Several periods of extreme warming in Earth\u2019s past have been followed by \u201ctipping points\u201d involving the release of greenhouse gases, according to research published in the journal Science Advances. Scientists from Wageningen University & Research and Utrecht University in the Netherlands analyzed three periods of rapid warming between 56 and 52 million years ago. They found that each of these periods was preceded by a climate tipping point, which the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has described as \u201ca critical threshold beyond which the system reorganizes, often abruptly and\/or irreversibly.\u201d The Earth contains numerous reservoirs of carbon and other greenhouse gases that, if depleted or destabilized, can trigger leaks and chain reactions when released into the atmosphere. The warming caused by the releases can destabilize other reservoirs, leading to feedback loops. The relevant periods of warming were already known to coincide with massive releases of gases like methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, but the data in the analysis are the first to draw a direct line between reduced stability of the climate system and these periods of warming. \u201cThis is exactly what you would expect if the carbon release was caused by a tipping point in the carbon cycle,\u201d lead author Shruti Setty, a Ph.D. candidate at Wageningen University and Research, said in a statement. The study follows another, published last December in the journal Nature Climate Change, that suggested that current levels of global warming could trigger climate tipping points. The study suggested that even if temperatures are stabilized or reduced, systems have a 50 percent chance of collapsing when temperatures exceed 4 degrees Celsius. The researchers found that completely avoiding such a scenario would only be possible if global warming were kept below 1 degree Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels, while levels are currently 1.2 degrees above the pre-industrial point.<\/p>\n
ZACK BUDRYK\u00a0<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Several periods of extreme warming in Earth\u2019s past have been followed by \u201ctipping points\u201d involving the release of greenhouse gases, according to research published in the journal Science Advances. Scientists from Wageningen University & Research and Utrecht University in the Netherlands analyzed three periods of rapid warming between 56 and 52 million years ago. They found that each of these periods was preceded by a climate tipping point that [\u2026]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-klimaticka-zmena"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2094\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}