Every increment of global warming above 1.5C increases the risk of crossing key tipping points in the Earth system – even if the overshoot is only temporary, says new research.
It is well established that if global temperatures exceed 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, there is a higher risk that tipping points will be crossed.
The new study, published in Nature Communications, investigates the risk of crossing four interconnected tipping points under different “policy-relevant” future emissions scenarios.
The authors investigate the risk of tipping where warming temporarily overshoots 1.5C, but global temperatures are then brought back down using negative emissions technologies. They find that the longer the 1.5C threshold is breached, and the higher the peak temperature, the greater the risk of crossing tipping points.
The most pessimistic scenario in the study sees global warming hit 3.3C by the end of the century – in line with the climate policies of 2020 – before dropping back below 1.5C over 2100-2300. Under this pathway, there is a 45% chance of crossing tipping points by 2300, the authors say.
The authors also warn that if global temperatures rise above 2C, the additional risk of tipping for every extra increment of warming “strongly accelerates”.
For temperatures between 1.5C and 2C, the risk increases by 1-1.5% for every 0.1C increase in overshoot temperature. However, for temperatures above 2.5C, tipping risk increases to 3% per 0.1C of overshoot.
The research “underlines the need for urgent emission cuts now that do not assume substantial carbon dioxide removal later”, a scientist not involved in the study tells Carbon Brief.
Overshoot scenarios
Scientists have warned for decades that as the planet warms, there is an increasing risk that Earth systems will cross “tipping points” – critical thresholds that, if exceeded, could push a system into an entirely new state.
For example, if climate change and human-driven deforestation push the Amazon rainforest past a critical threshold, large parts of the forest could experience “dieback”. This would cause entire sections of lush rainforest to eventually shift to dry savannah.
(See Carbon Brief’s explainer on the nine tipping points that could be crossed as a result of climate change.)
The planet has already warmed by 1.3C above pre-industrial levels, and a recent study warned that five tipping elements – including the collapse of the west Antarctic ice sheet – are already within reach.
That study emphasised the importance of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels – in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement. It finds that warming of 1.5C would render four climate tipping elements “likely” and a further six “possible”. Meanwhile, 13 tipping elements will be either “likely” or “possible” if the planet warms by 2.6C, as expected under current climate policies.
Many of the potential pathways to limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C by 2100 see the planet initially “overshoot” the threshold before negative emissions methods are used to bring temperatures back down.
The new paper investigates 10 future warming scenarios which run to the year 2300. The authors use the PROVIDE v1.2 emission pathways, which they describe as “an extended version of the illustrative pathways identified” used in the recent sixth assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The original scenarios run over 2015-2300, but the authors carried them forward for another 50,000 years by following the temperature trajectory set over 2290-2300. All scenarios stabilise at 1.5C, 1C or pre-industrial temperatures. However, many include overshoots, with peak temperatures ranging from 1.57C to 3.30C.
These scenarios show a range of options for how global temperatures change under these 10 scenarios in the “medium term” – until the year 2300 – as well as in the “long term”, which runs 50,000 years into the future to see how the planet eventually stabilises.
Scenarios that reach net-zero or negative emissions by 2100 and maintain them thereafter are classified as “NZGHG emission scenarios”. The table below gives more detail on each scenario.
