Dr. Nico Wunderling

Since April 2024, I am a shared Post-Doctoral Researcher between the Potsdam-Institute for Climate Impact Research and the Center for Critical Computational Studies. Here, my research focuses on interacting tipping elements in the Earth system, ranging from elements in the physical climate system to global ecosystems. I investigate how the stability of these particularly vulnerable components are affected by human activity and might endanger the overall stability of the Earth system. I am also interested in the effects of social sustainability transformations on the risk for dangerous climate tipping events.

For that purpose, I am working with models informed by complex dynamical systems and network science, as well as Earth system models of intermediate complexity (EMICs).

Positions and Roles

• 2024-ongoing: Co-lead of the chapter Tipping risks in the Earth System for the Global Tipping Points Report 2025
• 2024-ongoing: Co-editor for the Special Issue Earth Resilience in the Anthropocene for the EGU journal Earth System Dynamics
• 2024-ongoing: Joint Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Potsdam-Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in the Earth Resilience Science Unit and the Center for Critical Computational Studies (Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany)
  
• 2021-ongoing: Guest scientist as part of the ERSI initiative at the High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton University (Levin Lab)
• 2021-2024: Joint Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Potsdam-Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in the FutureLab on Earth Resilience in the Anthropocene and the Stockholm Resilience Centre (Stockholm University, Sweden), project: Earth Resilience in the Anthropocene, advisor: Prof. Dr. Johan Rockström
• 2017-2024: Member of the COPAN collaboration
• 2017 - 2021: Associated member in the project DominoES (Domino effects in the Earth system - Can Antarctica tip climate policy?)
  
• 2017 - 2021: PhD at PIK, the Humboldt University of Berlin and the University of Potsdam within the framework of the IRTG 1740 between Germany and Brazil
  

Education

• 2017 - 2021: PhD with Prof. Dr. Ricarda Winkelmann and Dr. Jonathan Donges in climate physics at the Potsdam-Institute for Climate Impact Research and the University of Potsdam and the Humboldt University of Berlin
  Topic: Nonlinear dynamics and interactions of tipping elements in the Earth System
  
• 2017: Masters in Physics at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
• 2014: Bachelors in Physics at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
  

Research interests

Topics:

• Tipping elements in the climate system and the biosphere
• Interactions between tipping elements
• Cascading transitions
• Climate feedbacks and Earth resilience
• Social/Social-ecological transformations towards sustainability

Methods:

• Complex systems and network science
• Nonlinear dynamical systems
• Ensemble methods
• Risk assessments
• Earth System Models of Intermediate Complexity

Key publications

1. Emission pathways to limit tipping risks:
   T. Möller*, A. (Ernest) Högner*, C.-F. Schleussner, S. Bien, N.H. Kitzmann, R.D. Lamboll, J. Rogelj, J.F. Donges, J. Rockström, N. Wunderling, Achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions critical to limit climate tipping risks, Nature Communications, 15, 6192, 2024. *These authors share the first authorship.
   Highlight paper in Nature Communications: Climate change impacts
2. Global warming overshoots of tipping points:
   N. Wunderling, R. Winkelmann, J. Rockström, S. Loriani, D.I. Armstrong McKay, P.D.L. Ritchie, B. Sakschewski, J.F. Donges, Global warming overshoots increase risk of climate tipping cascades in a network model, Nature Climate Change,  13, 75-82, 2023.
   Cover story of issue 13 in 2023.
   
3. Transgressing adaptive capacities in the Amazon rainforest:
   N. Wunderling, A. Staal, B. Sakschewski, M. Hirota, O.A. Tuinenburg, J.F. Donges, H.M.J. Barbosa*, R. Winkelmann*, Recurrent droughts increase risk of cascading tipping events by outpacing adaptive capacities in the Amazon rainforest, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119, 32, 2022. *These authors jointly supervised this study.
4. Software Package PyCascades to simulate interacting tipping elements in Earth, Nature and Society:
   N. Wunderling, J. Krönke, V. Wohlfarth, J. Kohler, J. Heitzig, A. Staal, S. Willner, R. Winkelmann, J.F. Donges, Modelling nonlinear dynamics of interacting tipping elements on complex networks: the PyCascades package, EPJST (European Physical Journal Special Topics), 2021.

