December 1, 2016 — Scientists have identified 19 “tipping points” that could radically change Arctic societies and environmental communities—and potentially the rest of the planet.

Those tipping points include things we’ve already heard a lot about, such as Arctic sea ice loss and the collapse of the Greenland ice sheet, as well as potential crises such as fishery collapses, a reduction of oxygen in the ocean, and the transformation of tundra ecosystems into woodlands.

“Some of these things have happened; some are more speculative,” said Garry Peterson of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, coeditor of the report, which was released last week by the center and the Stockholm Environment Institute. “Even if a bunch of these tipping points don’t happen, you’ve still got a lot to worry about.”

The biggest open question is how all these individual tipping points, also known as regime shifts, could magnify one another. “How regime shifts interact with one another is poorly understood,” Johan Rockström, executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, said in a statement. “If multiple regime shifts reinforce each other, the results could be potentially catastrophic. The variety of effects that we could see means that Arctic people and policies must prepare for surprise. We also expect that some of those changes will destabilize the regional and global climate, with potentially major impacts.”

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