Examples include the Greenland ice sheets, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, monsoon systems, and major ecosystems such as the Amazon rainforest or boreal forests. Rising anthropogenic pressures, such as greenhouse gas emissions and land-use change, increase the likelihood of crossing such thresholds. Their interactions may trigger tipping cascades, where the destabilization of one element increases the risk of others tipping, thereby amplifying Earth system change and undermining long-term Earth resilience.
Importantly, the Earth system is now co-shaped by human–Earth system feedbacks, where human activities both drive and respond to biophysical change. Fossil fuel use, deforestation, and land-use intensification contribute to destabilizing Earth system dynamics, while societal responses—such as mitigation policies, technological innovation, or behavioral shifts—can either reinforce unsustainable trajectories or create stabilizing strong feedbacks. These feedbacks can act nonlinearly, with the potential to delay, accelerate, or even redirect entire Earth system trajectories. In this context, research is uncovering the potential for rapid social tipping points, which could accelerate decarbonization and foster transformative pathways towards global sustainability to revitalize and regenerate Earth resilience.
In this session, we invite contributions on all topics relating to Earth resilience, planetary boundaries, tipping points in the Earth system, positive (social) tipping, as well as their interactions and potential cascading domino effects. We particularly welcome studies that use Earth system modelling, conceptual approaches, or data-driven analysis to investigate nonlinear dynamics, abrupt shifts, and tipping points, as well as contributions exploring social tipping processes and their role in shaping a more sustainable future.
Orals: Thu, 7 May, 16:15–18:00 | Room D1
Earth’s biosphere has been subject to both transient and persistent disruptors throughout its history. Transient disruptors, such as large igneous province volcanism and asteroid impacts, are typically short-lived (<1 Myr) agents associated with temporary but sometimes massive loss of biomass and biodiversity. Persistent disruptors, such as the evolution of land plants, typically operate over long timescales (>50 Myr) and have ultimately enhanced planetary habitability with new ecosystems and symbioses, even when they caused harm to the incumbent biosphere. Here we examine anthropogenic impacts on the biosphere within the framework of past transient and persistent disruptors.
Recent human activity has been degrading Earth’s biosphere at a greater rate than any previous disruptors in Earth’s history except for the Cretaceous-Palaeogene (K-Pg) mass extinction which was caused by an asteroid impact. In particular, we show that the rate of recent biosphere losses in terms of biodiversity and naturally available (versus human-appropriated) biomass and primary productivity are on par with or exceed the rates of almost all past mass extinctions. Moreover, human business as usual is expected to continue and potentially increase the rate of biosphere degradation over the next century and millennium.
However, humans have the capacity to choose the nature of our impacts on the biosphere. We have the potential to be a persistent disruptor of the biosphere by consciously choosing interactions that increase biodiversity and naturally available productivity. This can be achieved through a combination of new technologies and place-based understanding of the natural world developed by human societies globally over thousands of years. From Mediterranean savannahs to Pacific Island fisheries, to Australian and American deserts, humans have enhanced local and regional biodiversity and biomass without appropriating the bulk of it for ourselves but instead sharing it sustainably with the non-human biosphere.
We are the first disrupting agent able to make conscious choices about our impact on planetary habitability. By comparison with the geological and fossil records we show that most contemporary anthropogenic impacts on the biosphere resemble those of past transient disruptors, which at a global scale are degrading wild biomass and biodiversity through climate change, habitat loss and predation. Despite this, near-future humanity has the capacity to be a persistent disruptor of the biosphere, increasing biodiversity and naturally available biomass and productivity, by drawing on both emerging technologies and past and contemporary human experience. Evidence from past disruptors deep in Earth’s history inform the intentional changes to human-biosphere interactions that are needed for us to enhance planetary habitability in the near future.
How to cite: Wong Hearing, T. and Williams, M.: Humans are the second fastest driver of biosphere degradation in Earth history but we could become the fastest driver of positive biosphere change ever seen, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-4549, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-4549, 2026.
The cryosphere, the frozen components of the Earth system, plays a vital role in regulating planetary dynamics and maintaining a stable and habitable Earth. Despite its critical importance and the rapid cryosphere degradation underway in the Anthropocene, it remains unclear whether essential functions for Earth system resilience have so far been undermined, i.e., whether cryosphere changes still remain within a ‘safe operating space’ (SOS). Here, we propose a cryosphere SOS and systematically evaluate cryosphere contributions to Earth system resilience using a planetary boundaries framework. Evidence reveals an accelerating and partly irreversible decline in cryospheric integrity, driven and amplified by positive feedbacks. Our assessment indicates that key cryospheric control variables – land ice volume, sea-ice area, permafrost mean temperature, and snow cover – are departing from Holocene-like conditions. We conclude that the cryosphere has breached its SOS and is on a trajectory that locks in long-term risks for human societies and ecosystems. Safeguarding Earth system resilience therefore, requires explicit consideration of cryosphere changes and their internal dynamics, given their ability to shift and amplify the Earth system away from Holocene-like conditions.
How to cite: Su, B. and Wang-Erlandsson, L. and the SOS-Cryo team: The Cryosphere Beyond a Planetary Safe Operating Space, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-5093, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-5093, 2026.
Human-driven freshwater change relates to elevated Earth system risks, which motivates analysis to better understand its global characteristics. Because freshwater is integral to the functioning and stability of the Earth system (in terms of ecosystems and climatic processes, for instance), disruptions to freshwater cycle dynamics can contribute to a situation where human activities both depend on and undermine a stable Earth system. This interplay creates a strong need to assess and understand freshwater change at the global scale, including its spatial patterns and drivers.
Building on the newly updated planetary boundary for freshwater change (PB-FW), we analysed global and regional patterns of anomalous conditions and their drivers in blue water (streamflow) and green water (soil moisture). We used a large ensemble of global hydrological model simulations covering the years 1901–2019 from the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP) simulation round 3a experiments. We first determined local deviations at the grid cell scale and then aggregated land areas affected by those deviations, following the approach of the previous PB-FW estimate. Here, however, we extend its timeline by 15 years (from 2005 to 2019) and decompose the historical contributions of climate-related forcing (CRF) and direct human forcing (DHF; encompassing land and water use changes) to PB-FW transgression at global and regional scales.
