of coral reefs. Here are some feedback loops associated with the coral reef tipping point:

  1. Coral Bleaching Feedback Loop:
    • Mechanism: Elevated sea temperatures, driven by climate change, can trigger coral bleaching, where corals expel their symbiotic algae.
    • Effect: As bleaching occurs, corals become stressed and more susceptible to diseases. If bleaching is severe or occurs frequently, it weakens coral resilience and can lead to widespread coral mortality, reducing the ability of the reef to recover.
  2. Ocean Acidification and Coral Growth Feedback Loop:
    • Mechanism: Increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) leads to ocean acidification, hindering the ability of corals to build and maintain their calcium carbonate structures.
    • Effect: Weakened coral skeletons make corals more vulnerable to physical damage and limit their capacity to recover from disturbances. This feedback loop can contribute to a decline in overall coral reef health.
  3. Storm Damage and Reef Structure Feedback Loop:
    • Mechanism: Intense tropical storms, hurricanes, or cyclones, influenced by climate change, can cause physical damage to coral reefs.
    • Effect: Damaged coral structures provide less protection for the reef against future storms. If storms become more frequent or severe, the cumulative impact can compromise the structural integrity of the reef and hinder recovery.
  4. Overfishing and Algae Overgrowth Feedback Loop:
    • Mechanism: Overfishing of herbivorous fish, such as parrotfish, reduces their population, leading to increased algae growth on coral reefs.
    • Effect: Algae can outcompete corals for space, hindering coral growth and recovery. Reduced herbivory exacerbates the overgrowth of algae, creating a feedback loop that undermines the resilience of the coral reef ecosystem.
  5. Disease Spread and Coral Health Feedback Loop:
    • Mechanism: Climate change and environmental stressors can weaken coral health, making them more susceptible to diseases.
    • Effect: As diseases spread among stressed corals, the overall health of the reef declines. Weakened corals are less able to withstand additional stressors, leading to a feedback loop of declining health and increased vulnerability.
  6. Loss of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function Feedback Loop:
    • Mechanism: Environmental stressors, such as coral bleaching and disease, can lead to the loss of key species and a decline in overall biodiversity on the reef.
    • Effect: A reduction in biodiversity weakens the resilience and functioning of the coral reef ecosystem. This can create a feedback loop where the loss of key species further compromises the ability of the reef to recover from disturbances.

Mitigating these feedback loops requires comprehensive conservation strategies, including reducing greenhouse gas emissions, implementing sustainable fishing practices, establishing marine protected areas, and addressing local stressors to enhance the resilience of coral reefs.

ALSO SEE:

Toppled Tipping Points: The Domino Effect / Brouse and Mukherjee (2023)

Sea-level Rise: Greenland and the Collapse of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet / Mukherjee and Brouse (2022 and 2023)

Sea Level Rise: Then and Now / Mukherjee and Brouse (2023)

Feedback Loops / Daniel Brouse and Sidd Mukherjee (2016)

The Human Induced Climate Change Experiment

bookmark_borderTipping Cascades, Social-Ecological Systems, and the Hottest Year in History

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by Daniel Brouse
January 9, 2024

Human induced climate change is an exponential component of an unordered system (chaos theory). That means global warming is accelerating at a rapid rate in a complex way.

Unfortunately, even scientists are failing to see (let alone forecast) the rapid acceleration in climate change. Due to their complexity, the impacts of the Domino Effect are being underestimated. Tipping points are Critical Milestones that directly impact the rate of acceleration in climate change by multiplying the number and intensity of feedback loops. The Domino Effect is also known as “tipping cascades” in climate science. Cascading impacts in relation to tipping points include cascading impacts across biogeophysical and social systems. Until recently, scientist have been drastically underestimating the social-ecological systems. The University of Exeter reports, “There is a notable lack of topic clusters dedicated to how humans will be impacted by climate-related tipping cascades.”

The Age of Loss and Damage is a new way of thinking about economics by combining economics, climate science, statistics, and physics. Until now, economic models have been unfit to capture the full extent of climate damage. Traditionally, “integrated assessment models” (IAMs) were used to forecast “shock” events. IAMs use “quadratic function” to calculate GDP losses by squaring the temperature change, yet ignore other methods (such as the exponential function) that are better suited for rapid change. “Climate change is fundamentally different to other shocks because once it has hit, it doesn’t go away,” said Thierry Philipponnat, author of a report by Finance Watch, a Brussels-based public interest NGO on financial issues. “And if the fundamental assumption is flawed, all the rest makes little sense — if any.”

