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Tipping behavior can occur when an equilibrium of a dynamical system loses stability in response to a slowly varying parameter crossing a bifurcation threshold, or where noise drives a system from one attractor to another, or some…
Ecosystems often undergo abrupt regime shifts in response to gradual external changes. These shifts are theoretically understood as a regime switch between alternative stable states of the ecosystem dynamical response to smooth changes in…
It is usually believed that Darwin's theory leads to a smooth gradual evolution, so that mass extinctions must be caused by external shocks. However, it has recently been argued that mass extinctions arise from the intrinsic dynamics of…
When searching for inhabited exoplanets, understanding the boundaries of the habitable zone around the parent star is key. If life can strongly influence its global environment, then we would expect the boundaries of the habitable zone to…
Understanding when global glaciations occur on Earth-like planets is a major challenge in climate evolution research. Most models of how greenhouse gases like CO2 evolve with time on terrestrial planets are deterministic, but the complex,…
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…
Approximately one billion years (Gyr) in the future, as the Sun brightens, Earth's carbonate-silicate cycle is expected to drive CO$_2$ below the minimum level required by vascular land plants, eliminating most macroscopic land life. Here,…
The causes of major and rapid transitions observed in biological macroevolution as well as in the evolution of social systems are a subject of much debate. Here we identify the proximate causes of crashes and recoveries that arise…
We propose a minimal off-lattice model of living organisms where just a very few dynamical rules of growth are assumed. The stable coexistence of many clusters is detected when we replace the global restriction rule by a locally applied…
Global, population-wide oscillations in models of cyclic dominance may result in the collapse of biodiversity due to the accidental extinction of one species in the loop. Previous research has shown that such oscillations can emerge if the…
Planets similar to Earth - but slightly more irradiated - are expected to enter into a runaway greenhouse state, where all surface water rapidly evaporates, forming an optically thick H2O-dominated atmosphere. For Earth, this extreme…
We seek to model the coupled evolution of a planet and a civilization through the era when energy harvesting by the civilization drives the planet into new and adverse climate states. In this way we ask if triggering "anthropocenes" of the…
We have used the dynamical system approach in order to investigate the dynamics of cosmological models of the flat Universe with a non-minimally coupled canonical and phantom scalar field and the Ratra-Peebles potential. Applying methods of…
A number of authors have in recent years proposed that the processes of macroevolution may give rise to self-organized critical phenomena which could have a significant effect on the dynamics of ecosystems. In particular it has been…
The Gaia hypothesis considers the life-environment coupled system as a single entity that acts to regulate and maintain habitable conditions on Earth. In this paper we discuss three mechanisms which could potentially lead to Gaia: Selection…
Traditionally stellar radiation has been the only heat source considered capable of determining global climate on long timescales. Here we show that terrestrial exoplanets orbiting low-mass stars may be tidally heated at high enough levels…
Tidal locking of planets to their host stars results in an atmospheric circulation with a hotspot fixed to the frame of reference of the planet. On the other hand, asynchronously rotating planets feature moving hotspots either lagging or…
We present numerical results based on a simplified ecological system in evolution, showing features of extinction similar to that claimed for the biosystem on Earth. In the model each species consists of a population in interaction with the…
Extreme environmental events such as severe storms, drought, heat waves, flash floods, and abrupt species collapse have become more prevalent in the earth-atmosphere dynamic system in recent years. In order to fully understand the…
Among potentially habitable worlds, rocky planets orbiting M dwarfs offer the most favorable prospects for atmospheric characterization, yet their climates may differ substantially from those of Earth analogs. In the tidally locked limit,…