The Climate Crisis and How Feedback Loops Are Making It Worse

The warming Earth has set its own feedback loops that are repeating and intensifying the ‘climate crisis’ and its impacts.

By Maria, 7.4

When we burn fossil fuels to produce heat, electricity and more, they emit greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane. These gases trap the sun’s energy in Earth’s atmosphere as heat. As more and more greenhouse gases are released, more heat gets trapped and the planet warms up, disrupting the delicate climate systems that have made life on Earth possible.

But how these impacts bounce off each other is far more nuanced.

The wildfires or disappearing glaciers have unseen direct effects that result in more wildfires and disappearing glaciers. Think of it like dominos lined up in an infinite spiral – once one domino falls, it creates a reaction that pushes over another and then another right on down the line. Scientists call this process a “feedback loop” – and it’s got profound consequences for the planet.

WHAT IS A FEEDBACK LOOP?

Climate feedback loops are processes that can either increase or shrink the climate warming trends. Feedback loops make the impacts of key climate factors stronger or weaker, starting a cyclical chain reaction that repeats again and again and again, with each time, prompting even more destructive events, with an increasing rate.

There are two major groups of climate feedback loops: positive and negative.

Negative feedback is a process that decelerates temperature rise, whereas positive feedback loops enhance and amplify the effect.

In this example, you will see how feedback loops repeat the same process of the rising temperature, over and over.

1. As heat-trapping greenhouse gases are emitted, the atmosphere warms up.

2. This warmer air leads to more water evaporating from our oceans, rivers, lakes, and land, and entering the atmosphere.

3. Warmer air also holds more water vapor, and water vapor itself traps heat.

4. The extra water vapor in the already warmer air retains even more heat, amplifying the initial warming.

5. Even more warming leads to even more water evaporating, starting the cycle over again. And again. And again.

This ferocious cycle causing a cascade of effects that result in even more climate change. A problem we created taking on a life of its own… to potentially devastating effect.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), “The accelerating effects of positive feedback loops can be at risk to irreversible tipping points, which are changes to the climate that are not steady and predictable. Basically, tipping points are small changes within the climate system that can change a fairly stable system to a very different state. Similar to a wine glass tipping over, wine is spilt from the glass as the tipping event occurs and standing up the glass will not put the wine back; the state of a full wine glass becomes a new state of an empty glass.”

All of which is to say, while we aren’t quite to a tipping point just yet, many aspects of our climate system are already acting as part of dangerous positive feedback loops – creating compounding climate conditions and worsening impacts for people all over the world.”

Not only is the direct impact from human activities so cataclysmic to the planet, but these effects do not just end there. They go in loops and trigger more incidents like these along with them, like dominos stretching into different branches, whilst toppling all over each other causing much destruction.

Since the early 19th century when scientists have first noticed the side effects of climate change, when it still wasn’t a major problem, to now, when we also know that apart from the direct consequences, there also are things called ‘feedback loops’, which will loop the whole chain of global warming, it’s hard to imagine what we could discover next.

And scientists are still discovering new loops with new consequences. Yet, some of Earth’s own feedback loops can reverse the whole circle, as given in this example:

1. A warmer climate could cause more water to be held in the atmosphere.

2. This would lead to an increase in cloudiness and altering the amount of sunlight that reaches the surface of the Earth.

3. Less heat would get absorbed, which could slow the increased warming.

The urgent question remains: Are we approaching a point of no return, leading to an uninhabitable Earth, or can we still turn these loops around to halt the cycle and reduce the damage already done to our planet?