What El Niño means for the world's perilous climate tipping points

• This El Niño event is just getting started and so is only partially responsible for these recent extremes.
• These impacts could include the triggering of climate tipping points: self-sustaining shifts in the climate system that lock in devastating changes once critical warming levels are passed.
• So could record global heat turbo-charged by El Niño over the coming years bring these tipping thresholds within reach?
• Read more:
  Climate tipping points could lock in unstoppable changes to the planet – how close are they?
• However, most scientists don’t expect the world to reach a slew of climate tipping points if El Niño causes the world to cross 1.5°C briefly.

The outcome for tipping points

• The wide ranges over which particular tipping points are estimated to lie mean that we can’t say for sure exactly when tipping becomes inevitable, only that tipping becomes more likely with every fraction of warming within that range.
• Some commentators worry that recent temperature and sea ice extremes might themselves be the result of tipping points approaching.
• Flickering before tipping is possible, but systems like Antarctic sea ice or ocean currents aren’t known to behave this way.
• So, it’s unlikely, but not impossible, that this new El Niño event will directly trigger climate tipping points.
• Instead, coming El Niño events combined with human-driven global warming will continue to break temperature records, and the chance of tipping points being crossed will continue to grow as long-term warming proceeds.