Climate Change: A Very Short Introduction

by Mark Maslin

The term ‘tipping points’ is used a lot in climate change research and discussions. However, care must be taken as there are two usages of this word. First, there are references to climate tipping points, which are the large-scale, irreversible shifts in the climate system, such as irreversible melting of ice sheets or the release of huge stores of CH4 from below the oceans. The other usage concerns societal tipping points, which occur when climate change has a major effect on a region or a particular country. For example, a 200 mile (~322 km) shift northward of the South-East Asian monsoonal rainfall belt is, in climatological terms, a small shift, not a fundamental climate tipping point. But for the countries where the rains no longer fall or those where it does for the first time, such a shift is a major climate tipping point, because their weather may have been permanently altered.