Collapsologie

We investigate the probabilities of triggering climate tipping points under five Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) and how they are altered by including the additional carbon emissions that could arise from tipping points within the Earth's carbon cycle. The crossing of a climate tipping point at a threshold level of global mean surface temperature (threshold temperature) would commit the affected subsystem of the Earth to abrupt and largely irreversible changes with negative impacts on human well-being. However, it remains unclear which tipping points would be triggered under the different SSPs due to uncertainties in the climate sensitivity to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, the threshold temperatures and timescales of climate tipping points, and the response of tipping points within the Earth's carbon cycle to global warming. We include those uncertainties in our analysis to derive probabilities of triggering for 16 previously identified climate tipping points within the Earth system.