4 of the 10 climate science papers most referred to in news and social media authored by PIK researchers

PIK scientists contributed to the following top 10 climate science papers:

Ranked No. 2 of the papers most referred to is an article on climate projections reported by ExxonMobil scientists between 1977 and 2003. These were accurate and skillful in predicting subsequent global warming and contradicted the company’s public claims, a study co-authored by PIK's Stefan Rahmstorf and published in the highly renowned research journal Science showed.

Ranked No.5 is paper on Planetary Boundaries: For the first time, an international team of scientists was able to provide a detailed outline of planetary resilience by mapping out all nine boundary processes that define a safe operating space for humanity. Six of nine planetary boundaries are being transgressed, while pressure in all those boundary processes is increasing, cutting-edge research published in the journal Science Advances showed. Among the authors are PIK's Wolfgang Lucht, Jonathan Donges, Werner von Bloh, Georg Feulner, Dieter Gerten, Stefan Petri, Stefan Rahmstorf, Sibyll Schaphoff and Kirsten Thonicke as well as PIK Director Johan Rockström.

The costs of climate change are often estimated in monetary terms, while this raises ethical issues. Ranked No. 8 was a paper published in Nature Sustainability by authors like PIK's Sina Loriani and Boris Sakschewski, who expressed these costs in terms of numbers of people left outside the "human climate niche".

No. 9 in the ranking is a paper on Safe and just Earth System Boundaries. Humans are taking colossal risks with the future of civilisation and everything that lives on Earth, the study published in the journal Nature argued. Developed by an international science commission engaging more than 40 researchers from across the globe, among them PIK's Sina Loriani, Boris Sakschewski, Ricarda Winkelmann and PIK Director Johan Rockström, the scientists deliver the first quantification of safe and just Earth system boundaries on a global and local level for several biophysical processes and systems that regulate the state of the Earth system.