The paper makes the general statements quoted but in the text body clarifies that the evaluation has limitations in scope, omitting:
a) Tipping element cascades
So far, research on cascading behavior has primarily leveraged conceptual modeling rather than process and scenario-based approaches, limiting the applicability of these results for investigating the third question of what the cumulative impacts of transitions by multiple tipping elements might be.
b) Several tipping elements that are warming-dependent
We omit potential carbon fluxes or radiative forcing impacts from other candidate tipping elements (boreal forests, stratocumulus cloud decks, tropical monsoons, AMOC, and Greenland/Antarctic ice sheets ) given higher uncertainty surrounding their potential impacts upon carbon cycling and planetary radiative balance under different warming scenarios. One or more of these tipping elements could add net contributions to warming, however current levels of scientific knowledge and confidence are insufficient to formulate assumptions that aren’t largely arbitrary. As stratocumulus cloud deck evaporation remains a novel and uncertain hypothesis, we also omit this mechanism. We assume die-off of tropical coral reefs produces no global climate feedbacks.
c) Several tipping elements that are warming-independent
Our review does not cover the full range of Earth system components that have been proposed to be candidate tipping elements over the last few decades. A number of other systems have been described as potential tipping elements, such as disruptions to the El Niño Southern Oscillation, loss of Antarctic sea ice, changes to snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere, and future shifts in ocean temperatures and oxygen levels, but are not expected to exhibit tipping behavior in response to warming (Ranasinghe et al., 2021).
As such I find this a little untrustworthy as the abstract implies a much higher confidence than is presented through the paper, but they did state it in the text.
I agree with what Sanjay said, there is fairly good agreement between the Armstrong McKay and Wang papers. One difference is the Amazon dieback is considered to be much more likely in the latter paper.
The paper broadly conforms to my previously held views on the tipping points discussed, but I would assign more risk to ice melt and AMOC slowdown as these projections don’t include new research on grounding line movement that increase sea level rise projections by up to 200% and evolving understanding of crevasse contribution to melting.
The paper makes the general statements quoted but in the text body clarifies that the evaluation has limitations in scope, omitting:
a) Tipping element cascades
b) Several tipping elements that are warming-dependent
c) Several tipping elements that are warming-independent
As such I find this a little untrustworthy as the abstract implies a much higher confidence than is presented through the paper, but they did state it in the text.
I agree with what Sanjay said, there is fairly good agreement between the Armstrong McKay and Wang papers. One difference is the Amazon dieback is considered to be much more likely in the latter paper.
The paper broadly conforms to my previously held views on the tipping points discussed, but I would assign more risk to ice melt and AMOC slowdown as these projections don’t include new research on grounding line movement that increase sea level rise projections by up to 200% and evolving understanding of crevasse contribution to melting.
Technical q: Is the Armstrong picture not showing?
I don’t think it embeds properly because it is part of a Science image player. I will try to fix it.