Publications

Hannah Mevenkamp, Nico Wunderling, Uma Bhatt, Tobey Carman, Jonathan Friedemann Donges, Helene Genet, Shawn Serbin, Ricarda Winkelmann, Eugenie Susanne Euskirchen. 2023. Reducing uncertainty of high-latitude ecosystem models through identification of key parameters. Environmental Research Letters. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ace637

Climate change is having significant impacts on Earth's ecosystems and carbon budgets, and in the Arctic may drive a shift from an historic carbon sink to a source. Large uncertainties in terrestrial biosphere models (TBMs) used to forecast Arctic changes demonstrate the challenges of determining the timing and extent of this possible switch. This spread in model predictions can limit the ability of TBMs to guide management an...

E. Keith Smith, Marc Wiedermann, Jonathan F. Donges, Jobst Heitzig, Ricarda Winkelmann. 2023. A global social activation model of enabling conditions for positive social tipping – the role of sea-level rise anticipation and climate change concern. EGUsphere. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1622

Effective climate change mitigation necessitates swift societal transformations. Social tipping processes, where small triggers initiate qualitative systemic shifts, are potential key mechanisms instigating societal change. A necessary foundation for societal tipping processes is the creation of enabling conditions. Here we assess future sea-level rise estimates and social survey data within the framework of a social activatio...

Samuel Bien, Paul Schultz, Jobst Heitzig, Jonathan F. Donges. 2023. Resilience basins of complex systems: An application to prosumer impacts on power grids. Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science. https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0120891

Comparable to the traditional notion of stability in system dynamics, resilience is typically measured in a way that assesses the quality of a system’s response, for example, the speed of its recovery. We present a broadly applicable complementary measurement framework that quantifies resilience similarly to basin stability by estimating a resilience basin , which reflects the extent of adverse influences that the system can...

Vitus Benson, Jonathan F. Donges, Jürgen Vollmer, Nico Wunderling. 2023. Robustness of critical slowing down indicators to power-law extremes in an Amazon rainforest model. EGU. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-9387

Critical slowing down has recently been detected as an indicator of reduced resilience in remotely sensed data of the Amazon rainforest [1]. Tropical rainforests are frequently hit by disturbances such as fire, windthrow, deforestation or drought, which are known to follow a heavy-tailed amplitude distribution. Early warning signals based on critical slowing down are theoretically grounded for systems under the influence of we...

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 ...

Finn Müller-Hansen, Jobst Heitzig, Jonathan Donges, Manoel F. Cardoso, Eloi L. Dalla-Nora, Pedro R. Andrade, Jürgen Kurths, Kirsten Thonicke. 2023. Can intensification of cattle ranching reduce deforestation in the Amazon? Insights from an agent-based social-ecological model. SocArXiv Papers. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/x5q9j

Deforestation in the Amazon with its vast consequences for the ecosystem and climate is largely related to subsequent land use for cattle ranching. In addition to conservation policies, proposals to reduce deforestation include measures to intensify cattle ranching. However, the effects of land-use intensification on deforestation are debated in the literature. This paper introduces the abacra model, a stylized agent-based mod...

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...

Smith, E., Eder, C., Donges, J., Heitzig, J., Katsanidou, A., Wiedermann, M., Winkelmann, R.. 2022. Domino Effects in the Earth System – The role of wanted social tipping points. OSF. http://dx.doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/d8scb

Social tipping processes have been identified as potential mechanisms for triggering necessary socio-technical transformations to avoid or mitigate disastrous climate futures. But, the coupling of social and climate systems remains comparatively under-defined. Here, we explore how (anticipated) changes to climate systems can instigate necessary positive transformations within social systems – the wanted social tipping points. ...

Zeitz, M., Haacker, J., Donges, J., Albrecht, T., Winkelmann, R.. 2022. Interacting melt-elevation and glacial isostatic adjustment feedbacks allow for distinct dynamic regimes of the Greenland Ice Sheet. EGU. http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-9968

Interacting feedbacks play an important role in governing the stability of the Greenland Ice Sheet under global warming. Here we study the interaction between the positive melt-elevation feedback and the negative feedback from glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA), and how they affect the ice volume of the Greenland Ice Sheet on long time scales. We therefore use the Parallel Ice Sheet Model (PISM) coupled to a simple solid Earth...

Wunderling, N., Staal, A., Sakschewski, B., Hirota, M., Tuinenburg, O., Donges, J., Barbosa, H., Winkelmann, R. 2022. Recurrent droughts increase risk of cascading tipping events by outpacing adaptive capacities in the Amazon rainforest. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2120777119

Tipping elements are nonlinear subsystems of the Earth system that have the potential to abruptly shift to another state if environmental change occurs close to a critical threshold with large consequences for human societies and ecosystems. Among these tipping elements may be the Amazon rainforest, which has been undergoing intensive anthropogenic activities and increasingly frequent droughts. Here, we assess how extreme dev...