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Many nations and organizations around the world have emphasized lowering greenhouse gas emissions with the aim of keeping the global temperature from rising more than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Past studies have pegged this as a critical tipping point for World'due south long-term climate, but that may be harder to reach than we idea. A new analysis suggests that even limiting emissions won't be able to stop the planet from warming considerably more the 2-degree cutoff.

Researchers at the Stockholm Resilience Centre note that World's own feedback mechanisms could hateful we've already crossed the point of no render. At present, the climate has warmed more than a caste to a higher place pre-industrial levels, and information technology'due south going upwards about 0.17 degrees C every decade. Carbon sinks that currently limit the damage of greenhouse gasses could tip the other way and become sources of carbon past 2 degrees of warming.

The feedbacks cited in the study include permafrost, which could thaw as temperatures increase. Warming oceans could also cause the release of carbon dioxide and methane from the bounding main floor. Forests that currently soak upwardly atmospheric carbon could likewise die in many regions, causing the release of all that captured carbon as they decompose. The squad likens it to a row of dominoes that could topple one subsequently another once nosotros cantankerous the 2-degree barrier.

If the scenario laid out in the new study is accurate, we could be headed for a and then-called Hothouse Earth, where the global temperature stabilizes at 4-5 degrees above pre-industrial averages. At that point, global climate would experience radical shifts, and the oceans would be ten-threescore meters higher than today. That would render many currently habitable areas inhospitable to human life.

It might take a century or more for the full effects of Hothouse Globe to be realized, but the study suggests that is inevitable if we don't make large changes. We're not talking virtually the end of the world itself, but it might well be the end of the world for humans.

Information technology's notwithstanding unclear if global temperatures tin be "parked" at or about ii degrees C. The Stockholm Resilience Centre study says that but lowering emissions won't exist enough — nosotros should be working toward ending the use of fossil fuels past the eye of this century. The world may demand to exert considerable effort to accept carbon out of the atmosphere through the employ of new biological carbon stores and equally-yet undiscovered technologies that can remove and sequester carbon.

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