Tipping risks from overshooting 1.5 °C can be minimised if warming is swiftly reversed
08/01/2024 - Current climate policies imply a high risk for tipping of critical Earth system elements, even if temperatures return to below 1.5 °C of global warming after a period of overshoot. A new study published in Nature Communications indicates that this risk can be minimised if the warming is swiftly reversed. That is why reducing emissions in the current decade is crucial for the stability of the Earth systems functions, researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and other institutes write. They analysed the tipping risks for four interconnected core climate tipping elements: the Greenland Ice Sheet, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), and the Amazon Rainforest.
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Overview article - Is the Atlantic Overturning Circulation Approaching a Tipping Point?
04/11/2024 - Studies show that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) has already weakened as a result of anthropogenic climate change and is possible moving towards a tipping point. This current has a significant influence on climate, particularly in Europe. Stefan Rahmstorf, head of the Earth System Analysis research department at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), outlines the current state of research in a new overview article in the scientific journal Oceanography.
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Amazon rainforest at the threshold: loss of forest worsens climate change
02/14/2024 - The Amazon rainforest could approach a tipping point, which could lead to a large-scale collapse with serious implications for the global climate system. A new Nature study by an international research team including scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact research (PIK) reveals that up to 47 percent of the Amazonian forest is threatened and identifies climatic and land-use thresholds that should not be breached to keep the Amazon resilient.
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500+ pages, 200+ researchers: Global Tipping Points Report delivers comprehensive assessment of tipping point risks and societal opportunities
12/06/2023 - Tipping points pose some of the biggest risks to our planet’s life-support systems and the stability of our societies. In an unprecedented effort by the scientific community, researchers have now published a comprehensive report on Earth system tipping points and their potential impacts and opportunities for societal change. More than 200 scientists from around the world contributed to the ‘Global Tipping Points Report’. The report with more than 500 pages provides an authoritative guide to the state of knowledge on tipping points, explores opportunities for accelerating much needed transformations, and outlines options for a new governance of tipping point risks and opportunities.
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Timely reversal of global warming could prevent Greenland ice sheet tipping
10/18/2023 - The Greenland ice sheet is likely to be more resistant to global warming than previously thought, finds a new study published in the scientific journal Nature. An international team of scientists shows that even if critical temperature thresholds are temporarily crossed by up to 6.5 degrees Celsius until 2100, a possible tipping of the ice sheet and therefore drastic sea level rise over hundreds of thousands of years could be prevented. To achieve this, measures to reduce greenhouse gases would have to be taken as quickly as possible following the critical rise in temperature, so that the temperature can be stabilized at no more than 1.5 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels in the long term.
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Stability inspection for West Antarctica: marine ice sheet not destabilized yet, but possibly on tipping path
09/07/2023 - Antarctica’s vast ice masses seem far away, yet they store enough water to raise global sea levels by several meters. A team of experts from European research institutes has now provided the first systematic stability inspection of the ice sheet’s current state. Their diagnosis: While they found no indication of irreversible, self-reinforcing retreat of the ice sheet in West Antarctica yet, global warming to date could already be enough to trigger the slow but certain loss of ice over the next hundreds to thousands of years.
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Past abrupt changes in North Atlantic Overturning have impacted the climate system across the globe
08/29/2023 - Abrupt climate changes have affected rainfall patterns worldwide in the past, especially in the tropical monsoon region, a new study shows. An international team of scientists used dripstones from globally distributed caves together with model simulations to analyse the global impacts of rapid Northern-Hemisphere temperature increases, the widely studied Dansgaard-Oeschger events, that repeatedly occurred during the last ice age. The comparison of stalagmite and model data shows in unprecedented detail how these abrupt changes and the associated modifications of the Atlantic overturning circulation, AMOC for short, have affected global atmospheric circulation.
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Amazon in the firetrap: Deforestation and warming lock rainforest in dry and damaged grassland state
07/12/2023 - Global warming and drastic deforestation could dry out the Amazon rainforest faster and enforce the risk of keeping it downright fire-trapped. A new study published in Nature Communications Earth and Environment shows: Fire can be a decisive factor for a potential tipping of the Amazon rainforest, as it is capable of locking large parts of the Amazon in a treeless state. While naturally not occurring in rainforests, fire can play an increasing role once the forest is damaged, thinned or completely lost, up to a status where fire is the dominating driver of the ecosystem.
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Greenland’s Ice Sheet might be close to first tipping point
04/05/2023 - The Greenland Ice Sheet is likely to be halfway towards a tipping point whose crossing would imply extensive further melting, a new study finds. While humanity has emitted ca. 500 gigatons of carbon so far, with about 1000 gigatons of carbon much of the massive ice sheet will melt irreversibly, a team of scientists shows.
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Advances, Applications, Perspectives: NDA23 Conference
03/20/2023 - Around 300 scientists from various fields of complex systems science gathered for three days at the Nonlinear Data Analysis and Modeling Conference (NDA) to exchange ideas and knowledge on the latest developments and applications in complex systems science. The conference was organized on the special occasion of the 70th birthday of Jürgen Kurths, former head and currently senior advisor of the Complexity Science research department at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research PIK.