Accepted/In Review/Submitted

• S. Loriani*, A. Bartsch*, E. Calamita, J.F. Donges, S. Hebden, M. Hirota, A. Landolfi, T. Nagler, B. Sakschewski, A. Staal, J. Verbesselt, R. Winkelmann, R. Wood, N. Wunderling, Do the GCOS Essential Climate Variables meet the needs?, accepted (Surveys in Geophysics), 2024. *These authors share the first authorship.
• C.W. Arnscheidt, SJ. Beard, T. Hobson, P. Ingram, L. Kemp, L. Mani, A. Marcoci, K. Mbeva, S.S. Ó hÉeigeartaigh, A. Sandberg, L.S. Sundaram, N. Wunderling, Systemic contributions to global catastrophic risk, in review, 2024.
• G. Dal Pra, C.Y.-C. Chan, T. Burkhanov, B. Sutherland, C.W. Arnscheidt, R. Cremades, C.Z. Cremer, V. Galaz, A. Gambhir, K. Heikkinen, M. Hinge, D. Hoyer, F.U. Jehn, P. Larcey, L. Kemp, P. Keys, E. Kiyaei, S. Lade, D. Manheim, D.A. McKay, D. Pandey, T. Pegram, V. Spaiser, K. Tómasdóttir, S. Werners, M. Workman, N. Wunderling, H. Yamashita, A Horizon Scan of Global Catastrophic Risks, in review, 2024.
• F.U. Jehn, L.G. Gajewski, J. Hedlund, C.W. Arnscheidt, L. Xia, N. Wunderling, D. Denkenberger, Food trade disruption after global catastrophes, in review, 2024.
• E. Enache, O. Kozak, N. Wunderling, J. Vollmer, Constraining safe and unsafe overshoots in saddle-node bifurcations, in review, 2024.
• N. Wunderling, S. Perri, J. Rockström, M. Oppenheimer, A. Porporato, J.F. Donges, S.A. Levin, W. Barfuss, Concerted efforts of politics, society and science mitigate climate tipping risks in a coupled human-Earth system model, in review, 2023.
• E.K. Smith*, N. Kitzmann*, M. Milkoreit*, R. Winkelmann*, A.-S. Crépin, C. Eder, N. Harring, J. Heitzig, A. Katsanidou, T.M. Lenton, F. Mauelshagen, K. Minor, I.M. Otto, A. Rezai, J. Scheffran, I. Stadelmann-Steffen, R. van der Ploeg, N. Wunderling, J.F. Donges*, Criticality and critical agency in societal tipping processes towards sustainability, in review, 2023. *These authors share the first authorship.

Full Publication List

Open Source Software

• PyCascades: Python framework for simulating tipping cascades on complex networks, including a step-by-step tutorial and a model description paper (newest development version here)

Reports

2023:

• N. Wunderling*, A. von der Heydt*, Y. Aksenov, S. Barker, R. Bastiaansen, V. Brovkin, M. Brunetti, V. Couplet, T. Kleinen, C.H. Lear, J. Lohmann, R.M. Roman-Cuesta, S. Sinet, D. Swingedouw, R. Winkelmann, P. Anand, J. Barichivich, S. Bathiany, M. Baudena, J.T. Bruun, C.M. Chiessi, H.K. Coxall, D. Docquier, J.F. Donges, S.K.J. Falkena, A.K. Klose, D. Obura, J. Rocha, S. Rynders, N.J. Steinert, M. Willeit (2023). Chapter 1.5: Climate tipping point interactions and cascades. In Lenton, T. M.; Armstrong McKay, D. I.; Loriani, S.; Abrams, J. F.; Lade, S. J.; Donges, J. F.; Milkoreit, M.; Powell, T.; Smith, S. R.; Zimm, C.; Buxton, J. E.; Bailey, E.; Laybourn, L.; Ghadiali, A. and Dyke, J. G. eds. The Global Tipping Points Report 2023, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK. * These authors share the first authorship.
• S. Hebden, L. Pereira, N.J. Steinert, N. Wunderling, K. Zickfeld (2023). Insight 1: Overshooting 1.5°C is fast becoming inevitable. Minimising the magnitude and duration of overshoot is essential. In 10 New Insights in Climate Science 2023/2024, Future Earth, The Earth League, WCRP, Stockholm.

