FutureLab - Earth Resilience in the Anthropocene

Overarching research questions: What are critical thresholds for tipping elements in the Earth System? What is the risk for domino effects and tipping cascades to be triggered by human interference? How can the resilience of the Earth System and its interacting physical, ecological and societal components under anthropogenic disruptions be defined, characterized, modelled and measured? Co-leaders: Ricarda Winkelmann, Jonathan F. Donges

Motivation

Climate change is often still perceived as a (gradual) shift of the Earth system in a flat stability landscape. That is, it is assumed that the Earth system can be stabilized at various degrees of global warming depending on the cumulative greenhouse gas emissions. However, amounting scientific evidence shows that there are positive feedbacks and tipping elements both in the natural and societal spheres of the Earth System giving rise to attracting valleys and hills (basin boundaries) in the stability landscape. These have the potential to destabilize the Earth system and (irreversibly) take us to a “hothouse” future through a set of domino-interactions.

This FutureLab aims to develop a framework to characterize the resilience of the Earth System in the Anthropocene, exploring stability landscapes of critical physical, biological and societal components, which are only known fragmentarily so far. This includes the identification of critical thresholds/tipping points for these subsystems, as well as their potential to resist to and recover from disruptions. The FutureLab is based in Research Department 1 (RD1) on Earth System Analysis with links to the RD1 working groups on Ice Dynamics (ICE) and Whole Earth System Analysis, and connects to core activities of other research departments. Several collaborations with RD4 and the FutureLab on Game Theory and Networks of Interacting Agents (GaNe) have already been established within ongoing activities in the COPAN collaboration and the DominoES project.

Key research goals

• Identify critical thresholds of physical and biological tipping elements and their potential for domino effects.
• Characterize social tipping elements which either have the potential to effect a significant change in the future Earth system trajectory or are themselves driven by changes in the climate system.
• Develop a framework to define and characterize Earth system resilience and engage in a community effort towards establishing an Earth Resilience Index.

We will combine process-based climate modelling (POEM focus) with integrated World-Earth modelling approaches (copan:CORE focus) as well as methods from complex systems science.

Team

Current members

• Ricarda Winkelmann (FutureLab co-lead, RD1)
• Jonathan F. Donges (FutureLab co-lead, RD1)
  
  
• Torsten Albrecht (PostDoc, RD1)
• Wolfram Barfuss (PostDoc, PIK associated, University of Leeds, UK)
• Ronja Reese (PostDoc, RD1)
• Boris Sakschewski (PostDoc, RD1)
  
  
• Martin Bastian (PhD student, PIK associated)
• Julius Garbe (PhD student, RD1)
• Niklas Kitzmann (PhD student, RD1)
• Nico Wunderling (PhD student, RD1)
• Maria Zeitz (PhD student, RD1)

Funding

Work in our FutureLab is supported by the following third-party funded projects:

• Geo.X Young Academy PhD training programme
• European Research Council Advanced Grant project ERA (Earth resilience in the Anthropocene)
• Leibniz Association project DominoES (Domino effects in the Earth system - Can Antarctica tip climate policy?)
• IRTG 1740: International Research Training Group on Dynamical Phenomena in Complex Networks: Fundamentals and Applications (funded by DFG and FAPESP)
• German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes) funding for PhD research on social tipping dynamics in sustainability transformation
• Heinrich Böll Foundation funding for PhD research
• EU H2020 project TiPACCs
  
• EU H2020 project TiPES (Tipping points in the Earth system)
• Princeton-Humboldt Cooperation and Collective Cognition Network (CoCCoN)

Work in progress

The following publications are currently under review and discussion:

• R. Winkelmann*, J.F. Donges*, E.K. Smith*, M. Milkoreit*, C. Eder, J. Heitzig, A. Katsanidou, M. Wiedermann, N. Wunderling, T.M. Lenton,
  Social tipping processes for sustainability: an analytical framework,
  in review (2020),
  preprint arXiv:2010.04488 [physics.soc-ph],
  preprint SSRN:3708161,
  * shared lead-authorship.
  
• N. Wunderling, A. Staal, B. Sakschewski, M. Hirota, O.A. Tuinenburg, J.F. Donges, H.M.J. Barbosa*, R. Winkelmann*,
  Network dynamics of drought-induced tipping cascades in the Amazon rainforest,
  in review (2020),
  Preprint Research Square, DOI: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-71039/v1,
  *These authors jointly supervised this study.
• N. Wunderling, M. Gelbrecht, R. Winkelmann, J. Kurths, J.F. Donges,
  Basin stability and limit cycles in a conceptual model for climate tipping cascades,
  in review (2020),
  Preprint arXiv:2009.09902 [physics.ao-ph] (2020).
  
