‘Tipping points' could exacerbate climate crisis, scientists fear

Key dangers largely left out of the IPCC special report on 1.5C of warming are raising alarm among some scientists who fear we may have underestimated the impacts of humans on the Earth’s climate.

The north-east coastline of Greenland,
one of the world’s two great ice sheets. 

The IPCC report sets out the world’s current knowledge of the impacts of 1.5C of warming and clearly shows the dangers of breaching such a limit. However, many scientists are increasingly worried about factors about which we know much less.

These “known unknowns” of climate change are tipping points, or feedback mechanisms within the climate system – thresholds that, if passed, could send the Earth into a spiral of runaway climate change.

Read the story from the Environment Correspondent with The Guardian, Fiona Harvey - “‘Tipping points' could exacerbate climate crisis, scientists fear.”