[Coral-List] Climate and social tipping points- talk by Tim Lenton

[Franziska Elmer]

Dear Coral list,

We all know that coral reefs are one of the systems who might soon reach a tipping point due to Climate change, some say they already have. Tim Lenton is an expert in Climate and social tipping points and will give a zoom talk this Wednesday about this topic. More Info below. Hope to see you there!

Franziska Elmer

02 February 2022 19:30 GMT, Zoom Registration<https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcpfu6tpzsrHtZ4H79LYsZJb9yNns3FwfwZ>
Talk in English with interpretation in Spanish and French.

Abstract: Tipping points<https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03595-0> in climate science normally refer to small changes in the Earth system that unleash much broader, typically damaging impacts that accelerate climate change. The best-known examples are rising sea levels due to disintegration of the Greenland and West Antarctica ice sheets, or the release of methane deposits from the thawing Siberian permafrost. They help to underline the urgency of climate action. Today most people understand we must reduce emissions – and very quickly. In this webinar, Tim will summarise recent evidence regarding climate tipping points, which supports declarations that we are in a ‘climate emergency’. He will also show his latest results identifying a human climate niche<https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1910114117> and projecting how it will move in the future. Then he will turn to identifying positive social tipping points<https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2021.30> that will need to be triggered to have any hope of limiting global warming to well below 2C.

Speaker: Tim Lenton<https://geography.exeter.ac.uk/staff/?web_id=Timothy_Lenton> is the Director of the Global Systems Institute and Chair in Climate Change and Earth System Science at the University of Exeter. His reading of Jim Lovelock’s books on Gaia, when he was an undergraduate, ignited his passion for studying the Earth as a whole system, forming the foundations of his research to date. For his PhD, supervised by Andrew Watson, Tim studied what regulates the nutrient balance of the ocean and the oxygen content of the atmosphere. In his first job he built a simple coupled carbon cycle and climate model and led the development of the GENIE Earth system model. This led him to studying the coupled evolution of life and the planet and identifying tipping points in the Earth system – past, present, and future. Tim and his group at Exeter focus on understanding the Earth as a system, modelling evolution, ecology, and biogeochemistry, providing early warning of climate tipping points, and identifying positive tipping points towards sustainability. This integrated view of our living planet is captured in his books ‘Revolutions that made the Earth’ with Andrew Watson (OUP, 2011) and ‘Earth System Science: A Very Short Introduction’ (OUP, 2016).