• L.A. Tamberg, J. Heitzig, J.F. Donges,
  A modeler's guide to studying the resilience of social-technical-environmental systems,
  Preprint arXiv:2007.05769 [physics.soc-ph] (2020).
  
• N. Wunderling, J.F. Donges, J. Kurths, R. Winkelmann,
  Interacting tipping elements increase risk of climate domino effects,
  Earth System Dynamics Discussion, in review (2020),
  DOI: 10.5194/esd-2020-18.
• S.H.R. Rosier, R. Reese, J.F. Donges, J. De Rydt, G.H. Gudmundsson, R. Winkelmann,
  The tipping points and early-warning indicators for Pine Island Glacier, West Antarctica,
  in review (2020),
  preprint EarthArXiv. April 15. DOI:10.31223/osf.io/y95r6.
• J. Bak-Coleman, M. Alfano, W. Barfuss, C. Bergstrom, M.A. Centeno, I.D. Couzin, J.F. Donges, M. Galesic, J. Jacquet, A. Kao, A. Gersick, T. Patterson, P. Romanczuk, D.I. Rubenstein, K. Tombak, J.J. Van Bavel, E.U. Weber,
  Collective behavior as a crisis discipline,
  in review (2020).
  
• M. Wiedermann, R. Winkelmann, J.F. Donges, C. Eder, J. Heitzig, A. Katsandiou, E.K. Smith,
  Can Antarctica tip climate policy?,
  in review (2019),
  preprint arXiv:1911.10063 [physics.soc-ph].
  
• V. Brovkin, E. Brook, J.H. Williams, T.M. Lenton, M. Barton, S. Bathiany, R.M. DeConto, J.F. Donges, A. Ganopolski, J. McManus, S. Praetorius, A. de Vernal, A. Abe-­Ouchi, H. Cheng, M. Claussen, M. Crucifix, G. Gallopin, V. Iglesias, D.S. Kaufman, T. Kleinen, F. Lambert, S. van der Leeuw, H. Liddy, M.-­F. Loutre, D. McGee, K. Rehfeld, R. Rhodes, A. Seddon, M.H. Trauth, L. Vanderverken, Z. Yu,
  Past abrupt changes, tipping points and cascading impacts in coupled climate-­ecological-­social systems: Lessons for the future,
  in review (2019).
  
• B. Ewers*, J.F. Donges*, J. Heitzig, S. Peterson,
  Divestment may burst the carbon bubble if investors' beliefs tip to anticipating strong future climate policy,
  in review,
  preprint arxiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/1902.07481,
  * Shared lead-authorship.
• J.F. Donges, W. Lucht, J. Heitzig, W. Barfuss, S.E. Cornell, S.J. Lade, and M. Schlüter,
  Taxonomies for structuring models for World-Earth system analysis of the Anthropocene: subsystems, their interactions and social-ecological feedback loops,
  Earth System Dynamics Discussions (2018),
  DOI: 10.5194/esd-2018-27.

Publications

In press

• N. Wunderling, M. Willeit, J.F. Donges, and R. Winkelmann,
  Global warming due to loss of large ice masses and Arctic summer sea ice,
  Nature Communications, in press (2020).

2020

• J. Garbe, T. Albrecht, J.F. Donges, A. Levermann, and R. Winkelmann,
  The hysteresis of the Antarctic ice sheet,
  Nature 585, 538–544, (2020),
  DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2727-5.
• M. Wiedermann, E.K. Smith, J. Heitzig, J.F. Donges,
  A network-based microfoundation of Granovetter's threshold model for social tipping,
  Nature Scientific Reports 10, 11202 (2020),
  DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-67102-6,
  preprint arXiv:1911.04126 [physics.soc-ph].
  
• A.K. Klose, V. Karle, R. Winkelmann, J.F. Donges,
  Emergence of cascading dynamics in interacting tipping elements of ecology and climate,
  Royal Society Open Science 7, 200599 (2020),
  DOI: 10.1098/rsos.200599
  preprint arXiv:1910.12042 [physics.geo-ph].
• J.-D. Mathias, M. Debeljak, G. Deffuant, A. Diemer, F. Dierickx, J.F. Donges, G. Gladkykh, J. Heitzig, G. Holtz, W. Obergassel, F. Pellaud, A. Sánchez, A. Trajanov, N. Videira,
  Grounding social foundations for Integrated Assessment Models of climate change,
  Earth's Future 8, e2020EF001573 (2020),
  DOI: 10.1029/2020EF001573.
  