| Scenario | Overshoot peak temperature | NZGHG | Stabilisation temperature | Scenario assumptions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CurPol-OS-1.5C | 3.30C | Never-NZGHG | 1.5C | Follows current (2020) policies until 2100, then declines |
| ModAct-OS-1.5C | 2.69C | Never-NZGHG | 1.5C | Follows current (2020) pledges (NDCs) until 2100, then declines |
| ModAct-OS-1C | 2.69C | Never-NZGHG | 1.0C | Follows current (2020) pledges (NDCs) until 2100, then declines |
| Ref-1p5 | – | not defined | 1.5C | Reference scenario designed in temperature space |
| SSP5-3.4-OS | 2.35C | No-long-term-NZGHG | 1.5C | Tests system response to rapid emission changes |
| SSP1-1.9 | 1.53C | No-long-term-NZGHG | 1.0C | Sustainable development, no long-term compensation of non-CO2 emissions |
| GS-NZGHG | 1.70C | NZGHG | pre-industrial | Gradual strengthening, returns warming to 1.5 °C by 2215 |
| SP-NZGHG | 1.57C | NZGHG | pre-industrial | Broad shift towards sustainable development |
| Neg-NZGHG | 1.67C | NZGHG | pre-industrial | Returns warming to 1.5 °C by 2100 with heavy CDR deployment |
| Neg-OS-OC | 1.67C | NZGHG | pre-industrial | Returns warming to 1.5 °C by 2100 with heavy CDR deployment |
Table showing the 10 scenarios used in this study. Source: Möller et al (2024).
There is quite a range between the 10 pathways.
At the high end, the “CurPol-OS-1.5C” scenario sees a continuation of the global climate policies implemented in 2020 until the year 2100, with warming peaking at 3.3C. It then sees a decline in global temperature until reaching a stabilisation of 1.5C by the year 2300.
At the low end, “Neg-OS-0C” scenario initially overshoots 1.5C to 1.67C, but then returns warming to 1.5C by 2100 using “heavy carbon dioxide removal deployment”. It also then sees average global temperatures drop to pre-industrial levels by the year 2300.
In the middle, the Ref-1p5 scenario is the only one that does not include an overshoot, instead stabilising quickly at 1.5C.
The chart below shows greenhouse gas emissions (top) and corresponding global temperature changes (bottom) associated with each scenario, identified by the different-coloured lines. The bottom chart illustrates the range in how quickly the pathways return to 1.5C or below.

Dr David McKay is a research impact fellow at the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute, who has published extensively on climate tipping points, but was not involved in this study.
He also notes that some of the scenarios shown in this study “may not be possible”, because there is debate about whether or not “the substantial carbon dioxide removal needed for large overshoots is feasible”.
Cascades
Many Earth systems are interlinked, so crossing one tipping point can increase the likelihood of crossing others. This is often described as a “domino effect” or “tipping cascade”.
The study focuses on four interconnected tipping points – collapse of the Greenland ice sheet and west Antarctic ice sheet, shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation and dieback of the Amazon rainforest.
Annika Högner is a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and co-lead author on the study. She tells Carbon Brief these four tipping points were chosen because they “play a significant role in the functioning of the Earth system” and “their tipping would have severe global impacts”.
The graphic below shows how the tipping points interact with each other. A “+” symbol indicates that crossing one tipping point can destabilise another. For example, a collapse of the Greenland ice sheet makes the AMOC more likely to shut down, as a result of the sudden influx of freshwater into the north Atlantic Ocean. A “±” symbol indicates that the relationship between two tipping points is uncertain.
A “-” symbol indicates that crossing one tipping point stabilises another. Högner tells Carbon Brief that the interaction between the Greenland ice sheet and AMOC is the only stabilising interaction in this study. She explains that if the AMOC were to cross a tipping point, “we [would] expect to see strong cooling in the northern hemisphere”, which will contribute to stabilising the Greenland ice sheet.

Earth system models “often don’t resolve tipping processes very well”, making them less suited to modelling full tipping cascades, Högner tells Carbon Brief.
Instead, she explains that the authors developed a “conceptual model”. This model does not attempt to simulate the entire Earth system, but instead just models the likelihood of tipping at different temperatures, based on existing knowledge about tipping elements from other studies.
The model takes temperature trajectories as an input and gives the state of the tipping elements after a specified time – that is, whether or not the element has tipped – as an output.
Importantly, these models include “hysteresis” – a feature of tipping systems, in which a system that has moved to a different state does not easily move back to the original state even if temperatures are reduced again.