During the late 20th and early 21st century, PB-FW transgression has increased markedly across its blue and green water components. In 2010–2019, local deviations in streamflow and soil moisture affected 22–23% of the global ice-free land area, notably exceeding the PB-FW, which places at 12–13%. Approximately half of the total transgression has occurred since 1990. CRF has increasingly become the dominant global influence on dry and wet streamflow and soil moisture deviations from preindustrial-like baseline conditions, while DHF amplifies dry deviations. Regionally, streamflow and soil moisture deviation occurrence varies widely; CRF dominates both dry and wet deviations across broad regions, whereas DHF exerts stronger influence at more confined scales, particularly by intensifying dry deviations. Additionally, the strongest DHF contributions to local deviations appear to be associated with human pressures on ecosystems, pointing to prospects for further studying freshwater change and vulnerabilities to its impacts in specific regions.
Our coherent unpacking of the global PB-FW transgression into regional components and their main drivers is a substantial advance in the use of the PB-FW. By linking the globally defined boundaries to regionally specific trajectories of freshwater change, we show how the new PB-FW can improve understanding of the extent, degree and drivers of global freshwater change. Similar applications and appraisals of other PBs could aid broader efforts of using the framework to inform sustainable environmental governance and Earth system stewardship, and to better connect global-scale approaches with more actionable, regional-scale knowledge on the drivers and impacts of freshwater change.
How to cite: Virkki, V., Andersen, L. S., te Wierik, S., Gerten, D., and Porkka, M.: Regionally divergent drivers behind transgressions of the freshwater change planetary boundary, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-16197, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-16197, 2026.
Recent assessments show that seven of the nine planetary boundaries have been crossed and are under increasing pressure. With Earth’s life-support systems weakening, the need for urgent action is clear: to secure a safe and just future for all, we need a whole-Earth approach that reduces the pressures on our planet and guides humanity back to the safe operating space. This is a major challenge that not only requires further developments in Earth system science but also complementary approaches that raise awareness and empower informed action across various domains.
With this contribution, we present the Planetary Boundaries Fresco, a participatory workshop designed to break down the complexities of Earth system science and carry it into the hearts of people and into the policies that shape our future. By combining storytelling, group exercises, guided discussions, and an interactive card game, the workshop format turns complex scientific concepts into an accessible, fun and action-oriented learning experience.
We share insights from the international development and scaling of the workshop, and discuss how it has supported engagement across education, business, policy and community levels. Drawing on facilitation and training experience, we highlight learnings of how participatory workshops and serious games can foster systems thinking, improve understanding of human pressures on the Earth system, and create space for reflection on uncertainty, trade-offs and collective responsibility. We argue that such experiences are key to support action across sectors and scales.
How to cite: van Breda, E. and (Dorant) van Breda, J.: Making planetary boundaries science accessible and actionable: insights from the Planetary Boundaries Fresco workshop., EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-8172, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-8172, 2026.
Ever since we entered the Anthropocene, (some) humans are not only affected by earth system changes but are the most important determinant of environmental alterations like climate change and the sixth mass extinction. These changes lead to nonlinear interactions and co-evolutionary dynamics that challenge current predominant modeling approaches. Thus, we need models that incorporate true bidirectional interactions between social and environmental processes at a global scale and go beyond economic cost-benefit analyses, often done by integrated assessment modelling approaches. In this study, we aim to provide a systematic overview of studies that already adopt this “World-Earth Modelling” approach.
Using the methods of a systematic review, we collected 21,999 entries from Web of Science and Scopus databases. These entries were screened using a novel approach that employed Large-Language Models to select suitable World-Earth models.
The results of this comprehensive literature review highlight novel developments in the field and identify gaps in this research frontier that should be addressed in future studies. We find that only a few studies capture global two-way interactions between social and environmental processes. Most of these models focus on economic perspectives, leaving socio-cultural dynamics, such as the effects of social norms or learning processes understudied. Furthermore, most of these models address the climate change dimension of planetary boundaries and neglect other environmental aspects. Nevertheless, existing models demonstrate that including bidirectional feedback between social and environmental processes can help explore possible transformation pathways toward a sustainable future, producing more realistic and dynamic scenarios and trajectories. However, integrating human-environmental feedback on a global scale is still in its infancy, and more research is needed to understand the emerging co-evolutionary dynamics in the Anthropocene.
How to cite: Prawitz, H., Schwarz, L., Barfuss, W., Eker, S., Halbe, J., and Donges, J. F.: Towards modelling the Anthropocene: A systematic review of World-Earth models, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-13363, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-13363, 2026.
The coupled human-Earth system is shaped by complex feedbacks between human society and climate. These bidirectional interactions – where human activities alter the climate system, and climate change, in turn, reshapes socioeconomic systems – play a pivotal role in determining long-term adaptation or mitigation strategies. However, scenario-generating Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs), when used to provide emissions scenarios within the framework of the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), do not represent these coupled feedbacks between climate and human society. While such a distinction between climate change, as modelled in Earth System Models, and its impacts on societal sectors, as modelled in impact models, prevents any double counting of the climate impacts in the emissions pathways, it limits the understanding of the coupled effects and is disadvantageous for resilient decision-making.
The newly developed Feedback-based knowledge Repository for Integrated Assessments-version 2.1 (FRIDA v2.1) endogenously incorporates several climate-society feedbacks at the structural level in the form of global impact functions of climate variables. The coupled effect of all climate impacts, which are part of the endogenous model behavior, diverges from their simple additive contribution, indicating a non-linear model response. These non-linearities arise primarily when individual impact channels generate opposing feedbacks of differing magnitudes, which drive the system beyond certain thresholds in the coupled setting that would remain untriggered under additive aggregation, reflecting the multiplicative nature of system feedbacks.
This study further investigates the cascading effects and relative strength of each of the impact channels in the context of associated feedback loops. Indirect economic impacts—representing climate-driven effects on investment and bank assets—exert a strong, system-wide influence and play a central role in shaping the model’s endogenous behaviour, owing to their cumulative effects. Climate impacts on labour productivity, government expenditure, and energy demand have less influence across the system. In contrast, impact channels related to mortality, human behaviour, concrete production, and land-use generate important localised effects, but do not significantly alter system-wide dynamics.
