Publications

Chandrakant Singh, Ruud van der Ent, Ingo Fetzer, Lan Wang-Erlandsson. 2023. Multi-fold increase in rainforests tipping risk beyond 1.5–2 °C warming. EGUsphere. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1486

Tropical rainforests invest in their root systems to store moisture in their root zone from water-rich periods for use in water-scarce periods. An inadequate root-zone soil moisture storage predisposes or forces these forest ecosystems to transition to a savanna-like state, devoid of their native structure and functions. Yet changes in soil moisture storage and its influence on the rainforest ecosystems under future climate ch...

Chandrakant Singh, Ruud van der Ent, Ingo Fetzer, Lan Wang-Erlandsson. 2023. Global warming beyond 1.5–2⁰C multiplies the rainforests' tipping risk. EGU. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-95

Tropical rainforests invest in their root systems to store soil moisture from water-rich periods for use in water-scarce periods. An inadequate root-zone soil moisture storage predisposes or forces these forest ecosystems to transition to a savanna-like state, devoid of their native structure and functions. Yet changes in soil moisture storage and its influence on the rainforest ecosystems under future climate change remain un...

Katherine Richardson, Will Steffen, Wolfgang Lucht, Jørgen Bendtsen, Sarah E. Cornell, Jonathan F. Donges, Markus Drüke, Ingo Fetzer, Govindasamy Bala, Werner von Bloh, Georg Feulner, Stephanie Fiedler, Dieter Gerten, Tom Gleeson, Matthias Hofmann, Willem Huiskamp, Matti Kummu, Chinchu Mohan, David Nogués-Bravo, Stefan Petri, Miina Porkka, Stefan Rahmstorf, Sibyll Schaphoff, Kirsten Thonicke, Arne Tobian, Vili Virkki, Lan Wang-Erlandsson, Lisa Weber, Johan Rockström. 2023. Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries. Science Advances. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adh2458

This planetary boundaries framework update finds that six of the nine boundaries are transgressed, suggesting that Earth is now well outside of the safe operating space for humanity. Ocean acidification is close to being breached, while aerosol loading regionally exceeds the boundary. Stratospheric ozone levels have slightly recovered. The transgression level has increased for all boundaries earlier identified as overstepped. ...

John M Anderies, Wolfram Barfuss, Jonathan F Donges, Ingo Fetzer, Jobst Heitzig, Johan Rockström. 2023. A modeling framework for World-Earth system resilience: exploring social inequality and Earth system tipping points. Environmental Research Letters. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ace91d

The Anthropocene is characterized by the strengthening of planetary-scale interactions between the biophysical Earth system (ES) and human societies. This increasing social-ecological entanglement poses new challenges for studying possible future World-Earth system (WES) trajectories and World-Earth resilience defined as the capacity of the system to absorb and regenerate from anthropogenic stresses such as greenhouse gas emis...

Sina Loriani, Boris Sakschewski, Jonathan Donges, Ricarda Winkelmann. 2023. Systematic assessment of climate tipping points. EGU. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-17342

Tipping elements constitute one high-risk aspect of anthropogenic climate change - after their critical thresholds are passed, self-amplifying feedbacks can drive parts of the Earth system into a different state, potentially abruptly and/or irreversibly. A variety of models of different complexity shows these dynamics in many systems, ranging from vegetation over ocean circulations to ice sheets. This growing body of evidence ...

Nico Wunderling, Ricarda Winkelmann, Johan Rockström, Sina Loriani, David I. Armstrong McKay, Paul D. L. Ritchie, Boris Sakschewski, Jonathan F. Donges. 2023. Global warming overshoots increase risks of climate tipping cascades in a network model. Nature Climate Change. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01545-9

Current policies and actions make it very likely, at least temporarily, to overshoot the Paris climate targets of 1.5–<2.0 °C above pre-industrial levels. If this global warming range is exceeded, potential tipping elements such as the Greenland Ice Sheet and Amazon rainforest may be at increasing risk of crossing critical thresholds. This raises the question of how much this risk is amplified by increasing overshoot magnitude...

Anita Lazurko, L. Jamila Haider, Tilman Hertz, Simon West, Daniel D. P. McCarthy, Simon West, Simon West, Simon West. 2023. Operationalizing ambiguity in sustainability science: embracing the elephant in the room. Sustainability Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-023-01446-6

Ambiguity is often recognized as an intrinsic aspect of addressing complex sustainability challenges. Nevertheless, in the practice of transdisciplinary sustainability research, ambiguity is often an ‘elephant in the room’ to be either side-stepped or reduced rather than explicitly mobilized in pursuit of solutions. These responses threaten the salience and legitimacy of sustainability science by masking the pluralism of real-...

Stephen A. Matlin, Goverdhan Mehta, Sarah E. Cornell, Alain Krief, Henning Hopf. 2023. Chemistry and pathways to net zero for sustainability. RSC Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1039/D3SU00125C

Chemistry needs to play a central role in achieving ‘net zero’ emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere to prevent changes to the climate that will have catastrophic impacts for humanity and for many ecosystems on the planet. International action to limit global warming to 1.5 °C has framed as a key goal the reduction of global emissions to as close to zero as possible by 2050, with any remaining emissions re-a...

Beatrice Crona, Giorgio Parlato, Steven Lade, Ingo Fetzer, Victor Maus. 2023. Going beyond carbon: An "Earth system impact" score to better capture corporate and investment impacts on the earth system. Journal of Cleaner Production. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.139523

This paper tests a novel metric developed to capture corporate Earth system impact (ESI) beyond merely direct GHG emissions and explores how such a tool could be used to improve assessments of corporate environmental impacts and support decisions on where to direct public and private investments. We use the mining sector as a test case to illustrate the applicability of the ESI score and examine the impact of the the five larg...

Victor Galaz, Juan Rocha, Paula Andrea Sánchez-García, Alice Dauriach, Tarik Roukny, Peter Søgaard Jørgensen. 2023. Financial influence on global risks of zoonotic emerging and re-emerging diseases: an integrative analysis. The Lancet Planetary Health. https://doi.org/10.1016/s2542-5196(23)00232-2

Emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases (EIDs), such as Ebola virus disease and highly pathogenic influenza, are serious threats to human health and wellbeing worldwide. The financial sector has an important, yet often ignored, influence as owners and investors in industries that are associated with anthropogenic land-use changes in ecosystems linked to increased EIDs risks. We aimed to analyse financial influence associa...