Weather instabilities as a warning sign for a nearby climatic tipping point?

TL;DR

This paper explores how increasing climate instabilities can serve as warning signs for imminent tipping points, using nonlinear dynamical systems theory to predict sudden climate shifts.

Contribution

It introduces a simple dynamical systems approach to identify early warning signs of climate bifurcations and potential abrupt transitions.

Findings

Increasing instabilities precede bifurcations

Warning signs can indicate an approaching climate tipping point

Prediction of transition timing is discussed

Abstract

Using in a simple way the theory of non linear dynamical systems, we show that increasing climatic instabilities may be a qualitative warning sign for the occurrence of a nearby bifurcation, yielding a discontinuous and sudden climate tipping towards an unknown and unpredictable state. The possibility of an accurate prediction of the occurrence time of such a transition is also discussed in terms of the approach of a critical point.