How to cite: Adakudlu, M., Mauritzen, C., Wells, C., Blanz, B., Schoenberg, W. A., Köberle, A., Callegari, B., Brier, J., Ramme, L., Rajah, J., Lindqvist, A. N., Eriksson, A., and Smith, C.: The role of climate impacts in Transition Pathways in an Integrated Assessment Model: interdependencies and nonlinearities , EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-9866, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-9866, 2026.
In order to address the emerging global polycrisis, it is essential to develop quantitative indicators for estimating resilience of essential bio-geophysical and social drivers of change. Such indicators are required to navigate the Anthropocene and to assess which actions increase the likelihood of achieving a safe and just operating space (SAJOS). In this contribution, we present a proposed novel information-based resilience metric. We define it as the conditional probability of a system reaching a desired system state, e.g. a SAJOS, given initial conditions and an information set. This information set reflects knowledge about relevant ranges of bio-physical and socio-cultural system dynamics, boundaries and perturbations. The resulting resilience index is highly dependent on the available information about the system and its intrinsic action capacities. An increase in epistemic knowledge about the system does not necessarily result in enhanced resilience. It is still possible to envisage scenarios in which one could find oneself in a world that is capable of attaining a SAJOS in only a limited number of circumstances. Our proposed approach facilitates the operationalization and quantification of resilience in complex World-Earth system (WES) models. Resilience should be understood as being constrained by available information about the system, its internal processes, boundaries, and the capacity of the system to act in an uncertain future. This further implies the importance of making informed investment decisions that balance improving system understanding (i.e. gaining information), increasing (anticipatory) capacities of action, and taking common-sense action to enhance resilience. Our information-based index can be applied to any kind of system. Since it answers the classical question of “resilience of what, to what” on a meta level, it allows moving beyond a highly specified and static notion of resilience, allowing for a wide range of application cases.
How to cite: Bechthold, M., Anderies, J. M., Donges, J. F., Fetzer, I., Wunderling, N., Barfuss, W., and Rockström, J.: An Information-Based World-Earth System Resilience Index, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-3844, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-3844, 2026.
The Earth and financial systems are deeply intertwined, each impacting and being exposed to the other, implying potential regime shifts and contagions. However, the interactions between financial/biophysical mechanisms and tipping elements of both systems are insufficiently understood and underrepresented in current conceptual, theoretical, and empirical models, resulting in critical knowledge gaps.
Financial flows, by enabling environmentally harmful economic activities, can drive ecosystem degradation. Conversely, major environmental changes like global warming and biodiversity loss generate financial risks. Crossing Earth System Tipping Points (ESTPs) could generate escalating costs and losses through complex interconnections and nonlinear dynamics, potentially causing irreversible disruptions to financial systems. Similarly, surpassing certain financing thresholds tied to e.g., deforestation or resource extraction could trigger ESTPs.
Current knowledge is not sufficient to draw definitive conclusions on this conundrum, primarily due to limited integration of financial dynamics into ESTPs frameworks, which often overlook economic drivers and policy contexts. Such interactions are however evident in ecosystems like the Amazon Rainforest, where financial flows connect to land-use change, biodiversity loss, and GHG emissions. Reciprocally, financial models essentially ignore ESTPs’ dynamics and temporality, focusing instead on smoother/lower-uncertainty central scenarios.
A comprehensive understanding of the complex, interrelated mechanisms at play is essential for effective governance of ESTPs, both for prevention and impact management.
This research hence investigates how tipping dynamics in one system can trigger, amplify, or dampen tipping in another. For this, we undertake a comprehensive mapping of Finance and Earth systems tipping mechanisms through a literature review bringing together these fields across disciplinary approaches, such as biophysical tipping points, Earth system dynamics, human-natural systems interactions, micro/macroeconomic dynamics, ecological macroeconomics, financial system dynamics, behavioural finance, financial innovation, financial regulation. The second axis of the research consists in the development of a transdisciplinary framework connecting Finance and ESTPs. The elaboration of such a framework aims to bring together a synthesis of the various definitions, concepts, theories, observations, dynamics and mechanics, governing rules and laws, and mathematical formalisations that have been used so far in one or several of the sub-fields touching upon the broad topic. This attempt to propose a unified framework, approaching tipping phenomena [or described in other terms such as: network contagion and markets interconnectedness, liquidity spirals and market freezes, cascading failures, herding behaviour and market sentiment shifts, systemic risk mitigation and macroprudential policy, financial instability hypothesis] from both biophysical and socioeconomic perspectives together, aspires to offer a useful toolbox to better understand, and ultimately manage, these interdependent systems. Our preliminary findings serve as a foundation for a collaborative research agenda on which further work can be elaborated, spanning e.g., empirical and theoretical modelling, policy development, investment strategies.
How to cite: Chenet, H.: Finance and Earth system tipping points – Towards a transdisciplinary framework and research agenda, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-13771, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-13771, 2026.
Climate extremes are projected to increase with climate change, and have the potential to negatively impact terrestrial ecosystems with consequences for carbon- and water cycles. While the responses of ecosystems to increasing CO2 concentrations and the resulting climate change are relatively well studied, the reversibility of ecosystem responses under forcing reversals remains less understood. Using the idealised CDRMIP experiment set-up, we assess the reversibility of simulated ecosystem stress and associated changes in physiological ecosystem resilience which we quantified using lag-1 autocorrelation. We identify Amazonia as a hotspot for hysteretic behaviour in ecosystem stress responses at a high model agreement level (six out of eight), characterized by generally stronger negative carbon flux anomalies at identical CO2 levels during ramp down compared to ramp up. While previous studies have suggested localized tipping or abrupt responses in parts of Amazonia, we do not detect significant changes in physiological resilience throughout the CO2 ramp up. However, we find reduced physiological resilience in South Amazonia comparing equivalent CO₂ levels during ramp down and ramp up, pointing to potential limits in the capacity of these ecosystems to recover from stress induced by global change.
How to cite: Teckentrup, L., Liu, L., Donat, M., Bernardello, R., Nieradzik, L., and Tourigny, E.: Reversibility after reversals? Hysteretic ecosystem stress responses under CO2 removal, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-21313, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-21313, 2026.