Reuters reported, “Critics say this (IAMs) choice is doomed to underplay the likely impact – particularly if the planet hits environmental tipping points in which damage is not only irreversible but happens at an ever-accelerating rate.” Thierry Philipponnat’s report, Finance in a Hot House World, concludes: “Climate risk is growing to disruptive levels throughout the financial system and the guardians of financial stability urgently need to adapt their tools to regain control.” The report calls for economic models that do not mislead, scenario analyses that prepare the market, and a new prudential tool to address the build-up of systemic climate risk.

Traditional economics is based upon the “costs and benefits” to society. Since there are no known long-term benefits of climate change to society, the Age of Loss and Damage economics focuses on the exponential costs of climate change to society.
— from The Age of Loss and Damage / Brouse (2023)

2023: The Hottest Year in Human History
2023 was a wake-up call to both biogeophysical and social-ecological scientists. The record breaking physical and economical impacts could be felt worldwide. The record warming year was seventeen times greater than any other record increase in history. Typically record breaking temperatures are measured in 100th degrees. There were also 200 consecutive days of record breaking temperatures. Typically there are one or two record breaking days in row. The increase in intensity and frequency of record breaking heat requires forecasting models to be recast.

2023 Biogeophysical Records

Global temperatures reached exceptionally high levels in 2023. The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), implemented by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts on behalf of the European Commission with funding from the EU, monitored several key climate indicators throughout the year, reporting on record-breaking conditions such as the hottest month on record and daily global temperature averages briefly surpassing pre-industrial levels by more than 2°C. Unprecedented global temperatures from June onwards led 2023 to become the warmest year on record – overtaking by a large margin 2016, the previous warmest year.

Highlights: 

  • 2023 is confirmed as the warmest calendar year in global temperature data records going back to 1850
  • 2023 had a global average temperature of 14.98°C, 0.17°C higher than the previous highest annual value in 2016
  • 2023 was 0.60°C warmer than the 1991-2020 average and 1.48°C warmer than the 1850-1900 pre-industrial level
  • It is likely that a 12-month period ending in January or February 2024 will exceed 1.5°C above the pre-industrial level
  • 2023 marks the first time on record that every day within a year has exceeded 1°C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial level. Close to 50% of days were more than 1.5°C warmer then the 1850-1900 level, and two days in November were, for the first time, more than 2°C warmer.
  • Annual average air temperatures were the warmest on record, or close to the warmest, over sizeable parts of all ocean basins and all continents except Australia
  • Each month from June to December in 2023 was warmer than the corresponding month in any previous year
  • July and August 2023 were the warmest two months on record. Boreal summer (June-August) was also the warmest season on record
  • September 2023 was the month with a temperature deviation above the 1991–2020 average larger than any month in the ERA5 dataset
  • December 2023 was the warmest December on record globally, with an average temperature of 13.51°C, 0.85°C above the 1991-2020 average and 1.78°C above the 1850-1900 level for the month. You can access information specific for December 2023 in our monthly bulletin
  • Global average sea surface temperatures (SSTs) remained persistently and unusually high, reaching record levels for the time of year from April through December
  • 2023 saw a transition to El Niño. In spring 2023, La Niña came to an end and El Niño conditions began to develop, with the WMO declaring the onset of El Niño in early July.
  • High SSTs in most ocean basins, and in particular in the North Atlantic, played an important role in the record-breaking global SSTs
  • The unprecedented SSTs were associated with marine heatwaves around the globe, including in parts of the Mediterranean, Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, Indian Ocean and North Pacific, and much of the North Atlantic
  • 2023 was remarkable for Antarctic sea ice: it reached record low extents for the corresponding time of the year in 8 months. Both the daily and monthly extents reached all-time minima in February 2023
  • Arctic sea ice extent at its annual peak in March ranked amongst the four lowest for the time of the year in the satellite record. The annual minimum in September was the sixth-lowest
  • The atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane continued to increase and reached record levels in 2023, reaching 419 ppm and 1902 ppb respectively. Carbon dioxide concentrations in 2023 were 2.4 ppm higher than in 2022 and methane concentrations increased by 11 ppb.
  • A large number of extreme events were recorded across the globe, including heatwaves, floods, droughts and wildfires. Estimated global wildfire carbon emissions in 2023 increased by 30% with respect to 2022 driven largely by persistent wildfires in Canada

