Sometimes in complex systems you have a variable that tracks the overall system change. As you get closer to a tipping point, that variable starts increasing its variance from the mean as a predictor of the regime shift.

So, hypothetically, you have CO2 tracking smoothly upwards with little difference from year to year, then right before a major system tipping point the annual CO2 increase starts wobbling and varying more and more as a signal that big change is about to happen.

When they say that global CO2 sinks might be weakening, perhaps this portends a major shift. Not faster and faster but a completely different game…

However, scientists are concerned about a third factor: the possibility that the planet’s carbon sinks are beginning to fail. About half of all CO2 emissions every year are taken back out of the atmosphere by being dissolved in the ocean or being sucked up by growing trees and plants. But the oceans are getting hotter and can therefore absorb less CO2 while on land hotter and drier conditions and more wildfires mean less plant growth.

Let that sink in. No pun intended. Even without triggering all the natural runaway climate change tipping points, human CO2 has been getting bid A LOT lower by nature. If that were to weaken or go away that’s a pretty big change.

https://bergensia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/be9bb3c91b926de2910976829a37fce2.jpg

This is what the CO2 curve looks like lately.

This is what it used to look like

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Mauna_Loa_CO2_monthly_mean_concentration.svg

The thing I’m pointing out is the red dots. Notice the red dots used to have a very clean very specific pattern years ago? (Spacing, height etc repeating each year.) Now that’s going away…