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) and the Amazon rainforest are two vital components of the Earth system that regulate global climate and biosphere integrity. There is growing concern that both systems may approach critical thresholds beyond which they could, potentially irreversibly, tip to alternative stable states. However, it remains unclear how their stability changes when they are considered as an interlinked system rather than in isolation.
Although ecological rainforest processes and large-scale ocean circulation may appear distinct, they share a key coupling agent: freshwater. Here, we quantify these ocean–vegetation freshwater interactions by combining UTrack, a Lagrangian moisture tracking method, with complex network analysis. We first establish an empirical reference based on ERA5 reanalysis data to characterize present-day moisture pathways and recycling. Next, we extend this analysis to Earth System Model simulations under 2°C of global warming, as well as scenarios with additional AMOC collapse or Amazon rainforest dieback.
Under present-day conditions, easterly trade winds transport large amounts of moisture from the Atlantic Ocean to the Amazon (≈ 0.35 Sverdrups, 1 Sv = 10⁶ m³ s⁻¹), sustaining the rainforest and its self-amplifying moisture recycling mechanism (≈ 0.23 Sv). In turn, freshwater is returned to the Atlantic via the Amazon’s exceptionally large river discharge (≈ 0.21 Sv), and atmospheric moisture export (≈ 0.062 Sv), conceivably influencing the salt–advection feedback that drives the AMOC. Our findings suggest that a substantial weakening of the AMOC may alter the strength, spatial configuration, and seasonal variability of the trade winds, thereby affecting both moisture transport to the Amazon and internal moisture recycling within the basin. Conversely, large-scale Amazon forest dieback may influence freshwater fluxes that are relevant for the stability of the AMOC. Together, these results provide a foundation for exploring AMOC–Amazon interactions in (conceptual) coupled modelling frameworks, guiding future research on potential tipping cascades and Earth system resilience.
How to cite: De Maeyer, K., Staal, A., Bastiaansen, R., Stanchieri, C., Dijkstra, H., and Rietkerk, M.: Tracing moisture pathways to understand AMOC–Amazon tipping interactions, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-9787, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-9787, 2026.
Posters on site: Thu, 7 May, 08:30–10:15 | Hall X5
This poster provides an overview of the PROMOTE (Progressing Earth System Modelling for Tipping Point Early Warning Systems) project. One project aim is to develop a version of the UK Earth System Model (UKESM) that is suitable to become the model component of a potential early warning system of Subpolar Gyre or Greenland Ice Sheet tipping. In PROMOTE, we (i) undertake targeted development of UKESM to advance its representation of the Greenland Ice Sheet and North Atlantic Subpolar Gyre, (ii) develop innovative simulation techniques aiming to make the simulation of tipping behaviour in the Subpolar Gyre and Greenland Ice Sheet more controlled and efficient, (iii) use machine-learning and other analysis techniques as well as model simulations to inform the design of observational networks, and (iv) evaluate tipping processes and impacts of tipping in our newly developed model versions. PROMOTE is run by a team of scientists and model developers at 7 UK national research centres and universities during 2025-2030, and is part of the “Forecasting Tipping Points” programme funded by the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA).
How to cite: Schiemann, R., Blaker, A., Bruciaferri, D., Cornford, S., Dittus, A., Jackson, L., Jebri, F., Jeffery, H., Jones, C., Kuhlbrodt, T., Lang, C., Mulcahy, J., Naughten, K., Popova, E., Robson, J., Smith, R., Sinha, B., Swaminathan, R., Tett, S., and Wood, R.: An overview of the PROMOTE project: Progressing Earth System Modelling for Tipping Point Early Warning Systems, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-14794, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-14794, 2026.
Climate attractors are asymptotic steady states of the climate system, embedded in a high-dimensional phase space. They represent distinct climatic regimes, separated by unstable boundaries where small perturbations can cause the climate to transition from one attractor to another. Identifying climate attractors in simulations performed with state-of-the-art models is challenging [1] due to the high computational costs associated with running multi-millennial, multi-component simulations with a continuous spectrum of variability. Nevertheless, the number of attractors and their stability ranges can provide crucial information about the numerical representation of nonlinear interactions in a model, and reveal the dynamical structure of the climate system.
In the search for climate attractors under the present-day continental configuration, we used a recently developed modelling framework called biogeodyn-MITgcmIS [2], in which the dynamical core of both the atmosphere and the ocean is provided by the MIT general circulation model, while offline coupling ensures the consistent evolution of vegetation and ice sheets. Using this coupled setup, we identified three distinct climatic states: a glacial state, an interglacial state, and a hot state with a strongly reduced Greenland ice sheet. These states coexist over a range of atmospheric CO₂ concentrations, thereby defining hysteresis paths between the attractors.
Here, we describe the methodology used to identify these attractors and highlight the crucial role of ice-sheet and vegetation evolution. We characterize the attractors in terms of their dominant feedback mechanisms. We find that, while the positive overturning cell mainly changes in intensity during the transition from the cold to the warm state, it collapses during the transition from the warm to the hot state. Crossing the warm-hot boundary involves substantial vegetation changes, the disappearance of the Greenland ice sheet, and a reduction of sea ice in the Antarctic region. Finally, we discuss the need to repeat similar investigations using different climate models to assess the robustness of the identified attractors and mechanisms.
[1] Brunetti and Ragon, Phys. Rev. E 107, 054214 (2023)
[2] Moinat et al., EGUsphere [preprint], https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2946 (2025)
How to cite: Brunetti, M. and Moinat, L.: In search of climate attractors, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-6664, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-6664, 2026.
As the aim of limiting global warming to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels is getting out of reach, the world enters a risk zone for climate tipping points. For several crucial tipping elements, such as the polar ice sheets and the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a tipping threshold below 2°C cannot be ruled out. We develop an emulator for tipping elements to assess the risks of continental and regional tipping points with severe impacts on global conditions for human life, namely the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, the Amazon rainforest, the AMOC and permafrost. Given the most recent advances in model capabilities for simulating coupled components of the Earth system, we directly parameterize the dynamic behaviour of our modelled tipping elements and their interactions according to a range of current process-based Earth system model experiments for the first time. With this empirically calibrated emulator, we assess tipping risks under overshoot scenarios and investigate the impact of several properties of temperature trajectories like peak temperatures, overshoot timescales and temperature reduction pathways, including carbon dioxide removal. Our results imply a crucial role for both emission mitigation and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) for tipping risks until 2200. We find that under current policies and actions, substantial deployment of CDR methods would have to take place well within this century to limit tipping risks in the next centuries to 10%. On millennial timescales, the return to a safe operating space w.r.t. tipping points is decided by the mitigation efforts of the next decades and the global storage capacity for carbon removal.
