# Climate Tipping Points

> An atlas of fast-changing climate science, with evidence profiles for major tipping elements and an automatically updating feed of new scholarship.

Climate Tipping Points explains climate-system components that may undergo abrupt, self-reinforcing, or effectively irreversible change. It distinguishes tipping elements from tipping points, separates core elements from regional elements and debated mediators, and presents uncertainty alongside consequences and possible interactions.

## Main resources

- [Interactive atlas](https://climatetippingpoints.com/): Select mapped systems and inspect current research, key studies, warming signals, transition timescales, consequences, caveats, and potential interactions.
- [About the project](https://climatetippingpoints.com/about): Purpose, intended audiences, and information about creator Dagomar Degroot.
- [Full machine-readable research guide](https://climatetippingpoints.com/llms-full.txt): Complete summaries, terminology, evidence notes, connected systems, and citations for every mapped tipping element.

## Tipping-element research profiles

- [Greenland Ice Sheet](https://climatetippingpoints.com/tipping-points/greenland): As the ice sheet loses height, its surface encounters warmer air, amplifying melt and potentially committing Greenland to long-term disintegration.
- [West Antarctic Ice Sheet](https://climatetippingpoints.com/tipping-points/west-antarctica): Much of the ice rests on bedrock below sea level. Retreat into deeper basins can become self-sustaining once grounding lines destabilize.
- [Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation](https://climatetippingpoints.com/tipping-points/amoc): Freshening and warming of the North Atlantic can weaken deep-water formation and the salt-advection feedback that sustains the circulation.
- [Arctic Winter Sea Ice](https://climatetippingpoints.com/tipping-points/arctic-sea-ice): Summer sea ice is not generally expected to tip under anthropogenic forcing, but winter ice may have multiple states and sea-ice loss can amplify other transitions.
- [Northern Permafrost](https://climatetippingpoints.com/tipping-points/permafrost): Ice-rich ground can collapse abruptly into thermokarst landscapes, while thaw exposes ancient carbon to decomposition and greenhouse-gas release.
- [Amazon Rainforest](https://climatetippingpoints.com/tipping-points/amazon): Warming, drought, fire, and deforestation can reinforce one another, reducing rainfall and shifting forest toward degraded or open states.
- [Warm-water Coral Reefs](https://climatetippingpoints.com/tipping-points/coral): Repeated marine heatwaves can outrun recovery, shifting diverse coral systems toward degraded, algae-dominated states.
- [Boreal Forest](https://climatetippingpoints.com/tipping-points/boreal): Heat, drought, insects, and fire may accelerate southern forest loss faster than tree cover can expand into the tundra to the north.
- [West African Monsoon](https://climatetippingpoints.com/tipping-points/west-african-monsoon): Land-ocean temperature contrasts and feedbacks may reorganize Sahel rainfall, but models disagree on whether change would be abrupt and in which direction.
- [El Niño–Southern Oscillation](https://climatetippingpoints.com/tipping-points/enso): ENSO is a powerful source of global climate variability that can transmit and intensify stress across rainforests, monsoons, coral reefs, and polar ice.

## Foundational scholarship

- [Armstrong McKay et al. (2022), Exceeding 1.5°C global warming could trigger multiple climate tipping points](https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abn7950): Assessment of threshold ranges, transition timescales, and impacts for proposed tipping elements.
- [Wunderling et al. (2024), Climate tipping point interactions and cascades: a review](https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-41-2024): Review of stabilizing, destabilizing, and uncertain interactions among tipping elements.

## Interpretation notes

- Crossing a tipping point is not the same as completing a transition.
- Temperature ranges are assessment ranges, not precise forecasts or deadlines.
- ENSO and Arctic winter sea ice are included chiefly as possible mediators; their status as tipping elements is debated.
- Permafrost can tip locally even though current evidence does not support one pan-Arctic global threshold.
- Automatically matched recent papers are kept distinct from curated key studies.