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Amazon heat drives Tibet temperatures: climate tipping elements connected half around the globe
01/26/2023 - While the Amazon rainforest and the Tibetan Plateau sit on different sides of the globe, scientists now discovered that changes in the South American ecosystem can trigger changes in the vicinity of the Himalayas. Both are tipping elements, hence large-scale elements of the planetary machinery that are sensitive to global warming and may shift abruptly and often irreversibly from one state to another at specific thresholds. A new study applies the theory of complex networks to these elements and finds surprising – and worrying – long-distance linkages.
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Excellent research: Doctoral prize for Nico Wunderling
01/23/2023 - PIK researcher Nico Wunderling has been awarded by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation for his groundbreaking dissertation on tipping elements.
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3 out of 10 climate science papers most referred to in news and social media feature PIK authors
01/06/2023 - In a ranking of climate science papers most referred to in news and social media, no less than 3 out of the top 10 papers feature authors from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). The ranking is published by the renowned 'Carbon Brief' newsletter and is based on the papers' so-called Altmetric score. While this metric is certainly not perfect, it is a good indicator to help assess public perception of climate science publications.
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Overshooting climate targets could significantly increase risk for tipping cascades
12/22/2022 - Temporarily overshooting the climate targets of 1.5-2 degrees Celsius could increase the tipping risk of several Earth system elements by more than 70 percent compared to keeping global warming in line with the United Nations Paris Agreement range, a new risk analysis study by an international team of researchers shows. This tipping risk increases even if in the longer term the global temperature would stabilize within the Paris range. Avoiding an overshoot would hence limit the risks, the researchers conclude.
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Tipping Points in the Earth System: Potsdam Young Scientist Award for Nico Wunderling
11/25/2022 - Nico Wunderling was awarded the Young Scientist Prize of the state capital Potsdam for his research on tipping points in the Earth system. Mayor Mike Schubert awarded the post-doctoral researcher of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) the prize based on his scientifically and socially relevant work. Wunderling's work on "Nonlinear dynamics and interactions of tipping elements in the Earth system" addresses some of the particularly consequential impacts of human-induced global warming. His findings have been picked up by media around the world - including Guardian, Spiegel and Zeit. Nico Wunderling completed his PhD at the University of Potsdam and at PIK with a position in an international doctoral program and a doctoral fellowship from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation.
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Risk of passing multiple climate tipping points escalates above 1.5°C global warming
09/09/2022 - Multiple climate tipping points could be triggered if global temperature rises beyond 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, according to a major new analysis published in the journal Science. Even at current levels of global heating the world is already at risk of passing five dangerous climate tipping points, and risks increase with each tenth of a degree of further warming. An international research team synthesised evidence for tipping points, their temperature thresholds, timescales, and impacts from a comprehensive review of over 200 papers published since 2008, when climate tipping points were first rigorously defined.
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Less rain in the forest: Amazon even more vulnerable than previously thought
08/02/2022 - For every three trees dying from drought in the Amazon rainforest, a fourth tree – even though not directly affected – will die, too. In simplified terms, that’s what researchers have now found using network analysis to understand the complex workings of one of Earth’s most valuable and biodiverse carbon sinks. The regions most at risk of turning into savannah are located on the forest’s Southern fringes, where continuous clearing for pasture or soy has already been weakening the forest’s resilience for years.
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Considering catastrophe: high-impact, low-probability climate scenarios "dangerously underexplored"
08/02/22 - Researchers call for a new "Climate Endgame" agenda and say far too little work has gone into understanding the mechanisms by which rising temperatures might pose a "catastrophic" risk to society and humanity: For instance if temperature rises are worse than many predict or cause cascades of events we have yet to consider, or indeed both. The world needs to start preparing for the possibility of a "climate endgame", the authors argue in a perspective piece in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences PNAS. Assessing catastrophic risks is necessary in order to have a better chance of preventing them.
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Amazon rainforest is losing resilience: new evidence from satellite data analysis
03/07/2022 - The Amazon rainforest is likely losing resilience, data analysis from high-resolution satellite images suggests. Resilience loss in pristine parts of the rainforest is mainly due to stress from nearby human activity, such as logging and slash-and-burn. The influence of human-caused climate change is not clearly determinable so far, but will likely matter greatly in the future. For about three quarters of the forest, the ability to recover from perturbation has been decreasing since the early 2000s, which the scientists see as a warning sign. The new evidence is derived from advanced statistical analysis of satellite data of changes in vegetation biomass.
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Potsdam and Exeter agree 'tipping points' partnership
03/03/2022 - The University of Exeter and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) have signed an agreement to jointly investigate climate change tipping points.