How to cite: Lohmann, N., Donges, J., and Wunderling, N.: Carbon Dioxide Removal Pathways in Climate Overshoots Are Decisive for Tipping Risks in an Earth System Model-Based Tipping Dynamics Emulator, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-6801, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-6801, 2026.
Quantifying and comparing the performance of methods that detect abrupt changes in climate time series remains challenging due to limited ground-truth data and the complex, nonlinear and stochastic dynamics of the climate system. To address this gap, we present PONDS (Perturbed Observables in Noisy Dynamics Synthesiser), a new software package designed to generate synthetic, climate-like time series for benchmarking and methodological development. PONDS serves three core purposes: (1) mimicking real-world climate shift events through configurable perturbations applied to synthetic or observationally informed dynamical systems; (2) enabling evaluation of abrupt-shift detectors by providing standardized benchmark datasets with known structural and statistical properties; and (3) offering a flexible framework for incorporating alternative time-series generators within a climate-data context.
PONDS provides a controlled environment for exploring the detectability of regime shifts under varying assumptions about noise characteristics and complexity of the shift events. This includes the generation of spatio-temporal clusters and time series of customizable configurations. For example, a user can generate shift cluster events that spatially overlap and shift event properties propagate. This bridging tool supports systematic sensitivity analysis and promotes reproducible comparison across detection algorithms.
PONDS aims to contribute to the session by offering a modular tool that is able to enhance data-driven abrupt shift detection tools and potential climate tipping points, by providing a benchmark oriented data synthesizer. It further helps to understand the various appearances of practically observed and theoretically expected shift events.
How to cite: Röhrich, L., Harteg, J., Kühlein, F., Donges, J., and Loriani, S.: PONDS - A Python Package for Generating Synthetic Datasets with Spatio-Temporal Shifts, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-2216, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-2216, 2026.
Droughts are a dominant climate stressor in Mediterranean ecosystems, and frequency and intensity of these events are expected to increase. Multi-year long-lasting droughts involving ‘memory’ effects, make short-term or event-specific analysis insufficient to assess ecosystem's responses. We present a remote-sensing framework that combines kernel-density-based phenological anomalies with cumulative sums (Cusums) trajectories to assess long-term functional change in Mediterranean forests of Central Chile. Using MODIS EVI, Moisture Stress Index (MSI) and Evapotranspiration (ET), we generate spatially explicit indicators that capture gradual deviations from the expected phenology and persistent directional shifts.
Our framework revealed persistent negative trajectories preceding the 2010–present megadrought, indicating chronic water stress and progressive loss of resilience. The spatially-explicit indicators highlighted spatially coherent degradation hotspots—northern sclerophyllous and southern deciduous forests—where canopy greenness, moisture, and evapotranspiration declined synchronously. By contrasting pre- and post-2010 relationships between vegetation indices and hydro-climatic variables, we detect a shift of forest-climate interactions consistent with increasing water limitation conditions.
Our results demonstrate how combining KDE-derived anomalies with cumulative change metrics enhance the detection of early and persistent vegetation stress from satellite time series. This provides a sensitive framework to detect early and persistent vegetation stress and to anticipate functional thresholds under continued aridification.
How to cite: Lastra, J., Chávez, R. O., Decuyper, M., Lau, A., and de Beurs, K.: Cumulative drought stress and forest functional changes in drought-prone Mediterranean forests, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-7125, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-7125, 2026.
The Amazon rainforest is considered one of the core tipping elements in the climate system with a potential tipping point in the range of 2-6℃ of global warming. However, the complexity of tropical ecosystems makes climate change projections on the future of the Amazon rainforest inherently difficult. Furthermore, deforestation as an additional driver plays a key role in the Amazon rainforest and can synergistically interfere with global warming induced impacts. This creates a need for combined assessments of the safe operating space of the Amazon rainforest under global warming and deforestation.
Here, we introduce a risk-assessment approach combining a simple tipping model with different data sources for local-scale tipping points, precipitation changes due to climate change (mean annual precipitation and maximum cumulative water deficit), strength of the atmospheric moisture-recycling feedback and future deforestation pathways. With this approach we can quantify the safe operating space of the Amazon rainforest and find
that under current conditions of 1.4℃ of global warming and 17% of deforestation, more than a third of the Amazon rainforest is exposed to high risks of crossing critical thresholds indicating that substantial parts of the Amazon rainforest may have already left the safe operating space. Our results reiterate the need to hold the Paris climate target and also end net deforestation by 2030.
How to cite: Krönke, J., Staal, A., Donges, J. F., Rockström, J., and Wunderling, N.: A data-driven modelling approach to quantify the safe operating space of the Amazon rainforest under global warming and deforestation, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-6621, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-6621, 2026.
Detecting regime shifts in ecological systems is crucial for anticipating changes and guiding management actions or ecosystem restoration. When ecosystems are trapped in an undesirable state, assessing their resilience can provide guidance for deciding how and when to intervene on system to trigger a shift to a more desirable state. By understanding how strongly the system resists change, one can better anticipate the type, intensity and timing of such interventions.
To design effective interventions, it is necessary to distinguish causal effects from correlations and determine how acting on a given driver can change the system’s resilience. We show that adopting a causal approach provides tools to measure the resilience of a system — thus how far a bifurcation point is — and the effect of interventions, contributing to better ecosystem management.
We illustrate this approach using the example of freshwater eutrophication, where lakes can shift from a clear to a turbid state (and vice-versa). Using observational data combined with knowledge of causal interactions, we outline a protocol to measure system resilience and anticipate the effects of interventions — such as nutrient reduction or biomanipulation — tailored to the current regime. For example, causal effect estimation can help answering questions such as: given the current state of my system, what would be the effect of e.g. removing big fishes from the lake during one month? Should I reduce the resilience of the turbid state beforehand in order for that intervention to be sufficient, by e.g. reducing the nutrient input?
