About
Tipping elements are components of the Earth system that could be pushed into qualitatively different states by small external perturbations, with profound environmental impacts possibly endangering the livelihoods of millions of people. There are indications for significant interlinkages between climate tipping elements and even the potential for tipping cascades or domino effects from the climate to the social sphere. We will assess these effects for a highly relevant tipping chain connecting climatic tipping elements like Antarctica and Greenland with potential social tipping processes in public opinion formation and climate policy changes, and their societal implications.
DominoES is a joint project by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences (GESIS) funded by the Leibniz Association (2017–2021).
News
- 15–18 August 2021: WE-Heraeus-Seminar on "Interacting Tipping Elements in the Natural and Social Components of the Earth System" (InTENSE) in Bad Belzig, Germany, hosted by DominoES.
- 11 January 2021: Panel on "Social tipping dynamics and climate change mitigation" (I. Stadelmann-Steffen, C. Eder, E.K. Smith) organized for the ECPR General Conference (31 August – 3 September 2021) in Innsbruck.
- 4 December 2020: DominoES Mini-Workshop on "Criticality in Social Tipping Processes" (online)
- 4 December 2020: EGU Blogs article by Julius Garbe on what hysteresis is and how it affects the Antarctic Ice Sheet
24 September 2020: Our paper "The hysteresis of the Antarctic Ice Sheet" was published today and made it to the front cover of Nature! Media coverage (selection): The Guardian, DER SPIEGEL, ScienceNews, t-online, Der Standard, NRC, La Vanguardia- 19 September 2020: DominoES research in the Guardian: The tipping points at the heart of the climate crisis
- 23 November 2019: DominoES work on tipping interactions mentioned in New Scientist article: We may be closer than we thought to Earth's dangerous tipping points.
- 17–19 June 2019: Second DominoES Workshop on "Social Tipping Elements relevant to stay within planetary boundaries", GESIS, Cologne.
- 22–25 August 2018: "A change in climate change attitudes (and behavior)" (Christina Eder, E. Keith Smith). Panel organized for the ECPR General Conference in Hamburg.
- 6 August 2018: Paper published in PNAS on "Trajectories of the Earth system in the Anthropocene" featuring potential cascading domino effects of Earth system tipping elements with broad media impact, e.g.: Tagesschau (from minute 1.30), Süddeutsche Zeitung, FAZ, RBB Aktuell, Spiegel Online, Tagesthemen (from minute 10), BBC, Economic Times (India).
- 4–6 June 2018: DominoES Workshop on "Social Tipping Elements Decisive for the Future of the Anthropocene", GESIS, Cologne.
- 24 January 2018: Ricarda Winkelmann and Ronja Reese just started blogging about their expedition to Antarctica investigating complex sea ice dynamics there on board of the German research vessel "Polarstern", operated by the Alfred-Wegener-Institute. Position of Polarstern can be tracked here.
Key idea
Reference: E.K. Smith, C. Eder, J.F. Donges, J. Heitzig, A. Katsandiou, M. Wiedermann, R. Winkelmann: Domino Effects in the Earth System - The role of wanted social tipping points, in review (2022), preprint DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/d8scb.
Publications
For a list of our publications (up to 2021), please click here. For a more up-to-date list of publications of PIK's FutureLab ERAlab including DominoES project outputs see: here.
Project team
| PIK | GESIS |
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| DominoES associates at PIK |
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Scientific advisory board
- J. Doyne Farmer (Oxford University, United Kingdom; economic modeling, complexity economics)
- Michael Ghil (University of California Los Angeles, USA; nonlinear dynamics)
- Timothy Lenton (Exeter University, United Kingdom; climate tipping elements)
- Isabelle Stadelmann-Steffen (Bern University, Switzerland; comparative politics, public opinion)
