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Compiled daily

How close are the top five?

For each of the five elements scientists watch most closely, the bar shows how far through its tipping range today's warming has reached.

Each bar is filled from 0% (warming hasn't entered the band yet) to 100% (warming has reached the upper end of the band). Crossed elements are marked separately.

Global temperature since 1996

NASA GISTEMP annual anomaly vs 1850–1900. Dashed lines = 1.5 °C and 2 °C policy thresholds. Gold dots = landmark tipping-point papers.

Warming dial — 0 to 4 °C

Current global temperature vs pre-industrial, with all 16 Armstrong McKay (2022) threshold bands overlaid.

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Cryosphere (ice and frozen ground)
Biosphere (forests and reefs)
Ocean circulation
Atmosphere (monsoons)
Crossed (per GTP 2025)

Each row is one tipping element, sorted by its low-end threshold. The coloured bar is its likely tipping range; the short dashed tick inside is the best-guess central temperature. The bold vertical line is today's global warming (+1.55 °C) — count the rows it intersects to see how many elements are already at risk. Orange and red dashed verticals mark the Paris 1.5 °C and 2 °C policy thresholds.

16 tipping elements — threshold gauges

Each gauge shows where today's warming sits against that element's low–high threshold band, then says what would actually tip. Green = below band, orange = inside, red = past high.

Likely tipping range (low–high temperature for this element)
Scientists' best-guess threshold within that range (dashed)
Today's warming — where we sit on this scale right now

Cards with an orange tint are the six elements scientists watch most closely — coral reefs, Greenland, West Antarctica, abrupt permafrost, the Atlantic overturning circulation, and the Amazon. They sit first because each is either tipping now or closest to its threshold.

Cascading tipping — how systems connect

Tipping one system raises the risk of tipping the next. The chain below traces the best-evidenced path: polar ice melt weakens AMOC, which reshapes tropical rainfall (Wunderling et al. 2024).

What drives this

Ocean heat →The climate system's main heat reservoir pushes ice, coral, and circulation risks.
Global warming →The master dial that moves elements from monitoring into warning bands.
Permafrost carbon →A slow feedback that can amplify future warming.

What this drives

Sea-level rise →Greenland and Antarctic thresholds commit coastlines to centuries of change.
AMOC stability →Circulation shifts can reshape rainfall, cold blobs, and regional climate.
Coral reefs →One of the first major systems to enter danger bands near today's warming.

How we know this

Temperature: NASA GISTEMP v4 downloaded daily; we add +0.36 °C to express vs 1850–1900 pre-industrial baseline.
Primary source (2025 update): Global Tipping Points Report 2025 (Lenton, Rockström et al., Univ. of Exeter, 13 October 2025) — declares warm-water coral reefs the first climate tipping point crossed.
Threshold table: Reference from Armstrong McKay et al. (2022, Science) — the methodological backbone. Updates from Armstrong McKay 2024 retrospective in Cambridge Prisms.
Observed lines: Pulled from sibling monitors (coral, sea ice, AMOC, ice mass, methane) where wired; unwired elements show IPCC AR6 reference text, not guesses.
Cascade evidence: Wunderling et al. (Earth System Dynamics, 2024) — the canonical cross-element interaction review. Boers et al. (Nature Geoscience, 2025) — observation-based destabilisation evidence for Greenland, AMOC, Amazon, and the South American monsoon.
Cadence: Tipping systems evolve over decades to millennia — this page refreshes daily but upstream feeds update far less often.
Uncertainty: "Tipping point" definitions differ across literature; we use Armstrong McKay's temperature-bracket framing and cite primary papers.
Primary data & reading: NASA GISTEMP · Global Tipping Points Report 2025 · Armstrong McKay 2022 · Boers 2025 · Wunderling 2024 · How this page is built

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