2023 Social-Ecological Records

NOAA: 2023 A historic year of U.S. billion-dollar weather and climate disasters

In 2023, the U.S. experienced 28 separate weather and climate disasters costing at least 1 billion dollars. That number puts 2023 into first place for the highest number of billion-dollar disasters in a calendar year and included:

  • 1 winter storm/cold wave event (across the northeast U.S. in early-February).
  • 1 wildfire event (firestorm destroying town of Lahaina on Maui Island of Hawaii).
  • 1 drought and heat wave event (focused across the central and southern U.S.).
  • 4 flooding events (in California, Florida, and across the eastern and northeastern U.S.).
  • 2 tornado outbreaks (across the central and eastern U.S.).
  • 2 tropical cyclones (Idalia in Florida and Typhoon Mawar in Guam).
  • 17 severe weather/hail events (across many parts of the country).

2023 was also deadly, causing at least 492 direct or indirect fatalities — the 8th most disaster-related fatalities for the contiguous U.S. since 1980.

What Can I Do?
There are plenty of things you can do to help save the planet. Stop using fossil fuels. Consume less. Love more. Here is a list of additional actions you can take.

ALSO SEE: Climate Change: Rate of Acceleration / Brouse and Mukherjee (2023)

The Human Induced Climate Change Experiment

bookmark_borderClimate Change: 2023 the Year in Review

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by Sidd Mukherjee and Daniel Brouse

Sidd said, “Do you remember back in the early 2000’s when we thought we wouldn’t live to see the extreme changes due to global warming?”

Daniel replied, “I think 2023 is the most significant year so far. We saw confirmation of tipping points being crossed for Mountain Glacier Loss, Greenland Ice Sheet Collapse, Antarctic Ice Sheet Collapse, and potentially the Collapse of AMOC.”

Sidd continued, “We already knew that. It was Canada catching on fire that I could not believe. I never
thought I’d live to see the day.”

Daniel asked, “Do you think the permafrost and peatlands will have zombie fires and cause the permafrost tipping point?”

Sidd responded, “Yes. They are gone, too. We already know from the permafrost peatland fires in Siberia.”

NASA reported: Wildland fire experts have described Canada’s 2023 fire season as record-breaking and shocking. Over the course of a fire season that started early and ended late, blazes have burned an estimated 18.4 million hectares. Hundreds of fires exceeded 10,000 hectares (39 square miles), large enough to be considered “megafires.” These megafires were also unusually widespread this season, charring forests from British Columbia and Alberta in the west to Quebec and the Atlantic provinces in the east to the Northwest Territories and the Yukon in the north.

Forest fires cause a carbon feedback loop. The carbon emissions of Canada’s fires outweighed the combined emissions from its oil and gas, transport and agriculture sectors. The fires also cause the melting of the permafrost and zombie fires to burn in the permafrost. The permafrost collapse is a self-sustaining feedback loop/tipping point. As the permafrost melts, the peatlands emit CO2 and methane. The increase in CO2 and methane results in more warming that results in more peatland emissions.

The study Wildfire as a major driver of recent permafrost thaw in boreal peatlands published in the Journal Nature Communications found wildfires have caused a quarter of permafrost thaw (2,000 square kilometres) in Western Canada’s boreal peatlands over the past 30 years. “Historically, permafrost in this area underwent a natural cycle of thawing and reforming, but given current climate conditions and projections for the future, this fire-induced thaw appears to be irreversible,” said Carolyn Gibson, who conducted the research.

Toppled Tipping Points: The Domino Effect Brouse and Mukherjee (2023)

Sea-level Rise: Greenland and the Collapse of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet Mukherjee and Brouse (2022 and 2023)

Sea Level Rise: Then and Now Mukherjee and Brouse (2023)

The Age of Loss and Damage Brouse (2023)

Climate Change: How Long Is “Ever”? Brouse (2023)

Climate Change: The End of Times Brouse and Mukherjee (2023)

The Reign of Violent Rain Brouse and Mukherjee (2023)

Climate Change: Rate of Acceleration Brouse and Mukherjee (2023)

bookmark_borderThe Domino Effect / Snowball Effect

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by Brouse and Mukherjee

Tipping points are Critical Milestones that directly impact the rate of acceleration in climate change by multiplying the number and intensity of feedback loops.

