General Article Abrupt climate change

Topic Selected: Climate Change
This article is 10 years old. Click here to view the latest articles for this topic.

Recent climate change research has uncovered a disturbing feature of the Earth’s climate system: it is capable of sudden, violent shifts. This is a critically important realisation. Climate change will not necessarily be gradual, as assumed in most climate change projections, but may instead involve sudden jumps between very different states. This would present an enormous challenge to human societies and the global environment as a whole.

While no such violent shift has occurred over the du...

Would you like to see the rest of this article and all the other benefits that Issues Online can provide with?

Sign up now for a no obligation FREE TRIAL and view the entire collection