Tipping elements in the Earth's climate system.¶
Lenton, T. M., Held, H., Kriegler, E., Hall, J. W., Lucht, W., Rahmstorf, S., & Schellnhuber, H. J. (2008). Tipping elements in the Earth's climate system. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(6), 1786-1793.
Cited by¶
6 citations across 6 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Attractor Selection and Basin Control
- Policy interventions (carbon reduction) aim to restore the basin boundary and re-stabilize the present circulation pattern, a class of risks Lenton et al. (2008) identify in their analysis of tipping elements in the Earth's climate system.
This sourceIdentifies climate tipping elements (incl. Atlantic thermohaline circulation/AMOC) and how forcing relative to feedback timescales determines whether critical thresholds are crossed and locked in. SUPPORTS marker 057 (AMOC bistability/basin shift).
Supported in partVerified against the work's full text
Lenton et al. identify Atlantic circulation collapse and bistability as a tipping risk, but do not discuss carbon cuts restoring a basin boundary.
“Under sufficient North Atlantic freshwater forcing, all models exhibit a collapse of convection.”
- Policy interventions (carbon reduction) aim to restore the basin boundary and re-stabilize the present circulation pattern, a class of risks Lenton et al. (2008) identify in their analysis of tipping elements in the Earth's climate system.
- Regime Change
- A climate regime shift occurs when the dominant mode of variability changes (e.g., from a positive North Atlantic Oscillation to a negative one) and persists for decades, a class of transitions Lenton et al. (2008) catalogue as tipping elements in the Earth's climate system.
This sourceDefinitive catalogue of large-scale climate tipping elements (AMOC, ENSO, ice sheets, monsoons), with explicit regime-shift analysis and threshold estimates for each.
Supported in partVerified against the work's full text
Lenton et al. catalogue tipping elements, including a shift of the ENSO regime, but give no NAO-style dominant-mode definition of climate regime shifts.
“shift of the ENSO regime to an El Niño-like mean state”
- A climate regime shift occurs when the dominant mode of variability changes (e.g., from a positive North Atlantic Oscillation to a negative one) and persists for decades, a class of transitions Lenton et al. (2008) catalogue as tipping elements in the Earth's climate system.
- Reversibility Horizon
- The reversibility horizon lies at the tipping point, as Lenton et al. (2008) catalog in their identification of nine climate tipping elements where reversal becomes effectively impossible past threshold.
This sourceIdentifies climate tipping elements (Arctic sea ice, Greenland Ice Sheet, Atlantic thermohaline circulation, Amazon rainforest): formalizes how the rate of change relative to feedback timescales determines whether critical thresholds are crossed and locked in.
Supported in partVerified against the work's full text
Lenton et al. do compile a short list of nine policy-relevant tipping elements, but they define tipping broadly and say models disagree on whether transitions are reversible, so 'effectively impossible to reverse' overstates them.
“for several important phase changes, state-of-the-art models differ as to whether the transition is reversible or irreversible (in principle).”
- The reversibility horizon lies at the tipping point, as Lenton et al. (2008) catalog in their identification of nine climate tipping elements where reversal becomes effectively impossible past threshold.
- Temporal Dynamics
- Recognition of temporal dynamics enables reasoning about critical windows, bottlenecks, phase transitions, and brittleness to timing disturbance, a class of irreversible threshold behaviors Lenton et al. (2008) document as tipping elements in the Earth's climate system.
This sourceIdentifies climate tipping elements (Arctic sea ice, Greenland Ice Sheet, Atlantic thermohaline circulation, Amazon rainforest): formalizes how the rate of change relative to feedback timescales determines whether critical thresholds are crossed and locked in.
Supported in partVerified against the work's full text
Lenton et al. define climate tipping elements and thresholds, but treat irreversibility as only one possible case, so 'irreversible' overstates the class they document.
“We offer a formal definition, introducing the term “tipping element” to describe subsystems of the Earth system that are at least subcontinental in scale and can be switched—under certain circumstances—into a qualitatively different state by small perturbations.”
- Recognition of temporal dynamics enables reasoning about critical windows, bottlenecks, phase transitions, and brittleness to timing disturbance, a class of irreversible threshold behaviors Lenton et al. (2008) document as tipping elements in the Earth's climate system.
- Threshold
- Regulatory reasoning that stops at "below threshold" misses this dynamic—a phenomenon Lenton, Held, Kriegler, Hall, Lucht, Rahmstorf, and Schellnhuber (2008) document for Earth-system tipping elements, where sustained sub-tipping forcings push slow variables across critical thresholds long after any single forcing event would appear "safe."
This sourceIdentifies the major tipping elements in the Earth-system and shows how sustained sub-tipping forcings can push slow variables across critical thresholds long after any single below-threshold forcing would appear safe.
Supported in partVerified against the work's full text
Lenton et al. identify Earth-system tipping elements and note that change after crossing a critical value may come much later, but they do not describe sub-tipping forcings accumulating across a threshold.
“This inequality applies to forcing trajectories for which a slight deviation above a critical value that continues for some time inevitably induces a qualitative change. This change may occur immediately after the cause or much later.”
- Regulatory reasoning that stops at "below threshold" misses this dynamic—a phenomenon Lenton, Held, Kriegler, Hall, Lucht, Rahmstorf, and Schellnhuber (2008) document for Earth-system tipping elements, where sustained sub-tipping forcings push slow variables across critical thresholds long after any single forcing event would appear "safe."
- Tipping Points (or Phase Transitions)
- .
This sourceIdentifies the major tipping elements in the Earth-system and shows how sustained sub-tipping forcings can push slow variables across critical thresholds long after any single below-threshold forcing would appear safe.
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