The method is designed as a general tool for experts and can be applied across multiple ecosystems exhibiting tipping dynamics. It provides a framework based on explicitly specifying the causal graph linking system variables, identifying which variables can be intervened upon, estimating resilience from observational data, and selecting interventions that achieve a predefined management goal while accounting for associated costs.
How to cite: Lanson, A., Wahl, J., and Runge, J.: A causal framework for anticipating and managing ecological regime shifts, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-20679, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-20679, 2026.
The Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) events represent iconic tipping points in the Earth's climate system. However, objectively identifying these transitions and extracting reliable early warning signals (EWS) from high-resolution but noisy paleoclimate archives remains a significant challenge. In this study, we implement a systematic framework to evaluate and compare multiple computational methods for identifying abrupt climate shifts in paleoclimate records. To address the non-stationarity and proxy-specific noise inherent in different records, we employ an adaptive signal decomposition technique. This allows for the extraction of high-frequency dynamical features to quantify indicators of critical slowing down, specifically temporal autocorrelation within sliding windows. Results indicate that the deep learning-based framework exhibits superior robustness in capturing transient waveforms across different proxy types compared to conventional linear or state-space models. Notably, we observe significant discrepancies in transition timing and EWS strength between the different records. High-frequency atmospheric components demonstrate a more pronounced loss of resilience prior to major D-O transitions, suggesting that atmospheric reorganization may serve as a highly sensitive precursor to large-scale climate reorganization. Our findings highlight the potential of combining machine learning with advanced signal processing to diagnose the proximity of climate thresholds. This integrated framework provides a robust basis for assessing the stability of the coupled ice-ocean-atmosphere system and offers new insights into the predictability of abrupt climate changes during the last glacial period.
How to cite: Zhu, L., Xiao, C., and Zhang, T.: Multi-proxy Evaluation of Abrupt Climate Transition Predictability in Paleoclimate Records, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-16282, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-16282, 2026.
Global warming increases the risk of crossing critical temperature thresholds, so-called climate tipping points, which trigger large-scale, non-linear, and possibly irreversible changes in the Earth System accompanied by substantial impacts on the biosphere and human societies. However, precise temperature projections remain uncertain, largely due to the spread in climate sensitivity estimates. Equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) quantifies long-term temperature response to a doubling of atmospheric CO2. Here, we analyze how climate tipping risk is affected by ECS uncertainty by propagating a range of temperature projections from the simple climate model FaIR to PyCascades, a model of interacting tipping elements. Considered tipping elements are the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, the Greenland Ice Sheet, the Amazon rainforest, and the Atlantic Meridional Overturn Circulation. We find a nonlinear, logistic relationship between ECS and climate tipping risk for a wide range of atmospheric CO2 concentrations. The exact relation depends strongly on CO2 concentration, underlining the importance of both emissions and climate sensitivity in determining system stability. Higher ECS values strongly amplify the likelihood of crossing tipping points. Moreover, a recent observational constraint on ECS set a lower limit at 2.9°C, which implies a high tipping risk of at least 75 % for present-day atmospheric CO2 concentration. These results highlight the critical importance of narrowing ECS uncertainty and improving understanding of its drivers, as even moderate ECS estimates imply substantial long-term risks of triggering tipping events.
How to cite: Mühlhaus, R., Steinert, N. J., and Wunderling, N.: Observationally constrained climate sensitivity implies high climate tipping risk, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-3395, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-3395, 2026.
Human-induced environmental changes are rapidly reshaping the Earth system, with significant implications for human habitability. While existing safe and just Earth System Boundaries (ESBs) have delineated critical planetary thresholds, the future evolution of human habitable conditions remains unclear, especially given the transgression of all eight global ESBs and the underexplored "just" dimension of health and well-being. Here we propose the habitable composite volume (HCV), defined on a three–dimensional environmental phase space P, to quantify the collapsing boundaries of human habitability under the Great Acceleration. During the historical period (1981–2014), global HCV declined by approximately 27%, from 0.66 to 0.48. Under the projections of Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, the high-emission scenario poses the greatest risk, with HCV declining by up to 78% from 2015 to 2100 and collapsing areas encompassing 91.6% of global land, drastically reducing viable living space. Of greatest concern is that, high-risk regions—where collapse coincides with dense populations—expand nearly tenfold (1.7% to 16-18%) under moderate-to-high emissions, disproportionately affecting vulnerable developing regions first before extending to every continent. These findings highlight the escalating risks to human habitability and underscore the urgency of both mitigation and adaptation strategies to address this global crisis.
How to cite: Wang, F., Ran, Q., Ye, G., Li, Q., Wei, T., Yuan, N., Yang, Q., Xiao, C., Zhou, T., Zhai, P., Ha, K.-J., Franzke, C. L. E., Chen, C., Chen, D., and Dong, W.: Future Simulations Project a Significant Decrease in Habitability Space of Safe and Just Earth System Boundaries, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-4451, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-4451, 2026.
In the Planetary Boundaries framework, Biosphere Integrity is considered one of the “core boundaries” due to its vital role in the Earth system and its numerous interconnections with other boundaries (Rockström et al. 2009, Steffen et al. 2015, Richardson et al. 2023). The Planetary Boundary of Biosphere Integrity is assessed based on genetic diversity and functional integrity. While the current control variable for the genetic diversity component takes both terrestrial and marine life into account, the control variable for the functional integrity component so far only includes terrestrial life. In order to advance the representation of marine life within the boundary of functional biosphere integrity, we suggest the addition of a marine control variable that addresses the combined effect of multiple stressors on marine ecosystem health. The aim of the work presented here is to develop the basis for a multiple-stressor index that takes into account the interaction of ocean warming and ocean acidification. The index seeks to quantify the cumulative impact of anthropogenic stressors on marine ecosystems, such as kelp forests. Most species of kelp are considered foundation species due to their strong role in structuring the ecosystem. Macrocystis pyrifera (giant kelp) is the first species to be included in the development of this multiple-stressor index due to its global distribution, its important role in providing ecosystem services, and the current data availability (Roethler et al., 2025). Future work will consist of including other species and ecosystems, as well as additional stressors.