Tipping risk
The authors use their conceptual model to calculate “tipping risk” under the 10 future warming scenarios. Högner tells Carbon Brief that tipping risk “refers to the model of all four interacting tipping elements analysed in the study”. For example, a 50% tipping risk means there is a 50% chance that at least one of the four climate elements will tip.
The top row of the graphic below shows the risk of tipping in the year 2300 (left) and in 50,000 years from now (right). Bars placed higher up indicate a greater likelihood of tipping. The dot shows the average value for each data point, while the bars show the 10-90% range.
The text on the right hand side gives likelihood levels in the calibrated language used by the IPCC: very likely means a likelihood of 90-100%, likely is 66-100%, about as likely as not is 33-66%; unlikely is 0-33%; and very unlikely is 0-10%.
The middle row shows the peak temperature under each scenario (left) and stabilisation temperature (right). The bottom row shows how long temperatures overshoot before stabilising in each scenario.

The longer the 1.5C threshold is breached for, and the higher the peak temperature is, the greater the risk of crossing tipping points by the year 2300, the study shows.
The authors find the greatest risk of crossing tipping points in the CurPol-OS-1.5C scenario (red), which follows the climate policies of 2020 until the year 2100 and then reaches 1.5C by 2300, as this scenario has the greatest overshoot temperature and duration.
Under this scenario, there is a 45% tipping risk by 2300 and a 76% chance in 50,000 years, according to the paper.
The five pathways that do not return warming to 1.5C by the year 2100 have the greatest medium-term risks, and those with less than 0.1C overshoot have the lowest medium-term risks.
In the long-term – looking to the next 50,000 years – the authors find that stabilisation temperature is “one of the decisive variables for tipping risks”. They find that even in the Ref1p5 scenario – which sees global temperatures stabilise at 1.5C without any overshoot – there is a 50% risk of the system tipping over the next 50,000 years.
The results “illustrate that a global mean temperature increase of 1.5C is not ‘safe’ in terms of planetary stability, but must be seen as an upper limit”, the study warns.
Högner tells Carbon Brief that the paper “underlines the importance of adhering to the Paris Agreement temperature goal”.
Tessa Möller – a researcher at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and co-lead author on the paper – tells Carbon Brief that “we have a wide portfolio of technologies available” to limit warming to 1.5C, and just need to “implement” them.
However, she also highlights the “large credibility gap” between pledges from individual countries and the policies they have actually implemented. She tells Carbon Brief that not only do we need “stronger pledges”, but it is also essential that countries follow through on them.
Long-term climate
The authors also explore the risk of each individual tipping point being crossed in different scenarios.
The plot below shows the tipping risk by 2300 under different scenarios, at different temperatures, on the left. Each colour represents one scenario. Dots positioned further to the right indicate a greater peak temperature and dots positioned higher up indicate a greater tipping risk.
The plot on the right shows the percentage change in tipping risk for every additional 0.1C of overshoot, for different peak global temperatures, for the Amazon (cross), AMOC (plus), West Antarctic ice sheet (black dot) Greenland Ice sheet (square) and overall (yellow dot).

The authors find that AMOC collapse and Amazon dieback would likely be the first components to tip. This could be in the next 15-300 years and 50-200 years, respectively, depending on the scenario, they find.
Meanwhile, the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets have tipping timescales of 1,000-15,000 years and 500-13,000 years, respectively.
However, they note that as temperatures increase, the relative risk of each element tipping changes. The graph shows that while AMOC is the main driver of tipping risk at lower temperatures, the Amazon becomes the main driver once global temperatures exceed 2C.
Finally, they find that as global temperatures rise, the risk of tipping accelerates. Overall, tipping risk increases by 1-1.5% per 0.1C increase in overshoot temperature, for temperatures below 2C, according to the study. However, above 2.5C, tipping risk increases to 3% per 0.1C increase overshoot.
McKay notes that there are some limitations in the study. For example, he notes that the paper “has to rely on tipping threshold and timescale estimates with often wide ranges and sometimes low confidence, while tipping interaction estimates are based on dated expert judgement”.