Current funding

Former funding

• ERA-EU-Horizon2020 Project
• IRTG 1740 (International Research Training Group, PhD).
• German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des dt. Volkes, PhD-scholarship)

Lectures and courses

• WS 2024/2025: Co-Speaker in the lecture on "Global sustainability in the Anthropocene", Institute for environmental sciences and geography, University of Potsdam
• SS 2024: Co-Speaker in the lecture on "Earth System Science & Anthropocene" for the Master's program CLEWS, University of Potsdam
• WS 2023/2024: Co-Speaker in the lecture on "Global sustainability in the Anthropocene", Institute for environmental sciences and geography, University of Potsdam
• SS 2023: Co-Speaker in the lecture on "Earth System Science & Anthropocene" for the Master's program CLEWS, University of Potsdam
• WS 2022/2023: Co-Speaker in the lecture on "Global sustainability in the Anthropocene", Institute for environmental sciences and geography, University of Potsdam
• SS 2022: Co-Speaker in the lecture on "Earth System Science & Anthropocene" for the Master's program CLEWS, University of Potsdam
• WS 2021/2022: Co-Speaker in the lecture on "Global sustainability in the Anthropocene", Institute for environmental sciences and geography, University of Potsdam
• 2017-2019: Co-Tutor for the school on "The Earth as a complex dynamical system: from climate change to sustainability transformation", for the German Academic Scholarship Foundation
• WS 2018/2019: Tutor in the lecture series on "Introduction to Climate Physics", Department of Physics, Potsdam University with Prof. Dr. Ricarda Winkelmann

Supervised students

• Jonathan Rosser (PhD student, Cambridge University, 2023, ERA fellow and summer intern): Cryosphere tipping elements decisive for uncertainties in tipping risk assessments

• Nora Fahrenbach (Bachelor-Internship, The University of Edinburgh, 2021): Early warning signals of interacting tipping elements in the Amazon rainforest

• Valentin Wohlfarth (Master student, Humboldt University of Berlin, 2019/2020): Tipping cascades on the International Trade Network and the effects of meso- and macroscopic structure on tipping dynamics
• Hannah Meevenkamp (Bachelor student, University of Göttingen, 2020): Causal loop network analysis of Arctic permafrost feedbacks
• Jan Kohler (Bachelor student, University of Leipzig, 2019/2020): Dynamics of tipping on stochastic complex networks

• Jonathan Kroenke (Master student, University of Potsdam, 2018/2019): Dynamics of tipping cascades on complex networks
• Benedikt Stumpf (Master student, Free University Berlin, 2018/2019): The role of motifs in complex networks of tipping elements

• Radio Interview on "Wann kippt das Klima?" for detektor.fm (in german, November 2022)
• Panel discussion, "News from the near future - Handlungsoptionen für eine aus der Balance geratene Welt", Volkswagen Art4All, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (September 2022)
• Selected media echo on the article "Recurrent droughts increase risk of cascading tipping events by outpacing adaptive capacities in the Amazon rainforest" (September 2022): Mongabay, EOS AGU
• Entry in the journal Klima und Recht on "Warum jedes zehntel Grad zählt: Der Einfluss von Kippelementen" together with Frederik Wolf (in german, July 2022)

• Radio Interview on "Cascading Tipping Points" for Radio Ecoshock (November 2021)
• Interview on "Klimakrise - Kippelement und Kipppunkte" (in german) with Dora Stanić (Psychologists4 Future, November 2021)
• Podcast interview on "Tipping points des Klimas" (in german) as part of the ENPowerPodcast (August 2021)
• Entry in SIAM news on "A network approach to Cascading Tipping Points in the Amazon rainforest" together with Arie Staal (August 2021)
  
• Selected media echo on the article "Interacting tipping elements increase risk of climate domino effects under global warming" (June 2021): The Guardian, Spiegel, Berliner Tagesspiegel, Zeit, Forbes

• Selected media echo on the article "Global warming due to loss of large ice masses and Arctic summer sea ice" (October 2020): Berliner Tagesspiegel, NewScientist, Daily Mail, El País, Agence France-Presse
• Scilight (May 2020): Microscale rainforest interactions can result in vulnerabilities across large regions, Article and interview on the paper "How motifs condition critical thresholds for tipping cascades in complex networks: Linking micro- to macro-scales".

• Friedrich-Hirzebruch Promotionspreis 2023 of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des dt. Volkes): Video
• Potsdamer Nachwuchswissenschaftspreis 2022
• German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des dt. Volkes, PhD-scholarship, student scholarship), 2014-2017 and 2018-2021