• W. Barfuss, J.F. Donges, V.V. Vasconcelos, J. Kurths, S.A. Levin,
  Caring for the future can turn tragedy into comedy for long-term collective action under risk of collapse,
  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 117, 12915–12922 (2020),
  DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1916545117,
  PIK news piece, SRC news piece.
• J.F. Donges*, J. Heitzig*, W. Barfuss, M. Wiedermann, J.A. Kassel, T. Kittel, J.J. Kolb, T. Kolster, F. Müller-Hansen, I.M. Otto, K.B. Zimmerer, and W. Lucht,
  Earth system modeling with endogenous and dynamic human societies: the copan:CORE open World-Earth modeling framework,
  Earth System Dynamics 11, 395–413 (2020),
  DOI: 10.5194/esd-11-395-2020,
  * The first two authors share the lead authorship.
• J. Krönke, N. Wunderling, R. Winkelmann, A. Staal, B. Stumpf, O.A. Tuinenburg, J.F. Donges,
  Dynamics of tipping cascades on complex networks,
  Physical Review E 101, 042311 (2020),
  DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.101.042311,
  preprint arXiv:1905.05476 [physics.soc-ph].
  
• N. Wunderling*, B. Stumpf*, J. Krönke, A. Staal, O.A. Tuinenburg, R. Winkelmann, J.F. Donges,
  How motifs condition critical thresholds for tipping cascades in complex networks: linking micro- to macro-scales,
  Chaos 30, 043129 (2020),
  DOI: 10.1063/1.5142827,
  preprint arXiv:2001.02169 [nlin.AO],
  * The first two authors share the lead authorship,
  AIP Scilight: Microscale rainforest interactions can result in vulnerabilities across large regions.
  
• T. Ide, C. Fröhlich, J.F. Donges,
  The Economic, Political, and Social Implications of Environmental Crises,
  Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS) 101, E364–E367 (2020),
  DOI: 10.1175/BAMS-D-19-0257.1.
• T. Ide, M. Brzoska, J.F. Donges, C.-F. Schleussner,
  Multi-method evidence for when and how climate-related disasters contribute to armed conflict risk,
  Global Environmental Change, online first (2020),
  DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102063.
  
• M. Mahecha, F. Gans, G. Brandt, R. Christiansen, S.E. Cornell, N. Fomferra, G. Kraemer, J. Peters, G. Camps-Valls, J.F. Donges, W. Dorigo, L. Estupinan-Suarez, V. Gutierrez-Velez, M. Gutwin, M. Jung, M. Londono, D. Miralles, P. Papastefanou, M. Reichstein,
  Earth system data cubes unravel global multivariate dynamics,
  Earth System Dynamics 11, 201–234 (2020),
  DOI: 10.5194/esd-11-201-2020.
• S.J. Lade, W. Steffen, W. de Vries, S.R. Carpenter, J.F. Donges, D. Gerten, H. Hoff, T. Newbold, K. Richardson, J. Rockström,
  Human impacts on planetary boundaries amplified by Earth system interactions,
  Nature Sustainability 3, 119–128 (2020),
  DOI: 10.1038/s41893-019-0454-4,
  PIK press release, SRC press release.
• I.M. Otto, J.F. Donges, W. Lucht, H.J. Schellnhuber,
  Reply to Smith et al.: Social tipping dynamics in a world constrained by conflicting interests,
  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (PNAS) 117, 10631–10632 (2020),
  DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2002648117.
• I.M. Otto*, J.F. Donges*, R. Cremades, A. Bhowmik, R. Hewitt, W. Lucht, J. Rockström, F. Allerberger, S. Doe, A. Lenferna, M. McCaffrey, N. Morán, D.P. van Vuuren, H.J. Schellnhuber,
  Social tipping dynamics for stabilizing Earth’s climate by 2050,
  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (PNAS), 201900577 (2020),
  DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1900577117,
  * The first two authors share the lead authorship,
  PIK press release, SRC news, New York Times.

2019

• F.M. Strnad, W. Barfuss, J.F. Donges, J. Heitzig,
  Deep reinforcement learning in World-Earth system models to discover sustainable management strategies,
  Chaos 29, 123122 (2019),
  DOI: 10.1063/1.5124673,
  preprint arXiv:1908.05567 [physics.soc-ph] [cs.LG],
  PIK news item.
• K. Kornhuber, D. Coumou, E. Vogel, C. Lesk, J.F. Donges, J. Lehmann, R. Horton,
  Amplified Rossby waves enhance risk of concurrent heatwaves in major breadbasket regions,
  Nature Climate Change 10, 48–53 (2020),
  DOI: 10.1038/s41558-019-0637-z,
  PIK press release.

