Credit: Hadi Zaher

As humans put increasingly large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the planet grows increasingly hotter. To fix this, the vast majority of the world’s governments have agreed to reduce or eliminate their CO2 outputs to prevent the global average temperature from increasing more than a few degrees. But according to new research, our own emissions might not be all we have to worry about.

The Earth is a very complex system, and changing one thing can have repercussions a continent away. In addition, small changes can have extreme impacts that are difficult to predict. A group of researchers has discovered that a number of regions on Earth’s surface could end up releasing greenhouse gases in the future, leading to a ‘hothouse’ Earth that’s several degrees warmer than the present day.

The research, published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, outlines a number of scenarios where a small amount of heating could lead […]