As early as the beginning of the twenty-first century, the World Meteorological Organization has proposed the concept of a climatic tipping point, but everyone is familiar with the concept of a critical point, and by the end of 2019, Australian climatologist Steffen and his research team published a paper on climate tipping point in the journal Nature.
Nine critical points, including Arctic sea ice, Greenland ice sheet, northern foliage forest, permafrost, Atlantic warp inverted circulation, Amazon rainforest, warm water coral, southwest polar ice sheet, and southeast polar part, have been broken, while another 6 critical points are in the process of being broken.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="3" > climatic tipping point: 2021 really makes everyone panic</h1>
The Steffen paper, despite its many interpretations, remains obscure, but IN 2020 NASA published an article on its website detailing the changes in the planet since global warming, including:
Global temperature rise: Since the late 19th century, the Earth's average surface temperature has risen by about 1.18 degrees Celsius, a change caused mainly by carbon dioxide emitted by human activities;
The ocean absorbs most of the increased heat, and since 1969, the temperature at the top of the ocean has risen by more than 0.33 degrees Celsius, and the earth has stored 90% of the energy since it warmed in the ocean;
Reduced ice sheets: DATA monitored by NASA shows that Greenland lost an average of 279 billion tons of ice per year between 1993 and 2019, while Antarctica lost about 148 billion tons of ice per year;
Glaciers are receding globally: including continental glaciers in the Alps, Himalayas, Andes, Rocky Mountains, Alaska and Africa;
Reduced snow cover: NASA satellite observations show that spring snow in the Northern Hemisphere has decreased significantly over the past 50 years, and that snow melting occurs earlier;
Global sea levels have risen by about 20 centimeters in the last century, but in the last two decades they have almost doubled the rate of the last century and are accelerating every year;
Increase in extreme events: The number of record high temperature events has been increasing since 1950, while the number of record low temperature events has been decreasing;
Ocean acidification: The acidity of surface seawater has increased by about 30% since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and in recent decades, the ocean has absorbed 20% to 30% of total anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions;
Combined with the paper of Australian climatologist Steffen's climate tipping point, let everyone realize what is behind these cold data, the earth may really be changing rapidly, and the climate tipping point may be quietly coming.
However, the climatic tipping point mentioned by Steffen again is indifferent to ordinary people, after all, everyone cares about what is happening around them, except for cold winter and hot summer, in fact, there is no feeling, and the electricity bill for heating and cooling is higher than before.
Everything that happened in 2021 really scared everyone
The public's deep understanding of the climate tipping point is from 2021, because there have been too many abnormal events this year, and the China Weather Network has sorted out some events, and you may wish to re-review it in the form of pictures:
The statistics here are the abnormal events that occur in China, and there are more events in the world! For example, three hot dome events, namely Moscow at the end of May, the North American hot dome event that began in mid-July, and the European hot dome event in August, this event is actually a weather phenomenon, but you just need to know that in the past 10 years, a total of 6 have occurred, and 3 in 2021!
Heavy rain that has not been in the history of meteorology, heavy rain in New York in July, subway into a water curtain hole, heavy rain in Europe in mid-July, heavy rain in Henan, China at the end of July, after the global rainstorm, almost never in the history of meteorology has ever been a record of heavy rainfall, to the beginning of October In Shanxi, China also had a heavy rain, and Southeast Asia and India and other places, is long past the rainy season but still heavy rain.
In addition to torrential rains, there are extremely severe droughts in the southwest of the United States, droughts in southern Europe, rare droughts in Taiwan Province of China and Madagascar in Africa, as well as unprecedented fires and so on.
What really makes everyone hairy in these disasters is the torrential rain, because the current torrential rain is flooding the street, there are water soaking vehicles everywhere, all of which are rare or once in decades on the meteorological record. This is the vital interest, so the people have a question, what is wrong with the earth, is it really going to collapse?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="9" > the tipping point, in what ways will the Earth be "destroyed"? </h1>
Everyone is speculating about how global warming will end, and since the global climate system is an extremely complex system, it is difficult to predict what will happen, but there are two outcomes that may be most agreed upon.
1, the earth will have more extreme weather
This end is a continuation of the current climate, why is this the case? In fact, it is not difficult to collect according to the result, but the process may be extremely complicated, we watch the crowd, and then we want the result!
NASA data says that "since 1969, the temperature at the top of the ocean has risen by more than 0.33 degrees Celsius, and the earth has stored 90% of the energy since warming in the ocean", which means that the ocean absorbs more heat;
This means that the evaporation of the ocean is also greatly increased, which will increase the total amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, but the atmosphere will also have its own balance, and the total proportion of water vapor will remain roughly unchanged, so what is the heaviest result? There are two, one is that the amount of rain will increase significantly, and the other is that there will be more warm water vapor driving the global atmospheric circulation.
Ocean currents on Earth move
Obviously, the former is the cause of the increase in heavy rainfall, while the latter will affect the global climate through extremely complex ocean currents and atmospheric circulation systems, which may lead to high temperatures such as hot dome events, and may also lead to extreme droughts such as drought in the southwestern United States, as well as the occurrence of larger typhoons and hurricanes, and more likely to lead to extreme convective weather everywhere, winter cold currents and blizzards.
There is not much water on the earth, but the heat becomes a water porter, which will cause the original circulation balance imbalance, of course, this will also form a new balance, as to whether this balance is suitable for the development of human civilization, then Amitabha Buddha, ask for more blessings.
2) The Earth will likely enter an ice age again
There is also an extreme speculation that the earth will suddenly enter an ice age, which must have been vividly demonstrated in the Hollywood blockbuster "The Day After Tomorrow" released in 2004, when the AMOC (Atlantic Meridian Circulation) weakened or even stopped as an opportunity to cut into the Arctic.
Based on the theory that global warming has led to extremely strong temperate anticyclones that have swept the Arctic cold current and extremely cold air at the top of the galith into low altitudes, in just a few days, the northern hemisphere has fallen into boundless cold, the middle and high latitudes have all frozen, a large amount of sunlight has been reflected, and the earth has once again entered the ice age.
Theoretically, there's nothing wrong with that, it's just that it won't happen so quickly, and as the climatologist played by Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) puts it, it could have happened for hundreds of years or more in the future, "if we don't do it, then future generations will have to suffer the consequences now."
The current theory is also biased towards occurring in the medium and long term, because scientists have really observed that the AMOC has weakened by 15% since the beginning of the last century, and may weaken to 50% to 75% in the future, and the reason for this is that the Arctic ice sheet injects a large amount of fresh water into the ocean, resulting in an imbalance in salinity, which weakens the salinity and temperature-driven thermoalline circulation, stops energy transport, and the earth enters an ice age.
Of course, the occurrence of these things may require some opportunities, such as the cooperation of some extreme meteorological events, and perhaps at some point in the future, this black swan event may really occur, so as to send the earth into the ice age in one fell swoop, do not think that this will not happen, because historically, the ice age still accounts for the vast majority of events, and the interglacial warm period is only a transition period.
Ice age occurs, the cultivatable area will be greatly reduced, it is foreseeable that human beings will not go extinct, but there will be a large-scale humanitarian disaster problem, China announced in September carbon dioxide synthesis starch, October announced carbon monoxide synthesis of protein, may become a magic weapon to survive the ice age.