Runaway climate change describes a scenario in which the climate system passes a threshold or tipping point, after which internal positive feedback effects cause the climate to continue changing, even absent further external forcings. The runaway climate change continues until it is overpowered by negative feedback effects which cause the climate system to restabilise at a new state.
The phrase "runaway climate change" is used to describe a theory in which positive feedbacks result in rapid climate change. It is used in the popular media and by environmentalists with reference to concerns about rapid global warming. Some astronomers use the similar expression runaway greenhouse effect to describe a situation where the climate deviates catastrophically and permanently from the original state - as happened on Venus. It is rarely used in relation to climate change events in climatological literature.
Read more about Runaway Climate Change: Related Terms, Feedbacks, Examples, Current Risk, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words runaway, climate and/or change:
“The reality is that zero defects in products plus zero pollution plus zero risk on the job is equivalent to maximum growth of government plus zero economic growth plus runaway inflation.”
—Dixie Lee Ray (b. 1924)
“Culture is the name for what people are interested in, their thoughts, their models, the books they read and the speeches they hear, their table-talk, gossip, controversies, historical sense and scientific training, the values they appreciate, the quality of life they admire. All communities have a culture. It is the climate of their civilization.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“One of the reforms to be carried out during the incoming administration is a change in our monetary and banking laws, so as to secure greater elasticity in the forms of currency available for trade and to prevent the limitations of law from operating to increase the embarrassment of a financial panic.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)