However, he adds:
“This work makes it clear that every fraction of warming increases the chance of tipping points, even if global temperature subsequently falls, and underlines the need for urgent emission cuts now that do not assume substantial carbon dioxide removal later.”
The post ‘Every 0.1C’ of overshoot above 1.5C increases risk of crossing tipping points appeared first on Carbon Brief.
‘Every 0.1C’ of overshoot above 1.5C increases risk of crossing tipping points
Climate Change
World leaders invited to see Pacific climate destruction before COP31
The leaders and climate ministers of governments around the world will be invited to meetings on the Pacific islands of Fiji, Palau and Tuvalu in the months leading up to the COP31 climate summit in November.
Under a deal struck between Pacific nations, Fiji will host the official annual pre-COP meeting, at which climate ministers and negotiators discuss contentious issues with the COP Presidency to help make the climate summit smoother.
This pre-COP, expected to be held in early October, will include a “special leaders’ component” hosted in neighbouring Tuvalu – 2.5-hour flight north – according to a statement issued by the Australian COP31 President of Negotiations Chris Bowen on LinkedIn on Thursday.
Bowen said this “will bring a global focus to the most pressing challenges facing our region and support investment in solutions which are fit for purpose for our region.” Australia will provide operational and logistical support for the event, he said.
Like many Pacific island nations, Tuvalu, which is home to around 10,000 people, is threatened by rising sea levels, as salt water and waves damage homes, water supplies, farms and infrastructure.
Dozens of heads of state and government usually attend COP summits, but only a handful take part in pre-COP meetings. COP31 will be held in the Turkish city of Antalya in November, after an unusual compromise deal struck between Australia and Türkiye.
In addition, Pacific country Palau will host a climate event as part of the annual Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) – which convenes 18 Pacific nations – in August.
Palau’s President Surangel Whipps Jr told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that this meeting would be a “launching board” to build momentum for COP31 and would draw new commitments from other countries to help Pacific nations cut emissions and adapt to climate change.
“At the PIF our priorities are going to be 100 per cent renewables, the ocean-climate nexus and … accelerating investments that build resilience from climate change,” he told ABC.
The post World leaders invited to see Pacific climate destruction before COP31 appeared first on Climate Home News.
World leaders invited to see Pacific climate destruction before COP31
Climate Change
There is hope for Venezuela’s future – and it isn’t based on oil
Alejandro Álvarez Iragorry is a Venezuelan ecologist and coordinator of Clima 21, an environmental NGO. Cat Rainsford is a transition minerals investigator for Global Witness and former Venezuela analyst for a Latin American think tank.
In 1975, former Venezuelan oil minister Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo gave a now infamous warning.
“Oil will bring us ruin,” he declared. “It is the devil’s excrement. We are drowning in the devil’s excrement.”
At the time, his words seemed excessively gloomy to many Venezuelans. The country was in a period of rapid modernisation, fuelled by its booming oil economy. Caracas was a thriving cultural hotspot. Everything seemed good. But history proved Pérez right.
Over the following decades, Venezuela’s oil dependence came to seem like a curse. After the 1980s oil price crash, political turmoil paved the way for the election of populist Hugo Chávez, who built a socialist state on oil money, only for falling prices and corruption to drive it into ruin.
By 2025, poverty and growing repression under Chávez’s successor Nicolás Maduro had forced nearly 8 million Venezuelans to leave the country.
Venezuela is now at a crossroads. Since the US abducted Maduro on January 3 and seized control of the country’s oil revenues in a nakedly imperial act, all attention has been on getting the country’s dilapidated oil infrastructure pumping again.
But Venezuelans deserve more than plunder and fighting over a planet-wrecking resource that has fostered chronic instability and dispossession. Right now, 80% of Venezuelans live below the poverty line. Venezuelans are desperate for jobs, income and change.