References:
Rockström, J., Steffen, W., Noone, K. et al. A safe operating space for humanity. Nature 461, 472–475 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/461472a
Steffen, W. et al.,Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet.Science347,1259855(2015).DOI:10.1126/science.1259855
Richardson, K. et al., Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries.Sci. Adv.9,eadh2458(2023).DOI:10.1126/sciadv.adh2458
Roethler, M. et al., Global Meta-Analysis Reveals the Impacts of Ocean Warming and Acidification on Kelps. Ecological Monographs95(3):e70034(2025). https://doi.org/10.1002/ecm.70034
How to cite: Alvarado Amaro, A., Dupont, S., Caesar, L., and Mathesius, S.: Assessing multiple stressors on marine ecosystems in the context of the Planetary Boundaries framework , EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-15460, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-15460, 2026.
The Planetary Boundaries (PB) Framework seeks to identify key Earth system processes that sustain planetary stability and are vulnerable to large-scale perturbations driven by human activities (Richardson et al. 2023). The Planetary Health Check 2025 reports that seven of the nine Planetary Boundaries have already been exceeded, including the recently transgressed boundary of ocean acidification (Sakschewski et al. 2025). Ocean acidification poses substantial risks to marine ecosystems by altering the carbonate system at rates that challenge the capacity of calcifying organisms to adapt to the new conditions. These changes threaten ecosystem functioning, marine carbon sequestration, and the provision of marine ecosystem services. In addition, ocean acidification is associated with a measurable decline in the ocean’s buffer capacity (Müller et al. 2023), which reduces the efficiency of the ocean sink for anthropogenic CO₂ and thereby weakens the ocean’s capacity to mitigate climate change. In this contribution, we examine the rationale underlying earlier assumptions and methodological choices in the assessment of ocean acidification within the PB Framework, and discuss approaches that could improve its representation and evaluation. These include an explicit consideration of subsurface acidification, the consideration of regional variability in the derivation of a global threshold, and the exploration of alternative indicators for evaluating the state and impacts of ocean acidification. We demonstrate how incorporating the best available scientific understanding and the most recent observational evidence into the assessment of the Planetary Boundary of ocean acidification can advance the current methodology and help ensure its scientific robustness and relevance.
Richardson, K., Steffen, W., Lucht, W., Bendtsen, J., Cornell, S. E., Donges, J. F., ... & Rockström, J. (2023). Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries. Science advances, 9(37), eadh2458.
Sakschewski, B., Caesar, L., Andersen, L., Bechthold, M., Bergfeld, L., Beusen, A., ... & Rockström, J. (2025). Planetary Health Check 2025: a scientific assessment of the state of the planet. Planetary Boundaries Science (PBScience), 144.
Müller, J. D., Gruber, N., Carter, B., Feely, R., Ishii, M., Lange, N., ... & Zhu, D. (2023). Decadal trends in the oceanic storage of anthropogenic carbon from 1994 to 2014. AGU Advances, 4(4), e2023AV000875.
How to cite: Mathesius, S. and Caesar, L.: Ocean Acidification in the Planetary Boundaries Framework, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-12218, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-12218, 2026.
Accurately assessing the planetary boundary for China’s functional biosphere integrity is constrained by the scarcity of high-precision agricultural land-use data. To address this limitation, we reconstructed China’s historical cropping patterns based on our recently developed 1-km crop harvest area dataset and used these inputs to drive the dynamic global vegetation model LPJmL, enabling spatially explicit assessments of China’s functional biosphere integrity since the industrial period. We quantified the Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production (HANPP) and an ecological disruption metric (EcoRisk) to characterize the spatiotemporal evolution of functional biosphere integrity and its deviation from the Holocene baseline. We further identified China-specific planetary boundary thresholds and assessed the spatial heterogeneity of transgression patterns in terms of functional biosphere integrity. Our results indicated that the Huang-Huai-Hai Region and the Middle-Lower Yangtze Region experienced persistently high risks of boundary transgression, while Northeast and Southern China regions transitioned from a safe operating space to high-risk states during the mid-to-late 20th century. Notably, while HANPP has stabilized or declined in response to recent ecological policies, EcoRisk remains at a critically high level. These findings provide a valuable reference for assessing biosphere integrity in China and offer a framework for translating planetary boundary thresholds to regional scales.
How to cite: Xie, Y., Dai, K., Cheng, C., and Wu, X.: Assessing planetary boundary transgressions in China’s functional biosphere integrity, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-15605, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-15605, 2026.
Recent research has raised concerns that the Earth’s global surface temperature (GST) change relative to preindustrial levels (mean temperature 1850-1900), a key indicator closely connected to the planetary boundary for climate change, is in a human-caused phase of acceleration rather than just following a linear trajectory. However, at this point, reliably tracking this acceleration signal in a timely manner and clearly distinguishing it from natural variability remains difficult.
To address this, we propose a new method to regularly forecast the GST change, including both a prediction of the annual-mean of the current year and a projection of the 20-year mean up to 10 years ahead. The forecasts comprise both the global surface air temperature (GSAT) change as primary metric, also used by the IPCC for assessing the degree of compliance with Paris Agreement temperature limits, and for legacy purposes as well the global mean surface temperature (GMST) change, which (mainly) is a blend of surface water temperature over the oceans and surface air temperature over land.
We introduce and demonstrate the method over the 1990 to 2025 timespan. It provides annual-mean results for any current year, and the related 20-year-mean estimates, as early as of July of the year, followed by monthly updates until the current year is observationally complete (within the first quarter of the follow-on year). By combining monthly observational GMST and GSAT data from reliable sources, including reanalysis and seasonal prediction data, a typical GST forecast accuracy within 0.03 °C is achieved as of August of the current year for the annual mean, and a typical 10-year projection accuracy of within 0.05 °C for the 20-year-mean. The latter is a critical metric for early clues on emerging next-decade changes in the Earth system.
We show that the approach enhances the accuracy and timeliness of early-warning estimates of the ongoing GST change, including of GST change acceleration of current-year versus center-year-1990 20-year-mean trend rates and of the related level of exceedance over natural trend-rate variability. As an example, our prediction of September 2025 for the annual-mean GSAT change in 2025 was 1.48 °C, four months ahead of the January 2026 announcement of the EU Copernicus Climate Change Service of a GSAT change of 1.47 °C. By improving in this way our ability to detect and characterize GST change dynamics in a timely and reliable manner, this work provides valuable insights into the warming state of the climate system and its proximity to critical thresholds such as tipping points, along with co-informing on the Earth energy imbalance and potential destabilization tendencies in climate feedback processes. The findings also help inform discussions on the urgency of climate mitigation efforts to avoid exceeding planetary boundaries.