Tipping Points

Push a glass toward the edge of a table and eventually it will fall off on its own. No matter how slowly or meticulously you push… no matter how you weight or fill the glass, it will reach a tipping point and fall off before being pushed completely off the table. No matter whether you believe the glass is half-empty or half-full, when the tipping point is reached it will plummet out-of-control to its end. This is science not fate, faith, nor belief. Human induced climate change has resulted in environmental tipping points being breached.

Tipping points, when crossed, trigger self-sustaining feedback loops that are no longer dependent on human activity. Similar to when a domino topples over hitting two more dominoes that in turn fall hitting more dominoes. Thus, the name The Domino Effect. It can also be visualized as The Snowball Effect. A tipping point is like a snowball rolling down a hill growing in mass and velocity (momentum). When a tipping point is crossed, it results in cumulative and reinforced global warming.

A look at five (5) of the multiple tipping points that show the proverbial snowball is already rolling. The first dominoes have fallen and will continue to knock down more tiles with each escalating step.

  • Mountain Glacier Loss
  • Greenland Ice Sheet Collapse
  • Antarctic Ice Sheet Collapse
  • Collapse of AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation)
  • Amazon Rainforest Dieback

Crossing even a single tipping point is alarming. For instance, crossing the tipping point for ‘mountain glacier loss‘ has immediate consequences: millions of people in Europe will be impacted by the lack of fresh water. Billions of people that live along coasts will be impacted by the saline infiltration and eventually by the submerging of their property. In September of 2022, UNESCO reported accelerated melting of glaciers in World Heritage sites, with glaciers in a third of sites set to disappear by 2050. In September of 2023, the GLAMOS glacier monitoring center found 10% of Swiss glaciers had disappeared in the last 2 years. They do not expect any Swiss glaciers will be left by 2050 no matter what actions are taken. If extreme measures are taken, they anticipate we may be able to save some polar glaciers.

This in and of itself should be alarming; however, it gets worse. Tipping points are parts of feedback loop systems. The ice-albedo feedback loop is an expression of the ability of surfaces to reflect sunlight (heat from the sun). Any loss of ice over a darker surface means the surface will absorb more heat and reflect less heat. This process makes the Earth warmer causing more loss of ice, which in turn causes more warming of the Earth. So, yes, the mountain ice tipping point is quite alarming for both its immediate impact as well as its self-sustaining growth to global warming; but wait, it gets more alarming. The increasing temperatures due to crossing a tipping point cause other tipping points to be toppled (The Domino Effect).

Long run sea level rise New Jersey Coast

By the Autumn of 2023, it had become evident the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets will completely melt. The process is irreversible and inevitable. The cool water from the melting ice at the poles is being drawn toward the center of the Earth and getting warmed to record high temperatures. The warm, moist air is circulating and moving over land. These changes in climate systems will cause other areas to experience unprecedented drought. We expect sea level rise will total about 270 feet over the next several millennia. It is episodic, and in the fast bits it can go up 3 feet every twenty years for five hundred years. The melting Arctic and Antarctic have multiple feedback loops including: enhanced oceanic heating and ice-albedo, Planck feedback, lapse-rate feedback, and cloud feedback.

The tipping point for the collapse of AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation) was thought to be centuries away, at the earliest. In July of 2023, the study Warning of a forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation was published in the journal Nature Communications. “Here we provide statistical significance and data-driven estimators for the time of tipping. We estimate a collapse of the AMOC to occur around mid-century (2025-2095) under the current scenario of future emissions.” The collapse is likely to cause faster sea level rise on the east coast of the US, more severe storms in Europe, and increasing drought in the Sahel in Africa. “From the study of past climate, we know changes in the AMOC have been some of the most abrupt and impactful events in the history of climate,” said Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf, at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and world leading oceanographer. During the last Ice Age, winter temperatures changed by up to 10C within three years in some places. “We are dealing with a system that in some aspects is highly non-linear, so fiddling with it is very dangerous, because you may well trigger some surprises,” he said. “I wish I knew where this critical tipping point is, but that is unfortunately just what we don’t know. We should avoid disrupting the AMOC at all costs. It is one more reason why we should stop global warming as soon as possible.” A feedback loop created by the AMOC tipping point would cause a disruption of weather systems and circulation. The result would be the loss of naturally occurring carbon sinks. One scenario is desertification of the Amazon rainforest. In 2023, the Amazon River and the Rio Negro set record low levels.