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Tipping elements can destabilize each other, leading to climate domino effects
06/03/2021 - Under global warming, tipping elements in the Earth system can destabilize each other and eventually lead to climate domino effects. The ice sheets on Greenland and West Antarctica are potential starting points for tipping cascades, a novel network analysis reveals. The Atlantic overturning circulation would then act as a transmitter, and eventually elements like the Amazon rainforest would be impacted. The consequences for people would reach from sea-level rise to biosphere degradation. Interactions in the network can lower the critical temperature thresholds beyond which individual tipping elements begin destabilizing on the long-run, according to the study – the risk already increases significantly for warming of 1.5°C to 2°C, hence within the temperature range of the Paris Agreement.
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Parts of Greenland may be on the verge of tipping: new early-warning signals detected
05/18/2021 - Scientists have detected new early-warning signals indicating that the central-western part of the Greenland Ice Sheet may undergo a critical transition relatively soon. Because of rising temperatures, a new study by researchers from Germany and Norway shows, the destabilization of the ice sheet has begun and the process of melting may escalate already at limited warming levels. A tipping of the ice sheet would substantially increase long-term global sea level rise.
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PIK at the Chaos Communication Congress rC3
12/23/2020 - This year everything is different. The legendary Chaos Communication Congress is taking place remotely this year due to Corona - but experts from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research will contribute. The major event of Europe's largest hacker association Chaos Computer Club (CCC) traditionally attracts thousands of people to the exhibition halls in Leipzig over the four days between Christmas and New Year, but this year those interested can attend the Remote Chaos Experience (rC3) from home.
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Ice loss due to warming leads to warming due to ice loss: a vicious circle
10/27/2020 - The loss of huge ice masses can contribute to the warming that is causing this loss and further risks. A new study now quantifies this feedback by exploring long-term if-then-scenarios. If the Arctic summer sea-ice were to melt completely, a scenario that is likely to become reality at least temporarily within this century with ongoing greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels, this could eventually add roughly 0.2°C to global warming. This is, however, not in addition to IPCC projections of future warming since these already take the relevant mechanisms into account. Still, the scientists could now separate the effects of the ice loss from other effects and quantify it. The 0.2°C are substantial, given that global mean temperature is currently about one degree higher than in pre-industrial times, and governments worldwide agreed to stop the increase well below two degrees.
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Niklas Boers awarded with EGU Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award
10/26/2020 - One of 2021’s Outstanding Early Career Scientist Awards goes to PIK researcher Niklas Boers. Awarded by the European Geosciences Union (EGU), the prize recognizes Boers’ important contributions in the fields covered by the Nonlinear Processes in Geosciences (NP) Division, which is focused on a series of nonlinear paradigms including deterministic chaos, tipping points, predictability and its limits, as well as extreme events.
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Larger part of Amazon rainforest at risk of tipping
10/05/2020 A larger part of the Amazon rainforest than previously thought is at risk of crossing a tipping point where it could become a savanna-type ecosystem, according to a new study. The research, based on computer models and data analysis, is published by a team of scientists including Johan Rockström, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, in the journal Nature Communications. Rainforests are very sensitive to changes that affect rainfall for extended periods. If rainfall drops below a certain threshold, areas may shift into a savanna state.
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Identifiying crises through network connections: Nature Physics publication
27/02/2020 - From a Wuhan market to Europe and the US: A chain of infection enabled the spread of coronavirus. Trade and travel played the deciding role. Events that have been locally confined in the past are today damaging the global economy. When local networks become internationally connected, scientists call this percolation. An international team of researchers now developed a mathematical approach to better predict when percolation arises and disappears. Their findings have been published in the highly renowned journal Nature Physics this month.
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The Antarctica Factor: model uncertainties reveal upcoming sea level risk
Sea level rise due to ice loss in Antarctica could become a major risk for coastal protection even in the near term, scientists say. Within this century already, due to Antarctica alone global sea level might rise up to three times as much as it did in the last century. This is a finding of an exceptionally comprehensive comparison of state-of-the-art computer models from around the world.
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2°C ocean warming has been enough to destabilize Antarctica in the past
12/02/2020 - A melting of the Antarctic ice sheets would have far-reaching consequences for sea-level rise and coastal regions around the world. Based on new data from the Antarctic ice, an international team of scientists now reveals how the ice sheet reacted to rising temperatures in the past. Published in the US Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, their study using data from a blue ice field shows for the first time that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet already proved to be quite unstable during the last warm period 120,000 years ago. The Eemian warm period was the last phase of climate history with global temperatures similar to those that the world is heading towards due to manmade global warming in the coming decades.
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Tipping mechanisms could spark profound societal change towards climate stabilization: new study
21/01/2020 - Limiting global warming to well below 2°C requires a decarbonized world by 2050 at the latest and a corresponding global transformation of the energy and land use systems of societies across the world. To achieve this goal of net-zero carbon by 2050 emissions need to be cut by half every decade from now on. An interdisciplinary team of researchers now explored tipping mechanisms that have the potential to spark rapid yet constructive societal changes towards climate stabilization and overall sustainability. These tipping elements and mechanisms could bring about a transition that is fast enough for meeting the targets of the Paris climate agreement. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) the scientists identify six socio-economic tipping elements and related interventions that could bring such a transition to a deep and rapid global decarbonization on its way.
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