Babbage from The Economist (subscriber edition) No going back: climate tipping-points
Aug 27, 2025
Jonathan Nash, a professor of oceanography at Oregon State University, shares insights on critical climate tipping points. He discusses the potential for rapid and irreversible changes, like the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and the transformation of North Africa into arid desert. Nash emphasizes the urgency of understanding these shifts, particularly how human-induced greenhouse gases drive them. The conversation highlights the significance of ice cores from Antarctica in revealing our climate history and the need for better prediction models to navigate future uncertainties.
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Climate Change Can Flip Suddenly
- Climate change can include abrupt, self-reinforcing shifts called tipping points that rapidly alter systems.
- These feedbacks can make changes sudden, large, and hard or impossible to reverse.
Permafrost Melting Fuels Its Own Advance
- Thawing permafrost releases greenhouse gases which amplify warming in a self-reinforcing loop.
- That feedback can push the system past a threshold where thawing becomes self-sustaining.
Greenland Melt Could Shut Down Ocean Conveyor
- Large Greenland meltwater inputs can cap the North Atlantic surface and disrupt the meridional overturning circulation.
- Such a collapse would shift heat transport, cooling Europe and altering global climate patterns.