• S.J. Lade, J. Norberg, J.M. Anderies, C. Beer, S.E. Cornell, J.F. Donges, I. Fetzer, T. Gasser, K. Richardson, J. Rockström, W. Steffen,
  Potential feedbacks between loss of biosphere integrity and climate change,
  Global Sustainability 2, e21 (2019),
  DOI: 10.1017/sus.2019.18.

• J. Randers, J. Rockström, P.-E. Stoknes, U. Goluke, D. Collste, S.E. Cornell, and J.F. Donges,
  Achieving the 17 sustainable development goals within 9 planetary boundaries,
  Global Sustainability 2, e24 (2019),
  DOI: 10.1017/sus.2019.22,
  Preprint: EarthArXiv:10.31223/osf.io/xwevb,
  SRC news item and video.

• I.M. Otto, M. Wiedermann, R. Cremades, J.F. Donges, C. Auer, W. Lucht,
  Human agency in the Anthropocene,
  Ecological Economics 167, 106463 (2020),
  DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.106463.
• Deterministic limit of temporal difference reinforcement learning for stochastic games,
  Physical Review E 99, 043305 (2019),
  DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.99.043305,
  PRE editor's choice,
  PIK news release: New method to better understand much-employed self-learning Artificial Intelligence,
  Preprint: arXiv:1809.07225.
  
• C. Ciemer, N. Boers, M. Hirota, J. Kurths, F. Müller-Hansen, R.S. Oliveira, R. Winkelmann,
  Higher resilience to climatic disturbances in tropical vegetation exposed to more variable rainfall,
  Nature Geoscience 12 (2019), 174–179,
  DOI: 10.1038/s41561-019-0312-z,
  PIK Press release.

• W. Steffen, J. Rockström, K. Richardson, T.M. Lenton, C. Folke, D. Liverman, C.P. Summerhayes, A.D. Barnosky, S.E. Cornell, M. Crucifix, J.F. Donges, I. Fetzer, S.J. Lade, M. Scheffer, R. Winkelmann, and H.J. Schellnhuber,
  Trajectories of the Earth system in the Anthropocene,
  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 115(33), 8252-8259 (2018),
  DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1810141115,
  PIK press release,
  SRC press release.
• W. Barfuss, J.F. Donges, S.J. Lade, and J. Kurths,
  When optimization for governing human-environment tipping elements is neither sustainable nor safe,
  Nature Communications 9, 2354 (2018),
  DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-04738-z,
  Official PIK press release: better safe than sorry,
  Official SRC news release.
• J. Heitzig, W. Barfuss, J.F. Donges,
  A thought experiment on sustainable management of the Earth system,
  Sustainability 10(6), 1947 (2018),
  DOI: 10.3390/su10061947.
• M. Milkoreit, J. Hodbod, J. Baggio, K. Benessaiah, R. Calderon Contreras, J.F. Donges, J.-D. Mathias, J. Rocha, M. Schoon, and S. Werners,
  Defining tipping points for social-ecological systems scholarship – an interdisciplinary literature review,
  Environmental Research Letters 13, 033005 (2018),
  DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/aaaa75.

• F. Müller-Hansen, M. Schlüter, M. Mäs, J.F. Donges, J.J. Kolb, K. Thonicke, and J. Heitzig,
  Towards representing human behavior and decision making in Earth system models – an overview of techniques and approaches,
  Earth System Dynamics 8, 977-1007 (2017),
  DOI: 10.5194/esd-8-977-2017,
  Discussion paper: Earth System Dynamics Discussions, 2017, DOI: 10.5194/esd-2017-18.

• J.F. Donges*, R. Winkelmann*, W. Lucht, S.E. Cornell, J.G. Dyke, J. Rockström, J. Heitzig, and H.J. Schellnhuber,
  Closing the loop: reconnecting human dynamics to Earth system science,
  The Anthropocene Review 4(2), 151-157 (2017),
  DOI: 10.1177/2053019617725537,
  * The first two authors share the lead authorship,
  News release (Stockholm Resilience Centre).

• J.F. Donges and W. Barfuss,
  From math to metaphors and back again. Social-ecological resilience from a multi-agent-environment perspective,
  GAIA 26(S1), 182–190 (2017),
  DOI: 10.14512/gaia.26.S1.5.

• J.F. Donges, W. Lucht, F. Müller-Hansen, and W. Steffen,
  The Technosphere in Earth system analysis: a coevolutionary perspective,
  The Anthropocene Review 4(1), 23-33 (2017),
  DOI: 10.1177/2053019616676608,
  Preprint: arxiv:1704.06476 [physics.soc-ph].
• A. Ganopolski, R. Winkelmann, H.J. Schellnhuber,
  Critical insolation - CO2 relation for diagnosing past and future glacial inception,
  Nature 529 (2016), DOI: 10.1038/nature16494.