The collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet and the abrupt thawing of permafrost are among six tipping points in Earth’s climate that are now likely to be reached if global warming exceeds 1.5°C, the goal set by the Paris Agreement in 2015.

In 2008, researchers identified : processes such as ice melt that would become irreversible and self-perpetuating and that could speed up climate change. Now at the University of Exeter, UK, and his colleagues have completed the first major assessment of those possible shifts, and how much global warming it might take to trigger them.

While it was previously thought that most tipping points would occur when the global average temperature rose around 3°C above that in pre-industrial times, the new study found that some could occur at much lower temperatures.

The number of tipping points has also expanded to 16. Some new ones have been added – including changes in the Labrador Sea, part of the North Atlantic, which could cool Europe – while others have been dropped, such as loss of Arctic sea ice, as it is no longer seen as having a tipping point dynamic.

The world has already warmed by 1.1°C since the industrial revolution, at which point there is a low possibility of triggering some tipping points. However, between 1.5°C and 2°C, six of them become likely, including the collapse of the Greenland ice sheet and the die-off of coral reefs. A further four become possible, from abrupt loss of ice in the Barents Sea to the collapse of the vital Atlantic Ocean conveyor belt, a large system of currents that carries warmer, tropical water north, disruption of which could lead to more extreme heat and cold on both sides of the ocean.

“This provides really strong scientific support for rapid cutting of emissions in line with the 1.5°C goal,” says Armstrong McKay. “But the closer you get to 2°C, the more likely some of these tipping points get. Where we’re heading at the moment is something like 2.6°C — that’s definitely going to hit lots of tipping points.”

Last year’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report highlighted the risk of tipping points, but didn’t outline the temperatures at which each might be triggered. Armstrong McKay and colleagues trawled scientific literature and asked experts to provide estimates of how much warming might be required to set off the tipping points.

The reason the temperature thresholds have come down since 2008 is a subsequent explosion of research. Better modelling has been key, particularly of ice sheets. Bubbles of air thousands of years old captured in ice cores and other palaeoclimate records have helped us learn how ice sheets responded in the past when the world was 1.5°C hotter. Recent years have also provided observations showing early signs of destabilisation of the Greenland ice sheet and weakening of the Atlantic conveyer belt.

“The science of climate change has advanced hugely in the intervening 14 years and [the study authors] now provide a reassessment based on the latest science. And it is not good news,” says at University College London, who wasn’t involved in the research.

The tipping points can now be expected much sooner than thought. Many are considered likely or possible at around 1.5°C of warming, which the IPCC has said could happen in the 2030s. “It’s all a lot closer than we were feeling like they were before,” says Armstrong McKay.

One crumb of comfort is that the most imminent tipping points, such as the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet — which some scientists believe has already begun — won’t have a huge feedback effect that leads to runaway warming. Armstrong McKay says: “Some people will look at this and go, ‘well, if we’re going to hit tipping points at 1.5°C, then it’s game over’. But we’re saying they would lock in some really unpleasant impacts for a very long time, but they don’t cause runaway global warming.”

Nonetheless, he says it is urgent that societies act to stop tipping points being reached, to prevent impacts such as huge sea level rise, which could result from losing Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets over millennia or centuries. “We’d be locking in future generations to an extremely different planet with 10 metres or more sea level rise. It would completely reshape the coasts of every continent,” says Armstrong McKay.

As his team notes, most of the systems they assess “contribute significantly to human welfare”. Maslin says events such as an abrupt thawing of permafrost would “be devastating for human society and should be avoided at all costs”.

One thing the new research doesn’t consider is how the tipping points might interact with each other. Some could exacerbate others, while some will have a cooling effect offsetting the warming effect of others.

Armstrong McKay says the tipping point that concerns him most is the Amazon transforming from rainforest into savannah, which would release more carbon dioxide. Models predict that this isn’t expected unless warming exceeds 2°C, but that doesn’t account for the deforestation there.

Ice sheet collapse is more of a far-future issue that can seem abstract, while the Amazon’s collapse could unfold in our lifetimes – and there are signs that the transition has already begun in some areas. “That’s the one that you would actually see happening in real time,” he says.

The new UK prime minister, Liz Truss, has appointed Jacob Rees-Mogg to head the department of Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS), sparking concern among environmental campaigners over his views on climate change.

With the ongoing energy crisis, Rees-Mogg will play a key role in the new government and, based on his past statements, the appointment appears to be good news for companies extracting fossil fuels and bad for some firms wanting to accelerate the roll-out of renewable energy.

Earlier this year calls for a windfall tax on oil and gas companies “so they get every last drop out of the North Sea”. Fracking, which is currently under a moratorium imposed in 2019, “seems quite an interesting opportunity”, he said.

But gas prices are the overwhelming driver for . “His energy policy is seemingly based entirely on the primary cause of this economic crisis: fossil fuel prices. Unless that changes very rapidly, the UK has no chance of escaping this situation anytime soon,” says Chris Venables at the Green Alliance think tank.

In a statement, Dave Timms of Friends of the Earth said: “Putting someone who recently suggested ‘every last drop’ of oil should be extracted from the North Sea in charge of energy policy is deeply worrying for anyone concerned about the deepening climate emergency, solving the cost-of-living crisis and keeping our fuel bills down for good.”

Casting further back into Rees-Mogg’s comments on energy and climate change, , reveals a record of contrarian views.

“I would like my constituents to have cheap energy rather more than I would like them to have windmills,” . Wind power is . A year earlier, : “It is widely accepted that carbon dioxide emissions have risen but the effect on the climate remains much debated.” That comment came just days before a landmark report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change : “Human influence on the climate system is clear.”