The tipping point / feedback loop problem is very complex (chaos theory) and exponentially alarming. Yet another tipping point appears to have been triggered before 2024 — Amazon Rainforest Dieback. The Amazon is often referred to as ‘the lungs of our planet.’ Not only does the Amazon suck in huge quantities of CO2 and breath out O2, but the Amazon soils also store huge amounts of CO2. The desertification of the Amazon would result in a release of the carbon as the soils disappeared.

1) part of July was spent at record temperatures +3C
2) the collapse of the Amazon rainforest is likely to happen between +2 – 4C. The collapse of the Amazon is expected to occur because of changing weather patterns and circulation that result in drought.
3) Brazil set up a task force for “unprecedented drought in the Amazon”

Low river levels and hotter waters have killed masses of fish seen floating on river surfaces, contaminating the drinking water, Environment Minister Marina Silva said. “We have a very worrying situation. This record drought has disrupted river transport routes (dropping 30 cm / day) threatening food and water shortages, and a large fish mortality is already beginning.” This was the effect of a periodic El Nino mixing with changes in weather patterns brought by global warming. “We are seeing a collision of two phenomena, one natural which is El Nino and the other a phenomenon produced by humans, which is the change in the Earth’s temperature.” Worsened by climate change, this combination has caused drought not seen before in the Amazon and “is incomparably stronger and could happen more frequently.”

The average temperature for Brazil had been above the historical average from July through October of 2023. Rio de Janeiro recorded 42.5C on November 12, 2023 (a record for November) and high humidity on the 14th meant that it felt like 58.5C, municipal authorities said. Deadly humid heat is the greatest short term climate change risk to human health. On November 17, “a young Brazilian fan of US singer Taylor Swift died in Rio de Janeiro after falling ill inside the sweltering stadium where the superstar’s concert was held, amid a record-breaking heatwave across large swathes of Brazil,” as reported by ABC. “The show took place on the same day that Rio recorded its highest-ever heat index reading, which combines temperature and humidity, at 59.3 degrees Celsius (139 degrees Fahrenheit).”

Conclusion
Feedback loops and tipping points are parts of an equation that determine the rate of acceleration in climate change. Triggering these tipping points results in the CO2 stored in nature to be released without the assistance of humans. Though we do not know how much carbon is stored in nature, it would be reasonable to assume that the temperature could be pushed from 3 degrees to 6 degrees above pre-industrial levels. Humans cannot thrive above a rise of 1.5 degrees. Much of the Earth will be uninhabitable if the temperature rises an additional 6 degrees Celsius. If humans also add 3 degrees Celsius, the temperature and humidity will approach a wet-bulb temperature that will not sustain human life.

For the first time in human history, global warming is going to continue no matter what humans do. Even if humans stopped their greenhouse gas emissions today, humans have invoked nature’s greenhouse gas emissions. Nevertheless, the sooner humans stop their emissions, the better. In addition, humans must adapt their habitat to remove, reduce, and hinder nature’s greenhouse gas emissions.

What Can I Do?
There are plenty of things you can do to help save the planet. Stop using fossil fuels. Consume less. Love more. Here is a list of additional actions you can take.

 

bookmark_borderTipped Tipping Points, Feedback Loops, and the Domino Effect

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By Daniel Brouse and Sidd Mukherjee
September 29, 2023

A look at three (3) of the multiple tipping points we appear to have breached and The Domino Effect:

  • Mountain Glacier Loss
  • Collapse of AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation)
  • Amazon Rainforest Dieback

Crossing one tipping point would be alarming. For instance, crossing the tipping point for ‘mountain glacier loss‘ has immediate consequences: millions of people in Europe will be impacted by the lack of fresh water. Billions of people that live along coasts will be impacted by the saline infiltration and eventually by the submerging of their property. In September of 2022, UNESCO reported accelerated melting of glaciers in World Heritage sites, with glaciers in a third of sites set to disappear by 2050. In September of 2023, the GLAMOS glacier monitoring center found 10% of Swiss glaciers had disappeared in the last 2 years. They do not expect any Swiss glaciers will be left by 2050 no matter what actions are taken. If extreme measures are taken, they anticipate we may be able to save some polar glaciers.

