Tipping points: Early warning and wishful thinking

The causes for and possible predictions of rapid climate changes are poorly understood. The most pronounced changes observed, beside the glacial terminations, are the Dansgaard‐Oeschger events. Present day general circulation climate models simulating glacial conditions are not capable of reproducin...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geophysical research letters 2010-10, Vol.37 (19), p.n/a
Main Authors: Ditlevsen, Peter D., Johnsen, Sigfus J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bifurcations
Circulation
Climate
Climate change
Climate models
Computer simulation
Earth
Earth sciences
Earth, ocean, space
Exact sciences and technology
Fluctuation
Geophysics
Mathematics
Nonlinear systems
Oceanography
rapid climate change
Structural stability
Time series
tipping points
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Summary:The causes for and possible predictions of rapid climate changes are poorly understood. The most pronounced changes observed, beside the glacial terminations, are the Dansgaard‐Oeschger events. Present day general circulation climate models simulating glacial conditions are not capable of reproducing these rapid shifts. It is thus not known if they are due to bifurcations in the structural stability of the climate or if they are induced by stochastic fluctuations. By analyzing a high resolution ice core record we exclude the bifurcation scenario, which strongly suggests that they are noise induced and thus have very limited predictability.
ISSN:0094-8276
1944-8007
DOI:10.1029/2010GL044486