Nine regions of the world face massive, abrupt and potentially irreversible changes over the next century because of manmade global warming, researchers have said.

Scientists from 52 countries identified nine zones in which they assessed the world’s most dramatic climatic “tipping points” would be located and how long the decline would take. Each region was judged to require just a small change in conditions to have a huge and disproportionate impact on the environment.

The Arctic ice sheet was judged to be likely to vanish in only ten years once its tipping point was reached. The Amazon rainforest and the boreal forests of the northern hemisphere were assessed as likely to take 50 years to die back once rapid deterioration had begun.

It was thought that the decay of the Greenland and the West Antarctic ice sheets would each take 300 years to undergo serious decline. Sea levels would rise by up to 12 metres if both disappeared. The collapse of the Gulf Stream would take 100 years, as would an increase in the El Nino Southern Oscillation while the Indian summer monsoon would take only a year to collapse.

Professor Tim Lenton, of the University of East Anglia, who led the research, said: “A variety of tipping elements could reach their critical point within this century under human-induced climate change.”

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