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With rising global temperatures Earth's tipping elements are becoming increasingly more vulnerable to crossing their critical thresholds. The reaching of such tipping points does not only impact other tipping elements through their…
Tipping elements of the Earth system may shift abruptly and irreversibly from one state to another at tipping points, resulting in a growing threat to our society. Yet, it is not fully clear how to assess and quantify the influence of a…
Global climate warming poses a significant challenge to humanity; it is associated with, e.g., rising sea level and declining Arctic sea ice. Increasing extreme events are also considered to be a result of climate…
In ecology, climate and other fields, (sub)systems have been identified that can transition into a qualitatively different state when a critical threshold or tipping point in a driving process is crossed. An understanding of those tipping…
Many climate subsystems are thought to be susceptible to tipping - and some might be close to a tipping point. The general belief and intuition, based on simple conceptual models of tipping elements, is that tipping leads to reorganization…
This review synthesizes recent advancements in understanding tipping points and cascading transitions within the Earth system, framing them through the lens of nonlinear dynamics and complexity science. It outlines the fundamental concepts…
The theory of alternative stable states and tipping points has garnered substantial attention in the last several decades. It predicts potential critical transitions from one ecosystem state to a completely different state under increasing…
Model studies indicate that many climate subsystems, especially ecosystems, may be vulnerable to 'tipping': a 'catastrophic process' in which a system, driven by gradually changing external factors, abruptly transitions (or 'collapses')…
Tree-grass coexistence is a defining feature of savanna ecosystems, which play an important role in supporting biodiversity and human populations worldwide. While recent advances have clarified many of the underlying processes, how these…
Tipping elements in the Earth System receive increased scientific attention over the recent years due to their nonlinear behavior and the risks of abrupt state changes. While being stable over a large range of parameters, a tipping element…
The emergence and impact of tipping points have garnered significant interest in both the social and natural sciences. Despite widespread recognition of the importance of feedbacks between human and natural systems, it is often assumed that…
The climate system's nonlinear dynamics is influenced by various external forcings and internal feedbacks that can give rise to regional and even global tipping points that may lead to significant and potentially irreversible changes.…
Social tipping points are promising levers to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emission targets. They describe how social, political, economic or technological systems can move rapidly into a new state if cascading positive feedback…
Understanding the causes and effects of spatial vegetation patterns is a fundamental problem in ecology, especially because these can be used as early predictors of catastrophic shifts such as desertification processes. Empirical studies of…
Tipping elements in the climate system are large-scale subregions of the Earth that might possess threshold behavior under global warming with large potential impacts on human societies. Here, we study a subset of five tipping elements and…
We identify the phase of a cycle as a new critical factor for tipping points (critical transitions) in cyclic systems subject to time-varying external conditions. As an example, we consider how contemporary climate variability induces…
Based on suggested interactions of potential tipping elements in the Earth's climate and in ecological systems, tipping cascades as possible dynamics are increasingly discussed and studied as their activation would impose a considerable…
Tipping points are one of the hot topics in modern physics of complex systems. But what is a tipping point? A generic definition declares it as ``a state of the system where a small change in its parameters can lead to a significant change…
It is often known, from modelling studies, that a certain mode of climate tipping (of the oceanic thermohaline circulation, for example) is governed by an underlying fold bifurcation. For such a case we present a scheme of analysis that…
Tipping points occur in diverse systems in various disciplines such as ecology, climate science, economy or engineering. Tipping points are critical thresholds in system parameters or state variables at which a tiny perturbation can lead to…