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Only halving emissions by 2030 can minimize risks of crossing cryosphere thresholds

Nature Climate Change volume 13, pages 9–11 (2023)Cite this article

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Considering cryosphere and warming uncertainties together implies drastically increased risk of threshold crossing in the cryosphere, even under lower-emission pathways, and underscores the need to halve emissions by 2030 in line with the 1.5 °C limit of the Paris Agreement.

A key risk of climate change is the potential crossing of abrupt and/or irreversible thresholds, often called tipping points1. The need for improved understanding of such risks, as well as what is required to minimize them, is now also explicitly acknowledged by climate policy2. ‘Abrupt’ means a much faster change than usual for that system, while ‘irreversible’ on a given timescale means that the system will not be able to recover to its initial state on a similar timescale3. Some changes may be reversible on human timescales, after decades or centuries, whereas others may take millennia. For the cryosphere, which is not only particularly vulnerable to climate change but is also a key driver of sea-level rise, the latest IPCC assessment confirms again that several of its elements are susceptible to such threshold behaviour3. Examples of these include the potential melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets or permafrost thaw1,4,5.

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Fig. 1: Joint uncertainties of cryospheric thresholds and losses, sea-level rise and warming outcomes of emissions pathways.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Climate Analytics, Berlin, Germany

    Uta Kloenne, Alexander Nauels & Carl-Friedrich Schleussner

  2. Climate & Energy College, School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia

    Alexander Nauels

  3. International Cryosphere Climate Initiative, Pawlet, VT, USA

    Pam Pearson

  4. Department of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA

    Robert M. DeConto

  5. Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Plymouth, UK

    Helen S. Findlay

  6. Department of Physical Geography, Bolin Centre for Climate Research, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Gustaf Hugelius

  7. Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Alexander Robinson

  8. Instituto de Geociencias, CSIC-UCM, Madrid, Spain

    Alexander Robinson

  9. Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany

    Alexander Robinson

  10. Centre for Environmental Policy and Grantham Institute – Climate Change and Environment, Imperial College London, London, UK

    Joeri Rogelj

  11. Energy, Climate and Environment Programme, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria

    Joeri Rogelj

  12. Center for Ecosystem Science and Society, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, USA

    Edward A. G. Schuur

  13. Centre for Earth Observation Science, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

    Julienne Stroeve

  14. Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling, Department of Earth Sciences, University College London, London, UK

    Julienne Stroeve

  15. NSIDC, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

    Julienne Stroeve

  16. IRI THESys and Geography Faculty, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Carl-Friedrich Schleussner

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  1. Uta Kloenne
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Correspondence to Uta Kloenne.

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Kloenne, U., Nauels, A., Pearson, P. et al. Only halving emissions by 2030 can minimize risks of crossing cryosphere thresholds. Nat. Clim. Chang. 13, 9–11 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01566-4

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