Real change, though, won’t come through more oil dependency or profiteering by foreign elites. Instead, it is renewable energy that offers a pathway forward, towards sovereignty, stability and peace.
Guri Dam and Venezuela’s hydropower decline
Venezuela boasts some of the strongest potential for renewable energy generation in the region. Two-thirds of the country’s own electricity comes from hydropower, mostly from the massive Guri Dam in the southern state of Bolívar. This is one of the largest dams in Latin America with a capacity of over 10 gigawatts, even providing power to parts of Colombia and Brazil.
Guri has become another symbol of Venezuela’s mismanagement. Lack of diversification caused over-reliance on Guri for domestic power, making the system vulnerable to droughts. Poor maintenance reduced Guri’s capacity and planned supporting projects such as the Tocoma Dam were bled dry by corruption. The country was left plagued by blackouts and increasingly turned to dirty thermoelectric plants and petrol generators for power.
Today, industry analysis suggests that Venezuela is producing at about 30% of its hydropower capacity. Rehabilitating this neglected infrastructure could re-establish clean power as the backbone of domestic industry, while the country’s abundant river system offers numerous opportunities for smaller, sustainable hydro projects that promote rural electrification.


Venezuela also has huge, untapped promise in wind power that could provide vital diversification from hydropower. The coastal states of Zulia and Falcón boast wind speeds in the ideal range for electricity generation, with potential to add up to 12 gigawatts to the grid. Yet planned projects in both states have stalled, leaving abandoned turbines rusting in fields and millions of dollars unaccounted for.
Solar power is more neglected. One announced solar plant on the island of Los Roques remains non-functional a decade later, and a Chávez-era programme to supply solar panels to rural households ground to a halt when oil prices fell. Yet nearly a fifth of the country receives levels of solar radiation that rival leading regions such as northern Chile.
Developing Venezuela’s renewables potential would be a massive undertaking. Investment would be needed, local concerns around a just and equitable transition would have to be navigated and infrastructure development carefully managed.
Rebuilding Venezuela with a climate-driven energy transition
A shift in political vision would be needed to ensure that Venezuela’s renewable energy was not used to simply free up more oil for export, as in the past, but to power a diversified domestic economy free from oil-driven cycles of boom and bust.
Ultimately, these decisions must be taken by democratically elected leaders. But to date, no timeline for elections has been set, and Venezuela’s future hangs in the balance. Supporting the country to make this shift is in all of our interests.
What’s clear is that Venezuela’s energy future should not lie in oil. Fossil fuel majors have not leapt to commit the estimated $100 billion needed to revitalise the sector, with ExxonMobil declaring Venezuela “uninvestable”. The issues are not only political. Venezuela’s heavy, sour crude is expensive to refine, making it dubious whether many projects would reach break-even margins.
Behind it all looms the spectre of climate change. The world must urgently move away from fossil fuels. Beyond environmental concerns, it’s simply good economics.


Recent analysis by the International Renewable Energy Agency finds that 91% of new renewable energy projects are now cheaper than their fossil fuel alternatives. China, the world’s leading oil buyer, is among the most rapid adopters.
Tethering Venezuela’s future to an outdated commodity leaves the country in a lose-lose situation. Either oil demand drops and Venezuela is left with nothing. Or climate change runs rampant, devastating vulnerable communities with coastal loss, flooding, fires and heatwaves. Meanwhile, Venezuela remains locked in the same destructive economic swings that once led to dictatorship and mass emigration. There is another way.
Venezuelans rightfully demand a political transition, with their own chosen leaders. But to ensure this transition is lasting and stable, Venezuela needs more – it needs an energy transition.
The post There is hope for Venezuela’s future – and it isn’t based on oil appeared first on Climate Home News.
There is hope for Venezuela’s future – and it isn’t based on oil
Climate Change
UN’s new carbon market delivers first credits through Myanmar cookstove project
A cleaner cooking initiative in Myanmar is set to generate the first-ever batch of carbon credits under the new UN carbon market, more than a decade after the mechanism was first envisioned in the Paris Agreement.