This in and of itself should be alarming; however, it gets worse. Tipping points are parts of feedback loop systems. The ice–albedo feedback loop is an expression of the ability of surfaces to reflect sunlight (heat from the sun). Any loss of ice over a darker surface means the surface will absorb more heat and reflect less heat. This process makes the Earth warmer causing more loss of ice… which in turn causes more warming of the Earth. So, yes, the mountain ice tipping point is quite alarming for both its immediate impact as well as its self-sustaining growth to global warming; but wait, it gets more alarming. The increasing temperatures due to crossing a tipping point cause other tipping points to be toppled (The Domino Effect).

The tipping point for the collapse of AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation) was thought to be centuries away, at the earliest. In July of 2023, the study Warning of a forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation was published in the journal Nature Communications. “Here we provide statistical significance and data-driven estimators for the time of tipping. We estimate a collapse of the AMOC to occur around mid-century (2025-2095) under the current scenario of future emissions.” The collapse is likely to cause faster sea level rise on the east coast of the US, more severe storms in Europe, and increasing drought in the Sahel in Africa. “From the study of past climate, we know changes in the AMOC have been some of the most abrupt and impactful events in the history of climate,” said Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf, at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and world leading oceanographer. During the last Ice Age, winter temperatures changed by up to 10C within three years in some places. “We are dealing with a system that in some aspects is highly non-linear, so fiddling with it is very dangerous, because you may well trigger some surprises,” he said. “I wish I knew where this critical tipping point is, but that is unfortunately just what we don’t know. We should avoid disrupting the AMOC at all costs. It is one more reason why we should stop global warming as soon as possible.” A feedback loop created by the AMOC tipping point is disruption in weather systems and circulation that cause loss of naturally occurring carbon sinks. One scenario is desertification of the Amazon rainforest.

The tipping point / feedback loop problem is very complex (chaos theory) and exponentially alarming. A third tipping point appears to have been triggered by the summer of 2023 — Amazon Rainforest Dieback. The Amazon is often referred to as ‘the lungs of our planet.’ Not only does the Amazon suck in huge quantities of CO2 and breath out O2, but the Amazon soils also store huge amounts of CO2.  The desertification of the Amazon would result in a release of the carbon as the soils disappeared.

1) much of July was spent at record temperatures +3C
2) the collapse of the Amazon rainforest is likely to happen between +2 – 4C. The collapse of the Amazon is expected to occur because of changing weather patterns and circulation that result in drought.
3) Brazil set up a task force for “unprecedented drought in the Amazon”

Low river levels and hotter waters have killed masses of fish seen floating on river surfaces, contaminating the drinking water, Environment Minister Marina Silva said. “We have a very worrying situation. This record drought has disrupted river transport routes (dropping 30 cm / day) threatening food and water shortages, and a large fish mortality is already beginning.” This was the effect of a periodic El Niño mixing with changes in weather patterns brought by global warming. “We are seeing a collision of two phenomena, one natural which is El Niño and the other a phenomenon produced by humans, which is the change in the Earth’s temperature.” Worsened by climate change, this combination has caused drought not seen before in the Amazon and “is incomparably stronger and could happen more frequently.”

Feedback loops and tipping points are parts of an equation that determine the rate of acceleration in climate change.. Triggering these tipping points results in the CO2 stored in nature to be released. Though we do not know how much carbon is stored in nature, it would be reasonable to assume that the temperature could be pushed from 3 degrees to 6 degrees above pre-industrial levels. Humans cannot thrive above a rise of 1.5 degrees. Humans cannot survive if the temperature rises 6 degrees.

Climate Change Tipping Points
Climate Change Tipping Points

What you can do today. How to save the planet.

Climate Change: The End of Times

The Human Induced Climate Change Experiment

bookmark_borderCollapse of the Amazon

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September 28. 2023

1) much of July was spent at record temperatures +3C
2) the collapse of the Amazon rainforest is likely to happen at +2-4C. The collapse of the Amazon is expected to occur because of changing weather patterns and circulation that result in drought.
3) Today Brazil set up a task force for “unprecedented drought in the Amazon” [A DROUGHT IN THE RAINFOREST]

Low river levels and hotter waters have killed masses of fish seen floating on river surfaces, contaminating the drinking water, Environment Minister Marina Silva said.

