US National Research Council wants abrupt climate change warning system

woodyrr

Yesterday, the National Research Council (a branch of the US' National Academies of Science) released a report in which it called for the creation of an early warning system that would let us know when we're approaching tipping points in the climate.

While talk of climate tipping points is fairly common, most of it focuses on the climate itself changing to a new state. The new report is quite different, in that it's focused on things that can enter new states even when the climate is only changing gradually. These include individual features of the planet, like ice sheets, and things that currently support human infrastructure, like permafrost.

The new report builds on one that the National Academies released in 2002 called Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises. That also took the more broad view of climate change, focusing on the fact that the climate itself can shift rapidly, as evidenced by events like the end of the Younger Dryas cold period, where temperatures seem to have shifted dramatically over the course of a few decades.