Seafloor Methane: Methane plumes rising from the Arctic Ocean floor/National Oceanography Centre, Southampton.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/12/tipping-elements/all/1
Brandon Keim: (@9brandon http://www.earthlab.net/) "When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its last report in 2007, environmental tipping points were a footnote. A troubling footnote, to be sure, but the science was relatively new and unsettled. Straightforward global warming was enough to worry about. But when the IPCC meets in 2014, tipping points -- or tipping elements, in academic vernacular -- will get much more attention. ..."
PNAS Dec. 2009: http://www.pnas.org/content/106/49.toc
also see:
Signs From Earth Dec. 11, 2009: PNAS Free Special on Earth's "Tipping Elements": Must Decarbonize...industrial metabolism:"
The National Academies of Science in the United States published Dec. 8, 2009 in its Proceedings a free online section addressing "tipping elements" in Earth's system, and the role of our carbon-intensive economy in driving earth to a new state:
From PNAS introduction: http://www.pnas.org/content/106/49/20561.full
"...If international climate policies succeed, against all odds, in sealing an ambitious deal on the confinement of global warming to <2 *C, then the focus of TE (Tipping Elements) research should actually shift to the social transformations arena: a massive acceleration of innovation processes for the decarbonization of our contemporary industrial metabolism will be the only way to deliver. In the more likely case of insufficient mitigation targets and measures, however, future TE research will rather have to predict how and when the environmental face of the Earth is going to be disfigured..."
also see: Earlier (open access paper) PNAS Tipping Elements in earth's climate system
http://www.pnas.org/content/105/6/1786.abstract
Abstract: "The term "tipping point" commonly refers to a critical threshold at which a tiny perturbation can qualitatively alter the state or development of a system. Here we introduce the term "tipping element" to describe large-scale components of the Earth system that may pass a tipping point. We critically evaluate potential policy-relevant tipping elements in the climate system under anthropogenic forcing, drawing on the pertinent literature and a recent international workshop to compile a short list, and we assess where their tipping points lie. An expert elicitation is used to help rank their sensitivity to global warming and the uncertainty about the underlying physical mechanisms. Then we explain how, in principle, early warning systems could be established to detect the proximity of some tipping points...."
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