Climate Change Tipping Points

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°C 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.

URGENT CLIMATE WARNING
Our latest climate model -- now incorporating complex social-ecological feedback loops within a dynamic, non-linear system -- projects that global temperatures could rise by up to 9°C (16.2°F) within this century. This far exceeds earlier estimates, which predicted a 4°C rise over the next thousand years, and signals a dramatic acceleration of warming.

At this level of heating, large regions of the planet will become uninhabitable due to extreme heat, sea level rise, agricultural collapse, and mass migration. Critically, parts of the U.S. are already experiencing wet-bulb temperatures approaching or exceeding 31°C (87.8°F) -- a physiological limit beyond which the human body can no longer regulate its internal temperature, even in the shade with ample water.

This is no longer a distant threat. The climate system is entering a phase of compound risk and cascading collapse -- and we are already seeing the early signs.