Tipping point: refers to anything that changes suddenly.

In science, a tipping point is a point at which

an ecosystem can no longer cope with environmental change, and the ecosystem suddenly shifts
from one state to another.

What is Earth’s tipping point?

Climate tipping points occur when a change in a part of the climate system becomes self-
perpetuating beyond a warming threshold, leading to substantial Earth system impacts.

Tipping elements- systems of glaciers, forests, coral reefs. The collapse of these tipping elements
could trigger a form of global warming that feeds on itself. (These tipping elements can undergo
large and possibly irreversible changes in response to environmental perturbations once a certain
critical threshold in forcing is exceeded. With continuing global warming, it becomes more likely that
these critical thresholds of tipping elements might be exceeded, triggering severe consequences for
ecosystems, infrastructure, and human societies.)

Various factors like temperature changes, overgrazing, deforestation, agricultural runoff, and
overfishing cause the ecological tipping points to happen faster than previous events.

According to an article by the Washington Post, research published last year in Science suggests the
risk of a global tipping point that triggers accelerated climate warming starts to become significant
once average worldwide temperatures rise 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. That’s likely to happen
in the 2030s. The Earth’s surface temperature has already increased by nearly 1.2C and we are
perfectly on track to reach the much-feared 1.5C threshold between 2026 and 2042.

The last time carbon dioxide levels on our planet were as high as today was more than 4 million
years ago. Within the span of 60 years or so the annual rate of increase in atmospheric CO2 was
about 100 times faster than the previous natural increase. Today the level of global amount of
carbon dioxide is about 420 parts per million(ppm).

We still haven’t reached the global warming tipping point, but we are dangerously close to it..