Climate change : from the past tot the future by Thoams Stocker, University of Bern

Polar ice cores are a unique archive of past climate change. Both Antarctica and Greenland have transformed our understanding of how the Earth System works. An ongoing European project in Antarctica will provide unique information on the grand transition from the 40,000- to 100,000- year cyclicity of ice ages. Ice cores from Greenland unveiled the limited stability of the Earth System and gave rise to the study of “tipping points”. We discuss new model simulations that provide paleoceanographic fingerprints of these abrupt climate changes in the past. While tipping points are being used by some to illustrate the impending climate catastrophe, the concept of the global carbon budget is a much more robust and powerful science case for the fierce urgency of now. Any temperature limit has an "expiration date" and will become an unachievable ambition at some time in the near future.This end is nigh for the Paris limit of 1.5°C