Abrupt Climate Change

An abrupt climate change occurs when the climate system is forced to transition to a new state at a rate that is determined by the climate system itself, and which is more rapid than the rate of change of the external forcing. Past events include the end of the Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse, Younger Dryas, Dansgaard-Oeschger events, and possibly also the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum. The term is also used within the context of global warming to describe sudden climate change that is detectable over the time-scale of a human lifetime. One proposed reason for the observed abrupt climate change is that feedback loops within the climate system both enhance small perturbations and cause a variety of stable states.

Timescales of events described as 'abrupt' may vary dramatically. Changes recorded in the climate of Greenland at the end of the Younger Dryas, as measured by ice-cores, imply a sudden warming of +10°C within a timescale of a few years. Other abrupt changes are the +4 °C on Greenland 11,270 years ago or the abrupt +6 °C warming 22 000 years ago on Antarctica. By contrast, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum may have initiated anywhere between a few decades and several thousand years.