Climate change is accelerating. How close are irreversible tipping points?
Mgr. Alexander Ač, Ph.D. (Laboratory of Ecological Plant Physiology, CZECHGLOBE - Global Change Research Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences)
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Ongoing debate among climate scientists about whether rate of climate warming is accelerating, is closing and recent evidence points to significant acceleration of the trend (See Figure). What are the main drivers of such acceleration? Moreover, carbon budget for keeping the global temperature rise below 1,5 °C is essentially exhausted, and Earth is nearing 2 °C temperature limit fast. Which irreversible climate tipping points can be triggered and what is the risk of shutting down AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation) based on most recent scientific understanding?
Figure: Measured global temperature based on NASA GISS data since 1880. Warming rate post 2010 period shows almost doubling of warming rate post 1970 (0.18/decade vs. 0.34/decade). (Source: Makiko Sato, 2024)
BIO of the speaker:
Alexander Ač studied Environmental Ecology at Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice in Slovakia and obtained PhD title in the field of Applied Ecology at the University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice in the Czech Republic. Currently he works at the Global Change Research Institute in Brno and specializes in the topics of isotopic tree ring data and inventories of GHGs from agricultural lands. He is also a co-editor of a book “Era of Instability” (Academia, 2019) dealing with global and local impacts of climate change and he also translated to book Sustainable Energy – without the hot air (DJC MacKay, Cambridge, 2009). Author was a member of government advisory Commission for the climate issues (2019-2020).
