Tipping points: some key results of the TIPES EU project by Marina Martínez Montero et Victor Couplet

There is rising concern that several subsystems of the Earth may respond highly nonlinearly at critical future levels of anthropogenic forcing; these levels have recently been associated with tipping points (TPs). It is paramount to identify safe operating spaces for humanity and the planet in terms of these critical forcing levels in order to prevent harmful transitions to alternative, undesirable states of the Earth system. The mechanisms leading to such abrupt transitions are only partly understood and state-of-art Earth System Models appear to have difficulties in simulating abrupt transitions that occurred in the planet’s history.

TiPES is a european funded project  that aims at improving our understanding of tipping points.  We will present some of the results of the project, with an emphasis on our contributions.

(Figure from McKay et al, 2022)