Sunday, February 4, 2024

Are we reaching a tipping point in global heating?


Alberta Wildfire
watercolour
©2023 Charlene Brown

The National Centers for Environmental Information in the American National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration provides environmental data, products, and services covering the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun.

NOAA Chief Scientist Dr. Sarah Kapnick said that the findings of their 2023 climate analysis were astounding. “Not only was 2023 the warmest year in NOAA’s 174-year climate record — it was the warmest by far.”

The impacts of climate change are happening here and now, like extreme weather events that are becoming more frequent and more severe. There were many extreme weather events in 2023, along with record-low sea ice coverage and catastrophic wildfires. In Canada, 45.7 million acres burned, 2.6 times the previous record.

One of the confounding factors making forecasting the future more difficult, which I wrote about three years ago is the phenomenon of tipping points.  These are actions of a complex system which has become unstable.

Are we reaching a tipping point in global heating?

Read Decimation doesn’t begin to describe what happened in Lytton

Or have we already tipped?