Boers et al. (2025) Destabilization of Earth system tipping elements

Identification

• Journal: Nature Geoscience
• Year: 2025
• Date: 2025-10-01
• Authors: Niklas Boers, Teng Liu, Sebastian Bathiany, Maya Ben‐Yami, Lana Blaschke, Nils Bochow, Chris A. Boulton, Timothy M. Lenton, Andreas Morr, Da Nian, Martin Rypdal, Taylor Smith
• DOI: 10.1038/s41561-025-01787-0

Research Groups

• Earth System Modelling, School of Engineering and Design, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany
• Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany
• Global Systems Institute, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
• School of Systems Science and Institute of Nonequilibrium Systems, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
• Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Faculty of Science and Technology, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway
• Institute of Geosciences, Universität Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

Short Summary

This review demonstrates how interactions between Earth system tipping elements can generate spurious signals and mask genuine signs of destabilization. It presents observation-based evidence that the stability of the Greenland Ice Sheet, Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, South American monsoon system, and Amazon rainforest has declined in recent decades, suggesting they are nearing critical thresholds.

Objective

• To demonstrate how complex dynamics and feedbacks between Earth system tipping elements can generate spurious signals and potentially mask genuine signs of destabilization.
• To review and present observation-based evidence that the stability of four key tipping elements (Greenland Ice Sheet, Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, South American monsoon system, and Amazon rainforest) has declined in recent decades.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Global Earth system, with specific focus on regional tipping elements (Greenland, Atlantic Ocean, Amazon basin).
• Temporal Scale: Recent decades for observational evidence, with implications for future unmitigated anthropogenic warming.

Methodology and Data

• Models used: The study is a review and synthesis of existing literature and observation-based evidence. It discusses complex dynamics and feedbacks, and refers to climate models in its broader context, but does not apply a specific model for its primary analysis. Analysis data and Python code for figures are publicly available.
• Data sources: Observation-based evidence, synthesized from existing literature.

Main Results

• Interactions between Earth system tipping elements can generate misleading signals, potentially masking actual destabilization.
• Observation-based evidence indicates a decline in the stability of the central-western Greenland Ice Sheet, Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), Amazon rainforest, and South American monsoon system in recent decades.
• These four tipping elements are moving towards their critical thresholds.
• These critical thresholds may be crossed within the range of unmitigated anthropogenic warming.

Contributions

• Highlights the critical importance of understanding interactions between tipping elements to avoid misinterpreting stability signals.
• Synthesizes and presents updated, observation-based evidence confirming the declining stability of four major Earth system tipping elements.
• Underscores the urgency for enhanced monitoring of these elements and increased efforts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and land-use change to prevent irreversible transitions.

Funding

• Volkswagen Foundation
• European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme (ClimTip project, grant agreement no. 101137601; OptimESM, grant agreement no. 101081193)
• European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative (ESA-CCI) Tipping Elements SIRENE project (contract no. 4000146954/24/I-LR)
• European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 956170)
• National Key R&D Program of China (no. 2023YFE0109000)
• UiT Aurora Centre Program, UiT The Arctic University of Norway (2020)
• Research Council of Norway (project number 314570)
• DFG STRIVE project (SM 710/2-1)

Citation

@article{Boers2025Destabilization,
  author = {Boers, Niklas and Liu, Teng and Bathiany, Sebastian and Ben‐Yami, Maya and Blaschke, Lana and Bochow, Nils and Boulton, Chris A. and Lenton, Timothy M. and Morr, Andreas and Nian, Da and Rypdal, Martin and Smith, Taylor},
  title = {Destabilization of Earth system tipping elements},
  journal = {Nature Geoscience},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.1038/s41561-025-01787-0},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-025-01787-0}
}