Rees-Mogg faces a daunting in-tray, including emergency support for UK households to cope with energy bills – an announcement is expected on 8 September – plus , and whether to ease development of new onshore wind and solar farms. New polling, , found 77 per cent of people think the two technologies should be used to lower electricity bills.

One early card the business secretary could play is a scientific review of new evidence on shale gas produced by the British Geological Society, which but is still sitting on. That could be quickly published and used as justification to lift the fracking moratorium.

However, Venables says: “Approving new oil and gas licences in the North Sea, or once again wasting millions of taxpayer money on a doomed-from-the-start fracking mission, won’t bring down bills or improve UK energy security.” Gas prices are set internationally, and fracking is unlikely to yield any significant volumes any time soon: around a decade of past exploration and government support in the UK failed to produce any gas for homes and businesses.

Rees-Moggs’s apparent caveat-free enthusiasm for further North Sea oil and gas production also puts him potentially at odds with the government’s advisers, the Climate Change Committee. In February, the independent group proposed the UK government tighten tests to decide whether new projects are compatible with climate targets.

John Gummer, chair of the Climate Change Committee and a former Conservative party cabinet minister, says: “I’m sure he will look at the facts and will continue very much the attitudes and programmes of his predecessor [Kwasi Kwarteng, the new chancellor]. Mrs Thatcher would say this is about the facts, that’s why she she was so tough about climate change and that’s what the facts are — so we better get on with it.”

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UK retailers will be forced within the next three years to add water-efficiency labels to toilets, taps, showers and to dishwashers and other appliances in a bid to help people use less water.

The mandatory labels, which are in addition to existing “A to G” energy efficiency labels for appliances, won’t address the UK’s current drought and water supply crunch following the . However, they could help deliver a big chunk of the UK government’s goal of curbing water use per person from 145 litres a day on average now to 110 litres by 2050 to cope with climate change and a growing population.

Australia introduced a similar labelling scheme in 2005. Nathan Richardson at UK non-profit organisation says the Australian scheme looks likely to cut water consumption by 20 per cent over 25 years. “It takes time. It’s not an instant thing, because you need people to buy new products,” he says.

Nonetheless, Richardson says the new UK labels being consulted on from today are welcome. “It’s a no-brainer. This policy is going to be quite fundamental to helping people save water,” he says. The UK government didn’t say when the labels would be introduced, but they are understood to be slated for 2024 or 2025.

“Water labelling is a key tool,” said , chief executive of Ofwat, the regulator for the UK’s private water companies, in a statement. While , the mandated labels will be required at the point of sale for toilets, urinals, taps for kitchen sinks and bathroom basins, showers, dishwashers, washing machines and washer-dryers. A mock-up of the labels (pictured above) suggests they will be similar to existing energy labels.

The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs estimates that, over a decade, the new labels could save households £125 million on water bills and £147 million on energy bills because less water will need to be heated, for example for a shower. The government’s expectation is that the measure will save 1.2 billion litres of water a day.

Richardson says it is important that the labels are introduced along with stronger building regulations on water efficiency for new homes. Independent analysis by the Energy Saving Trust found that using labels alone would lead to a saving of 13 litres a day per person after 25 years — but .

The UK government has promised to publish a “road map” to more water efficient buildings before the year is out.

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Devastating floods that have killed more than 1000 people in Pakistan are a “climate catastrophe” requiring a strong international response, according to the secretary general of the United Nations, António Guterres.

“Pakistan is awash in suffering,” said Guterres in a . “The Pakistani people are facing a monsoon on steroids – the relentless impact of epochal levels of rain and flooding.” The UN today launched a flash appeal to raise funds to support those affected.

Eight weeks of torrential rain during a severe monsoon season have left a third of Pakistan underwater in the country’s worst flooding since 2010. In some areas, unprecedented water flows have been estimated by the Global Flood Awareness System, a European satellite monitoring scheme, with the most extreme destruction taking place in the south of the country.

Bed frames and helicopters have been used to rescue people during the floods, which have affected more than 33 million people. Government ministers the disaster will have an economic cost of more than $10 billion.

Pakistan’s climate minister Sherry Rehman said on Twitter that one small town, Padidan, had received . In , she said rescue helicopters were having trouble finding dry land in the south. Rehman called the event a “huge humanitarian disaster” and “quite apocalyptic”.

Pakistan has long been considered one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to the impacts of climate change, due to its geography and levels of poverty there. Earlier this year, the country, along with India, was hit by a prolonged and brutal heatwave. Jacobabad, one of the world’s hottest cities, reached a . A study has since found that climate change made the heatwave

In his address today, Guterres said it was outrageous that action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions was being put on the back burner. “Let’s stop sleepwalking towards the destruction of our planet by climate change. Today, it’s Pakistan. Tomorrow, it could be your country,” he said.

Rehman it was time for big emitters – a reference to countries including China, the US, India and members of the European Union – to review their climate policies. The human and economic cost of the Pakistan floods is likely to provide fresh impetus at UN climate talks on the issue of “loss and damage”, with lower-income countries calling for some form of reparations from large historical emitters for the impacts of climate change .

The subject is on the provisional agenda of the high-profile COP27 climate summit in Egypt this November, but it may yet get struck off. So far, richer nations have only agreed to further formal discussions on loss and damage.

The high number of deaths during the Pakistan floods suggests early warning systems are still failing to reach enough people, according to at the University of Reading, UK. “Questions need to be asked about why these floods are having a similar impact to those in 2010, when nearly 2000 people died,” she said in a statement.

While Pakistan is experiencing deadly floods, neighbouring China has been affected in recent weeks by a severe drought that has disrupted energy supplies and forced factories to close.