The Article 6.4 Supervisory Body has approved the issuance of 60,000 credits, which correspond to tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent reduced by distributing more efficient cookstoves that need less firewood and, therefore, ease pressure on carbon-storing forests, the project developers say. The approval of the credit issuance will become effective after a 28‑day appeal and grievance period.
The programme started in 2019 under the previous UN-run carbon offsetting scheme – the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) – and is being implemented by a South Korean NGO with investment from private South Korean firms.
The credits are expected to be used primarily by major South Korean polluters to meet obligations under the country’s emissions trading system – a move that will also enable the government to count those units toward emissions reduction targets in its nationally determined contribution (NDC), the UN climate body told Climate Home News.
Myanmar will use the remaining credits to achieve in part the goals of its national climate plan.
Making ‘a big difference’
The approval of the credits issuance represents a major milestone for the UN carbon market established under article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement. By generating carbon credits that both governments and private firms can use, the mechanism aims to accelerate global climate action and channel additional finance to developing nations.
UNFCCC chief Simon Stiell said the approval of the first credits from a clean cooking project shows “how this mechanism can support solutions that make a big difference in people’s daily lives, as well as channeling finance to where it delivers real-life benefits on the ground”.
“Over two billion people globally are without access to clean cooking, which kills millions every year. Clean cooking protects health, saves forests, cuts emissions and helps empower women and girls, who are typically hardest hit by household air pollution,” he added in a statement.
Concerns over clean cookstove credits
Carbon markets are seen as an important channel to raise money to help low-income communities in developing countries switch to less polluting cooking methods. Proceeds from the sale of carbon credits made up 35% of the revenue generated by for-profit clean cooking companies in 2023, according to a report by the Clean Cooking Initiative.
But many cookstove offsetting projects have faced significant criticism from researchers and campaigners who argue that climate benefits are often exaggerated and weak monitoring can undermine claims of real emission reductions. Their main criticism is that the rules allow project developers to overestimate the impact of fuel collection on deforestation, while relying on surveys to track stove usage that are prone to bias and can further inflate reported impacts.
As Louisiana bets big on ‘blue ammonia’, communities brace for air pollution
The project in Myanmar follows a contested methodology developed under the Kyoto Protocol that was rejected last year by The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM), a watchdog that issues quality labels to carbon credit types, because it is “insufficiently rigorous”.
An analysis conducted last year by Brussels-based NGO Carbon Market Watch claimed that the project would generate 26 times more credits than it should, when comparing its calculations with values from peer-reviewed scientific literature.
‘Conservative’ values cut credit volume
But, after transitioning from the CDM to the new mechanism, the project applied updated values and “more conservative” assumptions to calculate emission reductions, according to the UNFCCC, which added that this resulted in 40% fewer credits being issued than would have been the case in the CDM.
“The result is consistent with environmental integrity requirements and ensures that each credited tonne genuinely represents a tonne reduced and contributes to the goals of the Paris Agreement,” said Mkhuthazi Steleki, the South African chair of article 6.4 Supervisory Body, which oversees the mechanism.
Over 1,500 projects originally developed under the CDM requested the transition to the new mechanism, including controversial schemes subsidising fossil gas-powered plants in China and India. But, so far, the transfer of only 165 of all those projects has been approved by their respective host nations, which have until the end of June to make a final decision.
The UN climate body said this means that “a wide variety of real-world climate projects are already in line to follow” in sectors such as renewable energy, waste management and agriculture. But the transfer of old programmes from the CDM has long been contested with critics arguing that weak and discredited rules allow projects to overestimate emission reductions.
Genuinely new projects unrelated to the CDM are expected to start operating under the Paris Agreement mechanism once the Supervisory Body approves the first custom-made methodologies.
The post UN’s new carbon market delivers first credits through Myanmar cookstove project appeared first on Climate Home News.
UN’s new carbon market delivers first credits through Myanmar cookstove project
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