Past abrupt changes, tipping points and cascading impacts in the Earth system

• Published in: Nature Geoscience
• Main Authors: Brovkin, Victor, Brook, Edward, Williams, John W., Bathiany, Sebastian, Lenton, Timothy M., Barton, Michael, DeConto, Robert M., Donges, Jonathan F., Ganopolski, Andrey, McManus, Jerry, Praetorius, Summer, de Vernal, Anne, Abe Ouchi, Ayako, Cheng, Hai, Claussen, Martin, Crucifix, Michel, Gallopin, Gilberto, Iglesias, Virginia, Kaufman, Darrell S., Kleinen, Thomas, Lambert, Fabrice, van der Leeuw, Sander, Liddy, Hannah, Loutre, Marie France, McGee, David, Rehfeld, Kira, Rhodes, Rachael, Seddon, Alistair W. R., Trauth, Martin H., Vanderveken, Lilian, Yu, Zicheng
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: NATURE PORTFOLIO 2024
• Subjects: EARLY-WARNING SIGNALS; MILLENNIAL-SCALE VARIABILITY; DANSGAARD-OESCHGER EVENTS; PRAIRIE-FOREST ECOTONE; AFRICAN HUMID PERIOD; MELTWATER PULSE 1B; CLIMATE-CHANGE; VEGETATION INTERACTION; NORTH PACIFIC; SLOWING-DOWN; Dansgaard-Oeschger events
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10533/76147; https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00790-5; https://repositorio.uc.cl/handle/11534/80147

A synthesis of intervals of rapid climatic change evident in the geological record reveals some of the Earth system processes and tipping points that could lead to similar events in the future. The geological record shows that abrupt changes in the Earth system can occur on timescales short enough to challenge the capacity of human societies to adapt to environmental pressures. In many cases, abrupt changes arise from slow changes in one component of the Earth system that eventually pass a critical threshold, or tipping point, after which impacts cascade through coupled climate-ecological-social systems. The chance of detecting abrupt changes and tipping points increases with the length of observations. The geological record provides the only long-term information we have on the conditions and processes that can drive physical, ecological and social systems into new states or organizational structures that may be irreversible within human time frames. Here, we use well-documented abrupt changes of the past 30 kyr to illustrate how their impacts cascade through the Earth system. We review useful indicators of upcoming abrupt changes, or early warning signals, and provide a perspective on the contributions of palaeoclimate science to the understanding of abrupt changes in the Earth system. PAGES Max Planck Society ANID/MSI/Millennium Nucleus Paleoclimate US NSF NSF WARF German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) Leibniz Association project DominoES European Research Council Advanced Grant project ERA (Earth Resilience in the Anthropocene)