Publications

Jannes Breier, Luana Schwarz, Hannah Prawitz, Werner von Bloh, Christoph Müller, Stephen Björn Wirth, Max Bechthold, Dieter Gerten, Jonathan F. Donges. 2025. Supplementary material to "copan:LPJmL: A new hybrid modelling framework for dynamic land use and agricultural management". EGU Sphere. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-4475-supplement

Jannes Breier, Luana Schwarz, Hannah Prawitz, Werner von Bloh, Christoph Müller, Stephen Björn Wirth, Max Bechthold, Dieter Gerten, Jonathan F. Donges. 2025. copan:LPJmL: A new hybrid modelling framework for dynamic land use and agricultural management. EGU Sphere. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-4475

Dynamic Global Vegetation Models (DGVMs) are established in environmental and agricultural sciences for many purposes, e.g., modelling plant growth and productivity, water and carbon cycles, and biosphere-climate interactions. Nevertheless, DGVMs are still rather limited in terms of simulating mutual interactions between biospheric and human processes. While DGVMs such as the Lund Potsdam Jena managed Land (LPJmL) model have b...

Max Bechthold, Wolfram Barfuss, André Butz, Jannes Breier, Sara M. Constantino, Jobst Heitzig, Luana Schwarz, Sanam N. Vardag, Jonathan F. Donges. 2025. Social norms and groups structure safe operating spaces in renewable resource use in a social–ecological multi-layer network model. Earth System Dynamics. https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-1365-2025

Social norms are a key socio-cultural driver of human behaviour and have been identified as a central process in potential social tipping dynamics. They play a central role in governance and thus represent a possible intervention point for collective action problems in the Anthropocene, such as natural resource management. A detailed modelling framework for social norm change is needed to capture the dynamics of human societie...

Ajay Gambhir, Michael J. Albert, Sylvanus S. P. Doe, Jonathan F. Donges, Nadim Farajalla, Leandro L. Giatti, Haripriya Gundimeda, Sarah Hendel-Blackford, Thomas Homer-Dixon, Daniel Hoyer, Sumaya Adan, David Jacome-Polit, Luke Kemp, David Korowicz, Zora Kovacic, Jan Kwakkel, Laurie Laybourn, Robert Lempert, Ayan Mahamoud, Tom H. Oliver, Ivana E. Pavkova, Joseph Ponnoly, Vishwas Satgar, Megan Shipman, Jana Sillmann, Nick Silver, Samuel Stevenson, Ruth Richardson. 2025. A systemic risk assessment methodological framework for the global polycrisis. Nature Communications. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-62029-w

Human societies and ecological systems face increasingly severe risks, stemming from crossing planetary boundaries, worsening inequality, rising geo-political tensions, and new technologies. In an interconnected world, these risks can exacerbate each-other, creating systemic risks, which must be thoroughly assessed and responded to. Recent years have seen the emergence of analytical frameworks designed specifically for, or app...

Johan Rockström, Peter Schlosser, Avit K. Bhowmik, Roger Cremades, Jonathan F. Donges, James G. Dyke, Kristie L. Ebi, Adrian Heilemann, Daniela Jacob, Paula Mirazo, Denise Moreno Ramírez, Nebojsa Nakicenovic, Ilona M. Otto, Franz Prettenthaler, Janet Ranganathan, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Rachel Warren, Henry C. Wu. 2025. Living beyond limits: Consequences of missing the decisive decade for preserving our planet’s life-supporting systems. One Earth. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2025.101527

Humanity faces its ultimate challenge due to its failure so far in addressing the escalating risks, which are pushing the world into a deepening crisis. We have to rapidly adopt new pathways that reduce negative impacts and optimize regeneration. Today, we exceed our planet’s capacity to sustain life, depriving billions of basic needs amid rising conflict. Yet, with collective will, we can bridge the gap between knowledge and ...

Annika Högner, Giorgia Di Capua, Jonathan F. Donges, Reik V. Donner, Georg Feulner, Nico Wunderling. 2025. Causal pathway from AMOC to Southern Amazon Rainforest indicates stabilising interaction between two climate tipping elements. EGU. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-8514

Climate tipping elements like the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) and the Amazon Rainforest (AR) are critical components of the Earth system that currently both show declining trends in their resilience due to anthropogenic climate change and other human disturbances such as deforestation. A shutdown of the AMOC or a large-scale dieback of the AR would have severe impacts on a global scale. Additionally, AMO...

Thomas Elliot, Jonathan Donges, Massimo Pizzol, Ilona Otto. 2025. Manifesting tipping points in pro-environmental behaviour for climate change mitigation. EGU. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-10788

Achieving ambitious climate change targets, such as limiting global warming to 1.5°C, requires both political and social determination. Bottom-up pro-environmentalist behaviours can facilitate crossing social tipping points (STPs), resulting in new social norms with lower impact on global warming. While the passing of STPs has been described qualitatively, it remains poorly understood how the climate benefits of this phenomeno...

Max Bechthold, Wolfram Barfuss, André Butz, Jannes Breier, Sara Constantino, Jobst Heitzig, Luana Schwarz, Sanam Vardag, Jonathan Donges. 2025. Social norms and groups structure safe operating spaces and exhibit regime shifts in renewable resource use in a social-ecological multi-layer network model. EGU. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-3532

Social norms are a key socio-cultural driver of human behaviour and have been identified as a central process in potential social tipping dynamics. They play a central role in governance and thus represent a possible intervention point for collective action problems in the Anthropocene, such as natural resource management. A detailed modelling framework for social norm change is needed to capture the dynamics of human societ...

Jonathan Krönke, Jonathan F. Donges, Johan Rockström, Nils Bochow, Nico Wunderling. 2025. Estimating parameters for a simple tipping model from complex Earth system model output. EGU. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-15832

The existence of large-scale tipping points - thresholds where small changes can trigger drastic, often irreversible shifts in the climate system - has been a major concern of climate science in the past two decades. The ability to evaluate tipping risks using computationally manageable models is crucial to assess the resilience of the climate system and also to identify safe global warming trajectories for tipping elements. H...

Nico Wunderling, Annika Högner, Tessa Möller, Paul Ritchie, Johan Rockström, Norman Steinert, Jonathan F. Donges. 2025. Increased climate tipping risks from temperature overshoots. EGU. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-15540

In Paris 2015, the global community agreed to keep global warming well below 2.0°C aiming to limit it to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. However, recent research has shown that overshooting this temperature guardrail is becoming increasingly likely and several climate data teams across the world recorded 2024 as the first individual year with a global warming level above 1.5°C. Such temperature levels endanger critical com...