Overshooting climate targets could significantly increase risk for tipping cascades

Temporarily overshooting the climate targets of 1.5-2 degrees Celsius could increase the tipping risk of several Earth system elements by more than 70 per cent. The tipping risk increases even if in the longer term the global temperature stabilizes within the Paris range. This is the result of a new risk analysis by researchers at Stockholm university published in Nature Climate Change.

The Greenland and the West Antarctic ice sheets are at an especially high risk of tipping. Photo: Jay Ruzesky via Unsplash.

“We show that the risk for some tipping events could increase very substantially under certain global warming overshoot scenarios,” explains Nico Wunderling, scientist at Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

The researchers behind the study connected to Stockholm University are Nico Wunderling, Johan Rockström, David I. Armstrong McKay and Jonathan F. Donges.

Read more at Stockholm Resilience Centre

Find the study in Nature Climate Change