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\n\tSurpassing the global temperature targets of the Paris climate agreement, even temporarily, could dramatically increase the risk of the world experiencing dangerous \"tipping points<\/a>,\" according to research published Friday.\n<\/p> \n\tThe Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defines<\/a> tipping points as \"critical thresholds in a system that, when exceeded,\ncan lead to a significant change in the state of the system, often with an\nunderstanding that the change is irreversible.\" \n\tPublished in the journal Nature Climate Change,<\/em> the new study<\/a> focuses on the potential shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), the Amazon rainforest shifting to savannah, and the collapse of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets.\n<\/p> \"Our model analysis reveals that temporary overshoots can increase tipping risks by up to 72%.\" Under the 2015 Paris deal, governments agreed to work toward keeping global temperature rise this century below 2\u00b0C, ultimately aiming for limiting it to 1.5\u00b0C. However, scientists continue to warn the countries' pledges and actions to cut planet-heating emissions are far from bold enough to reach those goals, and critics blasted<\/a> the COP27 summit in Egypt last month as \"another terrible failure\" given that the conference's final agreement did not call for rapidly phasing out all fossil fuels.<\/p> \"To effectively prevent all tipping risks, the global mean temperature increase would need to be limited to no more than 1\u00b0C\u2014we are currently already at about 1.2\u00b0C,\" noted<\/a> study co-author Jonathan Donges, co-lead of the FutureLab on Earth Resilience in the Anthropocene at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). \"The latest IPCC report is showing that we're most likely on a path to temporarily overshoot the 1.5\u00b0C temperature threshold.\"<\/p> The researchers examined various scenarios with peak temperatures from 2\u00b0C to 4\u00b0C. As lead author and PIK scientist Nico Wunderling explained, they found that \"the risk for some tipping events could increase very substantially under certain global warming overshoot scenarios.\" <\/p> \"Even if we would manage to limit global warming to 1.5\u00b0C after an overshoot of more than 2\u00b0C, this would not be enough as the risk of triggering one or more global tipping points would still be more than 50%,\" Wunderling said. \"With more warming in the long-term, the risks increase dramatically.\"<\/p> \"We found that the risk for the emergence of at least one tipping event increases with rising peak temperatures\u2014already at a peak temperature of 3\u00b0C, more than one-third of all simulations showed a tipping event even when overshoot durations were limited strongly,\" he added. \"At 4\u00b0C peak temperature, this risk extends to more than half of all simulations.\"<\/p> According to the study, \"Our model analysis reveals that temporary overshoots can increase tipping risks by up to 72% compared with non-overshoot scenarios, even when the long-term equilibrium temperature stabilizes within the Paris range.\"<\/p> Study co-author Ricarda Winkelmann, co-lead of the FutureLab on Earth Resilience in the Anthropocene at PIK, pointed out that \"especially the Greenland and the West Antarctic ice sheet are at risk of tipping even for small overshoots, underlining that they are among the most vulnerable tipping elements.\"<\/p> \"While it would take a long time for the ice loss to fully unfold, the temperature levels at which such changes are triggered could already be reached soon,\" she said. \"Our action in the coming years can thus decide the future trajectory of the ice sheets for centuries or even millennia to come.\" <\/p>\n