Machine-learning prediction of tipping with applications to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation

TL;DR

This paper develops a machine-learning framework to predict critical tipping points in dynamical systems, with a focus on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, providing early warning estimates for potential collapse due to climate change.

Contribution

It introduces a novel data-driven approach leveraging noise benefits to forecast tipping points in nonautonomous systems, validated across multiple fields.

Findings

Predicted AMOC collapse window from 2040 to 2065

Framework successfully applied to synthetic and empirical data

Results align with current climate literature

Abstract

Anticipating a tipping point, a transition from one stable steady state to another, is a problem of broad relevance due to the ubiquity of the phenomenon in diverse fields. The steady-state nature of the dynamics about a tipping point makes its prediction significantly more challenging than predicting other types of critical transitions from oscillatory or chaotic dynamics. Exploiting the benefits of noise, we develop a general data-driven and machine-learning approach to predicting potential future tipping in nonautonomous dynamical systems and validate the framework using examples from different fields. As an application, we address the problem of predicting the potential collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), possibly driven by climate-induced changes in the freshwater input to the North Atlantic. Our predictions based on synthetic and currently available empirical data place a potential collapse window spanning from 2040 to 2065, in consistency with the results in the current literature.