Early warning signals of tipping points in periodically forced systems

Williamson, Mark S.; Bathiany, Sebastian; Lenton, Timothy M.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-7-313-2016

Articles | Volume 7, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-7-313-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-7-313-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 7, issue 2

Research article

| Highlight paper

|

13 Apr 2016

Research article | Highlight paper |

| 13 Apr 2016

Early warning signals of tipping points in periodically forced systems

Mark S. Williamson, Sebastian Bathiany, and Timothy M. Lenton

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Final revised paper (published on 13 Apr 2016)
Preprint (discussion started on 06 Nov 2015)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC C926: 'Review', Christian Kuehn, 06 Dec 2015
- AC C1162: 'Reply to C Kuehn', mark williamson, 04 Feb 2016
RC C1000: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #2, 24 Dec 2015
- AC C1176: 'Reply to referee #2', mark williamson, 04 Feb 2016

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by mark williamson on behalf of the Authors (04 Feb 2016) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (18 Feb 2016) by James Annan

RR by Christian Kuehn (19 Feb 2016)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (14 Mar 2016)

ED: Publish as is (26 Mar 2016) by James Annan

AR by mark williamson on behalf of the Authors (01 Apr 2016)

Short summary

We find early warnings of abrupt changes in complex dynamical systems such as the climate where the usual early warning indicators do not work. In particular, these are systems that are periodically forced, for example by the annual cycle of solar insolation. We show these indicators are good theoretically in a general setting then apply them to a specific system, that of the Arctic sea ice, which has been conjectured to be close to such a tipping point. We do not find evidence of it.