Recent  

Relative stability of Earth’s climate system is considered an emergent property of coupled ecosystems. We apply a spatio-temporal scaling relation for root growth to couple bacterial/fungal/vegetational response to climate crises triggered by land plant invasion and predict an absolute time scale to reach homeostasis. The predicted time is 33 % larger than required for the biosphere to emerge from associated Paleozoic ice ages. We propose a basis for understanding the biosphere and critical zone.

A convenient way of predicting drought is to calculate drought indicators with near-surface meteorology. We propose a simple way to utilize the satellite-derived vegetation information into a drought indicator. This simple approach only requires the minimum amount of ancillary data and is easy to implement and interpret. Adding vegetation dynamics effectively improves the spatial and temporal representations of soil-moisture drought, especially in the case of forests.

Land surface processes are crucial for the exchange of carbon, nitrogen and energy in the earth system. Using detailed meteorological and land-use data, we found that higher resolution improved not only the model representation of snow cover, but also plant productivity and water returned to the atmosphere. Only by combining high-resolution models with high-quality input data can we accurately represent complex spatially heterogeneous processes and improve our understanding of the earth system.

Heavy rainfall in East Africa between late 2019 and mid 2020 caused devastating floods and landslides and drove the levels of Lake Victoria to a record-breaking maximum in May 2020. In this study, we characterise the spatial extent and impacts of the floods in the Lake Victoria basin and investigate how human-induced climate change influenced the probability and intensity of the record-breaking lake levels and associated flooding, by applying a multi-model extreme event attribution methodology.

We qualitatively study the long-term stability of the Greenland Ice Sheet and AMOC as tipping elements in the Earth system, which is largely unknown given their interaction in a positive-negative feedback loop. Depending on the time scales of ice loss and the position of the AMOC’s state relative to its critical threshold, we find distinct dynamic regimes of cascading tipping. These suggest that respecting safe rates of environmental change is necessary to mitigate potential domino effects.

We used cGENIE, a climate model, to investigate the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) slowdown under a warming scenario. We apply a diagnostic that was used in a previous study (Levang and Schmitt, 2020) to separate the temperature from salinity contribution to this slowdown. We find that, in our model, the initial slowdown of the AMOC was driven by temperature and that salinity takes the lead for the termination of the circulation.

The climate impact of Arctic sea ice loss may depend on the region of sea ice loss and the methodology used to study this impact. This study uses two approaches across seven climate models to investigate the winter atmospheric circulation response to regional sea ice loss. Our findings indicate a consistent atmospheric circulation response to pan-Arctic sea ice loss in most models and across both approaches. In contrast, more uncertainty emerges in the responses linked to regional sea ice loss.

In this paper, we identify potential negative social tipping points linked to Earth system destabilisation and draw on related research to understand the drivers and likelihood of these negative social tipping dynamics, their potential effects on human societies and the Earth system, and the potential for cascading interactions and contribution to systemic risks.

Transitioning to a net-zero economy necessitates significant changes in the financial system. By promoting collective behavior, aligning expectations, using public finance, reducing capital costs and encouraging low-carbon investments, the financial system can play a crucial role in re-orienting economies onto a net-zero course. These mechanisms underscore the potential for positive tipping points in sustainable finance and stress the importance of policy interventions to capitalize on them.

We investigated the role of knowledge of climate tipping points on public climate risk perceptions in Norway. We did this by conducting a national survey of a representative sample of the population. We found a low level of public knowledge of climate tipping points amongst our participants and that exposure to knowledge of climate tipping points did affect climate risk perceptions to a limited degree.

Here we demonstrate that ocean acidification is predicted to cause profound shifts in many marine ecosystems by impairing the ability of calcareous taxa to grow, and by influencing the photosynthesis of many others. At naturally elevated CO₂ sites, species shift away from calcifying taxa and towards non-calcareous species. Ocean acidification will most likely cause ecological change in the near future in most benthic marine ecosystems, with some taxa predicted to be impacted before 2050.

To study tipping cascades in the climate-conflict nexus, a bi-stable tipping model analyses transitions between conflict and cooperation. The Lake Chad case demonstrates climate change as a risk multiplier combined with poor governance, lowering resilience and barriers of communities to conflict. Adaptive and anticipative governance can prevent tipping to violent conflict and induce positive tipping towards cooperation, through civil conflict transformation and environmental peacebuilding.

Heat extremes have severe implications for human health and ecosystems. Heat extremes are mostly introduced by large-scale atmospheric circulation but can be modulated by vegetation: Vegetation with access to water uses solar energy to evaporate water into the atmosphere. Under dry conditions, water may not be available, suppressing evaporation and heating the atmosphere. Using climate projections, we show that regionally less water is available for vegetation, intensifying future heat extremes.

Fires are inflicting substantial ecological and socio-economic impacts on a global scale. For the real-time monitoring the risk of fire incidents at an early stage, we developed a fire intensity estimation method based on the well-monitored meteorological variables. We utilized feed-forward neural networks (FFNNs) which uses four meteorological variables to estimate a fire radiative power. The estimation accuracy of FFNNs revealed a marked increase compared to a previous method.

In the United Arab Emirates, water scarcity is reaching crisis point, and new methods for obtaining freshwater are urgently needed. Regional climate engineering with large artificial heat islands can enhance desert precipitation by increasing cloud development. Through model simulation, we show that heat islands of 20 × 20 km or larger can potentially produce enough annual rainfall to supply thousands of people. Thus, artificial heat islands should be made a high priority for further research.

Tropical rainforests risk transforming into savanna-like landscapes under future climate change. By investigating the root zone storage dynamics and analyzing hydroclimate data from 33 Earth System Models (ESMs), we project the risk of rainforest tipping. While certain risks may be inevitable, the majority of them can still be avoided by adopting less severe climate scenarios. It is crucial to limit global surface temperatures below the Paris Agreement to preserve these valuable ecosystems.

Tipping points are abrupt, rapid and sometimes irreversible changes and numerous approaches have been proposed to detect them in advance. Such approaches have been termed early-warning signals and represent a set of methods for identifying changes in the underlying behavior of a system across time or space that would be indicative of an approaching tipping point. Here we review the literature to find where, how, and which early-warnings have been used so far in real-world case studies.

Lakes worldwide is in change and under threat due to stressors such as overload of nutrients, increased input of organic carbon (“browning”), and climate change that may cause reduced water volume, salinization or even loss of waterbodies. Some of these changes are abrupt to an extent that can be characterized as tipping points for that particular system. Such changes may also cause increased release of greenhouse gases, and lakes are major players in the global climate in this context.

The fast growth in renewables has led to an economic tipping point for the adoption of renewables. This paper reviews how the cost tipping point in renewables can initiate other social tipping dynamics in the energy transition and it presents energy communities as a promising and fast-growing niche environment that can exploit and foster such tipping dynamics.

This paper reviews the state-of-the-art literature on interactions between tipping elements and discusses the risk of potential tipping cascades under ongoing global warming. Specifically, we review the current knowledge on interactions between pairs of tipping elements from models to observations, review archetypal examples of tipping cascades in the past, and outline how future developments could improve our understanding of climate tipping element interactions.

Urgent government action is now required to stop burning fossil fuels and stabilise the climate. Some scientists believe wealthy countries like the UK should be aiming for 'net zero carbon' by 2035 at the latest. But generating the political support for this is very challenging, and unlikely. It would require a popular movement that persuades enough people to prioritise a sustainable future. This research examines what it would take to 'tip' the UK into supporting radical climate action.