Transitions across Melancholia States in a Climate Model: Reconciling the Deterministic and Stochastic Points of View

TL;DR

This paper investigates how stochastic perturbations influence climate state transitions in a model with bistability, revealing that Melancholia states serve as gateways for noise-induced shifts between warm and snowball conditions.

Contribution

It demonstrates the role of Melancholia states in stochastic climate transitions and characterizes the most probable transition paths in a bistable climate model.

Findings

Stochastic perturbations induce transitions between climate states.

Melancholia states act as gateways for state transitions.

Most probable transition paths pass through Melancholia states.

Abstract

The Earth is well-known to be, in the current astronomical configuration, in a regime where two asymptotic states can be realised. The warm state we live in is in competition with the ice-covered snowball state. The bistability exists as a result of the positive ice-albedo feedback. In a previous investigation performed on a intermediate complexity climate model we have identified the unstable climate states (Melancholia states) separating the co-existing climates, and studied their dynamical and geometrical properties. The Melancholia states are ice-covered up to the mid-latitudes and attract trajectories initialised on the basins boundary. In this paper, we study how stochastically perturbing the parameter controlling the intensity of the incoming solar radiation impacts the stability of the climate. We detect transitions between the warm and the snowball state and analyse in detail the properties of the noise-induced escapes from the corresponding basins of attraction. We determine the most probable paths for the transitions and find evidence that the Melancholia states act as gateways, similarly to saddle points in an energy landscape.