Wanted: An early-warning system for the end of the world

LONDON — The U.K., along with the rest of the world, may be on the brink of climate disaster.

If the worst happens, Whitehall is going to want a little bit of warning. 

So it is turning to scientific experts for help — and to a government-backed center for innovative research which also happens to be the legacy left by one of the most controversial figures in recent U.K. political history.

Scientists, assisted with millions in government funding, are about to embark on a mission to set up an “early warning system” for two so-called climate change ‘tipping points’: critical thresholds which, if breached, could plunge Britain and much of the world into a new reality of extreme weather and food insecurity.

The £81 million, multi-year scheme could deploy robots — dubbed WALL-E by some experts, in honor of Pixar’s robotic environmental hero — to monitor the impact of climate change in the Atlantic Ocean and the Arctic. The cash would also be used for supercomputer models of historic climate data.

It will all be led by the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), an independent body funded by the government and founded at the instigation of former Downing Street adviser Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s top aide until he was forced out of Downing Street in a swirl of ignominy in 2020.

ARIA has a remit to carry out research considered “too speculative, too hard, or too interdisciplinary to pursue elsewhere,” according to its own mission statement.

This includes work on prospective climate disasters. “It is incumbent on governments to think the unthinkable about what might happen,” said Laurie Laybourn, a researcher on climate and security at the Institute for Public Policy Research, a think tank. 

Climate monitor

Full details of the project will be announced in early 2025. 

But the aim is to monitor for changes in ocean circulation, temperature, and ice melt — driven by global warming — that could herald the collapse of the subpolar gyre (SPG.) 

That system of marine currents plays a critical role in maintaining northern Europe’s temperate climate. The project will also assess the linked risk of the Greenland ice sheet collapsing.

If there are signs the SPG is about to collapse, it would tell anyone paying attention that potentially existential changes to global conditions could be on on their way.

There is still significant scientific uncertainty, but some climate models anticipate that SPG collapse could happen as soon as 2040, resulting in colder, snowier winters and hotter summers in the U.K. and Europe, while potentially disrupting monsoon rains that are vital for food security in west Africa.

Ultimately, the goal is to create a permanent monitoring system that would alert policymakers if a tipping point was coming — buying governments and their populations vital time to prepare.

Sarah Bohndiek, one of the two scientists leading the climate change program at ARIA, warned the world was less prepared for climate tipping points than it had been for COVID-19.

“We saw the devastating societal and economic consequences [of the coronavirus], but also the speed with which we were able to respond and start delivering vaccination and delivering medical care,” Bohndiek told POLITICO.

“What would happen if we cross one of these climate tipping points? Well, actually, we don't have the same level of preparedness that we had for the pandemic.”

‘Catastrophic losses’

But warning signs over the SPG could be just the first stage of a still bigger tipping point: the breakdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) ocean current.

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change considers an abrupt collapse of the AMOC unlikely this century. But if it did occur, scientists predict catastrophic global consequences.

A recent IPPR report, written by Laybourn, the climate and security specialist, concluded that AMOC collapse would lead to such extreme cold that it “would effectively wipe out crop-growing in the U.K.” Its wider effects could cause “catastrophic losses to key crops globally,” the report said.

The paper criticized the government for failing to take account of climate tipping points when assessing national security risks and strategy.

Laybourn welcomed the idea of an early warning system. If a tipping point is approaching “we need as much warning as we can,” he said.

A government spokesperson said: “We continue to support fundamental research into climate risks, such as the work being conducted by both the Met Office and ARIA, as part of our record-breaking £20.4 billion backing for U.K. research and development.”

Gemma Bale, Bohndiek’s co-director on the early warning system project, described the research as “edge-of-the-possible stuff.”

“What we want to do over the five years of our program is to demonstrate that it could be possible,” said Bale. “Maybe we'll have something that looks like an early warning system at the end of five years. But maybe we'll have just changed the conversation so people are thinking: ‘This is what we need to do to actually build that system — and take these risks really seriously.’”

The challenges are technical as well as scientific, said Bohndiek. Robotic measuring instruments — the ones she likens to WALL-E — would have to operate for years in the depths of the ocean or out on the wastes of the Greenland ice sheet in the middle of an Arctic winter.  

Bohndiek and Bale, both founding directors at ARIA, have a background in medical physics, not climate science. They have asked top climate scientists already working on the problem for proposals to design the early warning system, as well as specialists in sensor technology. The agency also wants to work with social scientists who can then help convert the findings into policy recommendations.

Be prepared

The chosen “creators” — ARIA speak for researchers — will take the project forward early next year.

Tim Lenton, professor of climate change at the University of Exeter, is one of those who has submitted a proposal. An SPG collapse, if it happened, could unfold “quite quickly … in the space of a decade,” he said.

The costs of government investing in an early warning system now is “trivial compared to what you can save in terms of damages,” he added.

But if the unthinkable happened, and the SPG early-warning system was triggered, what could Whitehall actually do?

“You’d start with the basics,” said Lenton.

“So, snowier, harsher winters — let’s get some more salt. Let’s think more like British Columbia and how they cope with their winters. How do we make the rail network more resilient? How do we cope with more heating demand?”

In more extreme scenarios, ministers would have to ask, “What kind of agriculture we can credibly maintain and how do we support farmers to keep doing it?” Lenton said. “Forewarned is forearmed.”

In the more unlikely scenario of a full-scale AMOC collapse, those early warnings would demand even more drastic action from governments around the world.

Laybourn describes AMOC collapse — and its knock-on effects on agriculture and society — as a “planetary-scale cataclysm.”

“Hyperbole is a feature of our age — but these are appropriate words for this,” he said.