ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2021
Risk of tipping the overturning circulation due to increasing rates of ice melt.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- Noise-induced tipping of Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation under climate mitigation scenarios.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Non-linear dynamical approaches for characterizing multi-sector climate impacts under irreducible uncertainty.NPJ climate and atmospheric science · 2025Review
- Atlantic Ocean thermal forcing of Central American rainfall over 140,000 years.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Re-organization of Pacific overturning circulation across the Miocene Climate Optimum.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions critical to limit climate tipping risks.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Multistability and intermediate tipping of the Atlantic Ocean circulation.Science advances · 2024Article
- Arctic freshwater impact on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation: status and prospects.Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2023Review
- Warning of a forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Article
- Time-scale synchronisation of oscillatory responses can lead to non-monotonous R-tipping.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Potential for perceived failure of stratospheric aerosol injection deployment.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Rate-induced collapse in evolutionary systems.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2022Article
- Phase tipping: how cyclic ecosystems respond to contemporary climate.Proceedings. Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2021Article
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2 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Central elements of the climate system are at risk for crossing critical thresholds (so-called tipping points) due to future greenhouse gas emissions, leading to an abrupt transition to a qualitatively different climate with potentially catastrophic consequences. Tipping points are often associated with bifurcations, where a previously stable system state loses stability when a system parameter is increased above a well-defined critical value. However, in some cases such transitions can occur even before a parameter threshold is crossed, given that the parameter change is fast enough. It is not known whether this is the case in high-dimensional, complex systems like a state-of-the-art climate model or the real climate system. Using a global ocean model subject to freshwater forcing, we show that a collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation can indeed be induced even by small-amplitude changes in the forcing, if the rate of change is fast enough. Identifying the location of critical thresholds in climate subsystems by slowly changing system parameters has been a core focus in assessing risks of abrupt climate change. This study suggests that such thresholds might not be relevant in practice, if parameter changes are not slow. Furthermore, we show that due to the chaotic dynamics of complex systems there is no well-defined critical rate of parameter change, which severely limits the predictability of the qualitative long-term behavior. The results show that the safe operating space of elements of the Earth system with respect to future emissions might be smaller than previously thought.
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