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Home » Section 1 » Earth System Tipping Points » 1.5 » 1.5.2 » 1.5.2.1

1.5.2.1 Interactions across scales in space and time

In this section, we lay out the current state of the scientific literature on the interaction processes between several tipping systems and some other nonlinear components of the Earth system. The summary is shown in Figures 1.5.1 and 1.5.3. 

Figure: 1.5.1
Figure: 1.5.1 Interactions between established and more speculative tipping systems on a world map. All tipping systems discussed in this chapter are shown together with their potential connections. The causal interaction links can have stabilising (blue arrows), destabilising (red arrows), or unclear (grey arrows) effects. For some systems, it is speculative whether they are tipping systems on their own (such as ENSO or the Arctic sea ice) and they are denoted as such (blue outer ring) but they are included if they play an important role in mediating transitions towards (or from) core tipping systems. Tipping systems that exert a notable feedback on global mean temperature (GMT) when they tip are denoted by a red inner ring (for instance via albedo changes in case of a disintegration of the Greenland or West Antarctic ice sheets or Arctic sea ice, or via carbon release through tipping of permafrost or rainforests). This temperature feedback can be positive (i.e. amplifying warming, as likely for the permafrost, the Arctic sea ice, the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, the Amazon rainforest and ENSO) or negative. Source: Wunderling and von der Heydt et al. (accepted).

These systems are not isolated entities but interact across the entire globe (Figure 1.5.1). Not only do the interactions span global distances, but some tipping systems themselves can be of regional spatial scale (e.g. coral reefs or the GrIS), while others cover significant portions of the globe (e.g. the AMOC). Also, timescales differ vastly among the different climate tipping systems: some are considered fast tipping systems once the process has been initiated (in the order of years/decades to centuries, such as the Amazon rainforest and AMOC), while others are considered slow tipping systems (in the order of centuries to millennia, such as the GrIS). These different spatial and temporal scales of the individual tipping systems are therefore also important for their interactions and are mapped out in Figure 1.5.2 (Rocha et al., 2018; Kriegler et al., 2009). The respective processes of the interactions can be found in Figure 1.5.3, alongside an estimation of the interaction direction and, if available, an estimation of their strength.

Figure: 1.5.2
Figure: 1.5.2 Interactions between tipping systems across scales in space and time. Temporal scales are transitioning times of a disintegrating tipping system from months up to millennia. Spatial scales denote the system size from sub-continental to (nearly) global scales. Transitioning times are taken from Armstrong McKay et al. (2022), and spatial scales from Winkelmann et al. (2022). The causal links can be stabilising (blue arrows), destabilising (red arrows), or unclear (grey arrows). Some tipping systems are particularly speculative (such as ENSO or the Arctic sea ice) and denoted as such (outer blue border). Tipping systems that exert a feedback on the global mean temperature (GMT) when they tip are shown with an inner red border.  Adapted from: Wunderling and von der Heydt et al. (accepted).

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