How to cite: Pichler, M. and Kirchengast, G.: Earlier warning on global warming: a new method for timely tracking and forecasting of global surface temperature change and accelerations, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-14279, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-14279, 2026.
Time use provides a universal physically conserved variable for measuring human activity at multiple scales. While time use research spans several disciplines, focus has been mainly on the national scale, and global analysis is just now becoming possible with the development of a suitable dataset. Emergent global patterns in time allocation can constrain the possibility space of human systems represented in future scenarios, for example by assessing the implied change in time use for post-growth economies or from transitioning to sustainable agriculture. Here we present a synthesis of globally gap-filled, demographically consistent time use data across 36 physical outcome-oriented activities, and pair it with a long-term reconstruction of labour by sector. The complete set of daily and economic activities reveals that the employed share of the global population has been constant over time at about 40% and mean working hours average 2.6 hours per day per capita. We also demonstrate how person-hours can be downscaled to 1-degree spatial resolution to link labour activity to other spatial features, such as cropland, extraction sites, or urban areas. The dataset is intended to enable further high-level research into human-Earth interactions.
How to cite: Fajzel, W. and Galbaith, E.: Global time use for human-Earth system interactions, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-15173, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-15173, 2026.
This dissertation seeks to investigate how the Earth Systems Boundaries (ESBs), a safe and just corridor framework, can be integrated as an “what if” scenario to digital earth twins such as Destination Earth (DestinE). DestinE is a technological replica of Earth that provides continuous data for real-time monitoring and simulation of environmental and human activities, and provides “what if” scenarios, which is expected to be completed by 2030 (European Commission, 2025).The ESBs integration to a digital twin such as DestinE can contribute to systemic monitoring, simulation, and modelling of earth and human activities holistically at a level that could provide greater sustainability information concerning decision making and real-time data, and therefore contribute to city, business, and resource management optimization.
How to cite: Romero, M.: Digital Earth Twin’s Systemic Integration and Transformational Pathways , EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-8302, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-8302, 2026.
The rapid expansion of solar and wind power has transformed electricity systems, yet high penetrations of variable renewable energy (VRE) increasingly undermine their own economic viability through price cannibalization, rising curtailment, and revenue volatility. Consistent with these self-limiting dynamics, influential projections for VRE deployment generally underestimate the expected growth of solar photovoltaics, often implicitly constraining renewables and power-to-X technologies in favor of nuclear power, bioenergy, and fossil fuels with carbon capture. These constraints slow investment and risk stalling clean energy transitions before deep decarbonization is achieved.
While grid-scale battery storage is widely proposed as a solution, most existing studies assess storage either as an exogenous technology or as a short-term operational asset. It therefore remains unclear whether storage can fundamentally alter long-run transition dynamics or instead deliver only incremental benefits. This study investigates whether grid-scale battery storage can function as a tipping enabler by reshaping the feedback structure of electricity systems and restoring renewable value.
We adopt a systems perspective to examine the coupled evolution of renewable deployment, electricity price formation, storage revenues, learning effects, and investment delays. This approach explicitly represents feedback that can give rise to nonlinear regime shifts, central mechanisms behind positive tipping points in socio-technical systems. This builds upon FeliX, a global system dynamics-based integrated assessment model that emphasizes behavioral and investment dynamics while representing key energy–economy linkages. We extend the model with a battery submodule that endogenizes grid-scale storage deployment, revenues, and learning-by-doing. An electric vehicle component is included to capture battery diffusion dynamics and their contribution to cost reductions, rather than to represent transport in detail.
The results reveal pronounced nonlinear dynamics. At low storage penetration, batteries provide limited flexibility and do not prevent declining renewable revenues; balancing feedback associated with price cannibalization dominate, resulting in stagnating investment. Once storage capacity exceeds a critical threshold relative to renewable output, however, the system undergoes a qualitative regime shift. Curtailment declines sharply, price volatility is reduced, and the captured price of renewable electricity stabilizes or increases with further deployment, activating a self-reinforcing investment pathway. Importantly, learning-driven cost reductions alone are insufficient to trigger this transition when deployment delays, revenue erosion, and soft-cost constraints are considered. These factors can suppress reinforcing feedback and lock the system into a low-flexibility regime despite favorable technology trends. Scenario experiments show stabilizing revenues or reducing deployment delays, consistently enable tipping, and their effectiveness is strongly state-dependent.
Overall, the findings identify grid-scale battery storage as a potential leverage point for enabling positive tipping dynamics in electricity systems, while underscoring that self-reinforcing decarbonization critically depends on feedback activation, institutional design, and the timing of policy interventions.
How to cite: Hartvig, Á. D., Leoncio Hehl, D., Tan, R. Y. W., and Eker, S.: Positive tipping cascades in the power system driven by adoption of grid-scale batteries , EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-20651, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-20651, 2026.
Food is the foundation of our society. We often take it for granted, but stocks are rarely available for longer than a year, and food production can be disrupted by catastrophic events, both locally and globally. To highlight such major risks to the food system, we analyzed FAO crop production data from 1961 to 2023 to find the largest crop production shock for every country and identify its causes. We show that large crop production shocks regularly happen in all countries. This is most often driven by climate (especially droughts), but disruptions by other causes like economic disruptions, environmental hazards (especially storms) and conflict also occur regularly. The global mean of largest country-level shocks averaged -29%, with African countries experiencing the most extreme collapses (-80% in Botswana), while Asian and Central European nations faced more moderate largest shocks (-5 to -15%). While global shocks above 5% are rare (occurring once in 63 years), continent-level shocks of this magnitude happen every 1.8 years on average. These results show that large disruptions to our food system frequently happen on a local to regional scale and can plausibly happen on a global scale as well. We therefore argue that more preparation and planning are needed to avoid such global disruptions to food production.
How to cite: Jehn, F. U., Mulhall, J., Blouin, S., Gajewski, L., and Wunderling, N.: The Largest Crop Production Shocks: Magnitude, Causes and Frequency, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-2788, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-2788, 2026.
