Climate Tracking

Earth Systems Collapse

Tipping Points

 Climate Change Impacts Exceeding Projections 


A tipping point is a critical threshold beyond which a system reorganises, often abruptly and/or irreversibly and a tipping element is an Earth system component that is susceptible to a tipping point. Key tipping elements include the collapse of the West Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets, the melting of the Arctic Permafrost, the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation and the dieback of the Amazon Forest. ....

The crossing of climate system tipping points may lead the climate to change regionally or globally, both by substantially affecting the Earth system and as a result of tipping cascades, leading to potentially catastrophic impacts. Tipping points impacts will also cascade through socio-economic and ecological systems over timeframes that are short enough to defy the ability and capacity of human societies to adapt, leading to severe effects on human and natural systems.

 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)  Dec 2022

Note: Global map of candidate tipping elements of the climate systems and potential tipping cascades. Arrows show the potential interactions among the tipping elements that could generate tipping cascades, based on expert elicitation.

Source: (OECD, 2021[5]); (Kriegler et al., 2009[6]; Cai, Lenton and Lontzek, 2016[7]; Wunderling et al., 2021[4])


Impacts Happening Ahead of Projections or Greater than Projections, Bruce Melton, May 2023


This list of climate change impacts happening earlier or greater than projected includes details, short discussions/summaries, and links to documentation.  The compilations is an ongoing project of Bruce Melton and the Climate Change Now Initiative. If you have citations or interpretations that could be added to this list, please email them to Bruce at the email address provided in the document.

Counting the Cost of Climate Change, Christian Aid, 2022

Christian Aid identifies 20 of the most destructive climate disasters of the year. The ten most financially costly events all had an impact of $3 billion or more. Most of these estimates are based only on insured losses, meaning the true financial costs are likely to be even higher, while the human costs are often uncounted. Among them is Hurricane Ian which struck the US and Cuba in September costing $100 billion and displacing 40,000 people. The drought in Europe heatwave in Europe cost $20 billion while floods in Pakistan killed more than 1,700 people, displaced a further 7 million, and according to World Bank estimates caused $30 billion in economic damage. Due to the difficulty of obtaining insurance, only $5.6 billion of these losses were covered. 

Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters, NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), 

The NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) update to its 2022 Billion-dollar disaster report confirming another intense year of costly disasters and extremes throughout much of the United States. 2022 tied 2017 and 2011 for the third highest number of billion-dollar disasters. 2022 was also third highest in total costs (behind 2017 and 2005), with a price tag of at least $165.0 billion.

2022 was also deadly; the18 billion-dollar disasters of 2022 caused at least 474 direct or indirect fatalities—the 8th most disaster-related fatalities for the contiguous U.S. since 1980. 

The U.S. has sustained 355 weather and climate disasters since 1980 where overall damages/costs reached or exceeded $1 billion (including CPI adjustment to 2023). The total cost of these 355 events exceeds $2.540 trillion. 

Real-time attribution analysis of extreme weather events as they happen around the world.

Extreme Event Attribution was assessed by the US National Academy of Sciences to yield reliable estimates of changing risks of extreme weather casued by climate change. These analyses are carried out by The World Weather Attribution (WWA) initiative, a collaboration among climate scientists at Imperial College London in the UK, KNMI in the Netherlands, IPSL/LSCE in France, Princeton University and NCAR in the US, ETH Zurich in Switzerland, IIT Delhi in India, and climate impact specialists at the Red Cross / Red Crescent Climate Centre (RCCC) around the world.


NET ZERO TRACKER 

The Net Zero Tracker aims to increase transparency and accountability of net zero targets pledged by nations, states and regions, cities, and companies. They collect data on targets set and on many factors that indicate the integrity of those targets — essentially, how serious the entity setting the target is about meaningfully cutting its net emissions to zero.  Net Zero Tracker is a collaboration among four organisations:


CLIMATE REANALYZER:  Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine 


Climate Reanalyzer began in early 2012 as a platform for visualizing climate and weather forecast models. Site content is organized into three general categories: Weather Forecasts, Climate Data, and Research Tools. Pages within the first two groups are the easiest to use and include maps, map animations, and interactive time series charts (with data export options). Research Tools include pages for generating custom maps, time series, and linear correlations from monthly climate reanalysis, gridded data, and climate models. Data sources and information are found toward the bottom of each page. 


WORLD METEOROLOGICAL ORGANIZATION


As a specialized agency of the United Nations, WMO is dedicated to international cooperation and coordination on the state and behaviour of the Earth’s atmosphere, its interaction with the land and oceans, the weather and climate it produces, and the resulting distribution of water resources. 


NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION (NOAA):

GLOBAL MONITORING LABORATORY


The NOAA Earth Systems Research Laboratory's Global Monitoring Laboratory (GML) conducts research that addresses three major challenges: greenhouse gas and carbon cycle feedbacks, changes in clouds, aerosols, and surface radiation, and recovery of stratospheric ozone. GML's Carbon Cycle Greenhouse Gases (CCGG) research area operates the Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network, measuring the atmospheric distribution and trends of the three main long-term drivers of climate change, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O), as well as carbon monoxide (CO) which is an important indicator of air pollution. GML maintains calibration scales and provides calibration services to support the World Meteorological Organization Global Atmospheric Watch Programme. 


COPERNICUS CLIMATE CHANGE SERVICE (C3S)


Copernicus is the European Union's Earth Observation Programme. It consists of a complex set of systems that collect data from multiple sources: earth observation satellites and in situ sensors, such as ground stations, airborne and sea borne sensors.


OUR WORLD IN DATA:  Measuring progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals


The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are targets for global development that were adopted in 2015. All countries have agreed to work towards achieving them by 2030.

This SDG Tracker presents data across all available indicators from the Our World in Data database, using official statistics from the UN and other international organizations. This free, open-access information tracks global progress towards the SDGs and allows people worldwide to hold their governments accountable for achieving the agreed goals.

Systems Change Lab: Monitoring, learning from, and mobilizing action towards transformation

To ignite transformational change across our interconnected systems, Systems Change Lab has identified more than 70 shifts needed to protect both people and the planet. Within each shift, we measure how much progress has been made toward 2030 and 2050 science-based targets, as well as enablers and barriers of systems change.