“We have a very worrying situation. This record drought has disrupted river transport routes (dropping 30 cm / day) threatening food and water shortages, and a large fish mortality is already beginning,” she told Reuters in an interview.

Silva said this was the effect of a periodic El Niño mixing with changes in weather patterns brought by global warming.

“We are seeing a collision of two phenomena, one natural which is El Niño and the other a phenomenon produced by humans, which is the change in the Earth’s temperature,” she said.

Worsened by climate change, this combination has caused drought not seen before in the Amazon and “is incomparably stronger and could happen more frequently,” she added.

Scientists concur that a rise of 2 degrees will trigger feedback loops and tipping points. Triggering these tipping points results in the CO2 stored in nature to be released. Though we do not know how much carbon is stored in nature, it would be reasonable to assume that the temperature could be pushed from 3 degrees to 6 degrees above pre-industrial levels. Humans cannot thrive above a rise of 1.5 degrees. Humans cannot survive if the temperature rises 6 degrees.

Climate Change Tipping Points
Climate Change Tipping Points

Climate Change: Rate of Acceleration: By 2020, there was enough data to see the “doubling period” of some anthropogenic climate affects had gone from 100 years to 10 years.

What you can do today. How to save the planet.
Climate Change: How Long Is “Ever”?
Climate Change: The End of Times

The Human Induced Climate Change Experiment

bookmark_borderClimate Change: the Equation

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By Daniel Brouse
August 5, 2023

I’ve been thinking about the giant global warming formula that has been formulating in my head for the last few decades.

Human induced climate change is an exponential component of an unordered system (chaos theory).

Though the equation is complex… too complicated to write down…

I’ve lately begun considering trying to write down a small part of it:
Tipping points and feedback loops are parts of an equation that determine the rate of acceleration in climate change.

What do you think about this?

(t ² * f ²) nth
or
the domino effect * the snowball effect:
(h cos α−(s+d)sin θi+1) * a(1 + r) x

Acceleration, tipping points etc. I know that no simple formula exists for any of these. The reason you can’t write a formula is because they are chaotic systems. Chaos theory is the study of unordered systems; however, trying to write it down helps me quantify what I see in my mind’s eye.

These formulas are similar to what we imagined in 1995:

Abstract
Earth is in a space-time continuum similar to the vortex of a flushing toilet.

if acceleration = velocity/time
and v = speed of light = 2.9979*10^8 m/s
and for the sake of argument we are accelerating at pi (rounded to 15 decimal places) m/s^2
then time = 95426120.77903860 seconds (rounded to 16 significant digits)
= 1104.468990498130 days
= 3.025942439720910 years = roughly 3 years + 9.5 days as relative to the rotation and revolution of the planet earth.

Important note: this is motion at constant speed in a circle. So the speed of light isn’t changing but the direction of motion is, so there is acceleration (= change in velocity, not speed is the acceleration. Velocity has a direction as well as a magnitude, it is a vector, not a scalar like speed.)

a couple other fundamental physical constants to contemplate:
permitivity of free space = 8.854*10^(-12) C^2/(N*m)
permeability of free space = 4(pi)*10^(-7) Wb/(A*m)

SIDD: the tricky part is .. u cannot maintain a constant acceleration like pi m/s^2 on a massive body

In 2023 Sidd added:
On another note, regarding the permeability mu and permittivity epsilon
… those are deeply related to the speed of light thru maxwell’s equations
c=1/sqrt(mu*epsilon)

As for deep contemplation, let me see, in terms of formal schooling
I deeply contemplated those for two years in undergraduate
and about a year and a half in grad school … made my head very pointy.

What you can do today. How to save the planet.

A song about The Human Induced Climate Change Experiment

bookmark_borderA Tipping Point

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By Daniel Brouse
August 3, 2023

Push a glass toward the edge of a table and eventually it will fall off on its own. No matter how slowly or meticulously you push… no matter how you weight or fill the glass, it will reach a tipping point and fall off before being pushed completely off the table.

No matter whether you believe the glass is half-empty or half-full, when the tipping point is reached it will plummet out-of-control to its end. This is science not fate, faith, nor belief.

Human induced climate change has resulted in environmental tipping points being breached.

Climate Change Tipping Points

What you can do today. How to save the planet.

A song about The Human Induced Climate Change Experiment