Dresden 2020 – scientific programme

The DPG Spring Meeting in Dresden had to be cancelled! Read more ...

Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Updates | Downloads | Help

SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme

SOE 8: Climate Impact and Human-Economy-Nature Interactions (accompanying the symposium SYCE)

SOE 8.2: Talk

Wednesday, March 18, 2020, 12:45–13:00, HSZ 02

Dynamic emergence of domino effects in systems of interacting tipping elements in ecology and climate — •Ann Kristin Klose^1,2, Volker Karle^1,3, Ricarda Winkelmann^1,4, and Jonathan Donges^1,5 — ¹Earth System Analysis, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany — ²Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Germany — ³Institute of Science and Technology Austria, Klosterneuburg, Austria — ⁴Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany — ⁵Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

In ecology, climate and other fields, systems have been identified that can transition into a qualitatively different state when a critical threshold in a driving process is crossed. An understanding of those tipping elements is of great interest given the increasing influence of humans on the biophysical Earth system. Tipping elements are not independent from each other as there exist complex interactions. Based on earlier work on such coupled nonlinear systems, we systematically assessed the qualitative asymptotic behavior of interacting tipping elements. We developed an understanding of the consequences of interactions on the tipping behavior allowing for domino effects to emerge under certain conditions. The application of these qualitative results to real-world examples of interacting tipping elements shows that domino effects with profound consequences can occur and calls for the development of a unified theory of interacting tipping elements and the quantitative analysis of interacting real-world tipping elements.