Detecting hotspots of atmosphere–vegetation interaction via slowing down – Part 2: Application to a global climate model

Abstract. Early warning signals (EWS) have become a popular statistical tool to infer stability properties of the climate system. In Part 1 of this two-part paper we have presented a diagnostic method to find the hotspot of a sudden transition as opposed to regions that experience an externally induced tipping as a mere response. Here, we apply our method to the atmosphere–vegetation model PlanetSimulator (PlaSim) – VECODE using a regression model. For each of two vegetation collapses in PlaSim-VECODE, we identify a hotspot of one particular grid cell. We demonstrate with additional experiments that the detected hotspots are indeed a particularly sensitive region in the model and give a physical explanation for these results. The method can thus provide information on the causality of sudden transitions and may help to improve the knowledge on the vulnerability of certain subsystems in climate models.

[1]  Klaus Fraedrich,et al.  Detecting hotspots of atmosphere–vegetation interaction via slowing down – Part 1: A stochastic approach , 2012 .

[2]  K. Fraedrich,et al.  A suite of user-friendly global climate models: Hysteresis experiments , 2012 .

[3]  M. Scheffer,et al.  Early warning of climate tipping points from critical slowing down: comparing methods to improve robustness , 2012, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences.

[4]  M. Scheffer,et al.  Robustness of variance and autocorrelation as indicators of critical slowing down. , 2012, Ecology.

[5]  M. Scheffer,et al.  Recovery rates reflect distance to a tipping point in a living system , 2011, Nature.

[6]  M. Claussen,et al.  Implications of climate variability for the detection of multiple equilibria and for rapid transitions in the atmosphere-vegetation system , 2012, Climate Dynamics.

[7]  J. Michael T. Thompson,et al.  Predicting Climate tipping as a Noisy bifurcation: a Review , 2011, Int. J. Bifurc. Chaos.

[8]  C. Reick,et al.  What do moisture recycling estimates tell? Lessons from an extreme global land-cover change model experiment , 2011 .

[9]  T. Lenton.  Early warning of climate tipping points , 2011 .

[10]  S. Carpenter,et al.  Early Warnings of Regime Shifts: A Whole-Ecosystem Experiment , 2011, Science.

[11]  M. Scheffer,et al.  Slowing Down in Spatially Patterned Ecosystems at the Brink of Collapse , 2011, The American Naturalist.

[12]  J. Marotzke,et al.  The transition from the present-day climate to a modern Snowball Earth , 2010 .

[13]  J. Drake,et al.  Early warning signals of extinction in deteriorating environments , 2010, Nature.

[14]  Axel Andersson,et al.  Satellite derived precipitation and freshwater flux variability and its dependence on the North Atlantic Oscillation , 2010 .

[15]  Jan Sieber,et al.  Climate tipping as a noisy bifurcation: a predictive technique , 2010, 1007.1376.

[16]  P. Ditlevsen,et al.  Tipping points: Early warning and wishful thinking , 2010 .

[17]  Hugo Fort,et al.  Early Warnings for Catastrophic Shifts in Ecosystems: Comparison between Spatial and Temporal Indicators , 2010, Int. J. Bifurc. Chaos.

[18]  Marten Scheffer,et al.  Spatial correlation as leading indicator of catastrophic shifts , 2010, Theoretical Ecology.

[19]  S. Carpenter,et al.  Early-warning signals for critical transitions , 2009, Nature.

[20]  K. Fraedrich,et al.  Thermodynamic analysis of snowball Earth hysteresis experiment: Efficiency, entropy production and irreversibility , 2009, 0905.3669.

[21]  A. Ellison,et al.  Indicators of regime shifts in ecological systems: what do we need to know and when do we need to know it? , 2009, Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America.

[22]  Sharon E. Nicholson,et al.  A revised picture of the structure of the “monsoon” and land ITCZ over West Africa , 2009 .

[23]  Robert Marsh,et al.  Using GENIE to study a tipping point in the climate system , 2009, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences.

[24]  V. Guttal,et al.  Spatial variance and spatial skewness: leading indicators of regime shifts in spatial ecological systems , 2009, Theoretical Ecology.

[25]  M. Scheffer,et al.  Slowing down as an early warning signal for abrupt climate change , 2008, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[26]  V. Guttal,et al.  Changing skewness: an early warning signal of regime shifts in ecosystems. , 2008, Ecology letters.

[27]  Guiling Wang,et al.  Biosphere—atmosphere interactions over West Africa. II: Multiple climate equilibria , 2007 .

[28]  Marten Scheffer,et al.  Slow Recovery from Perturbations as a Generic Indicator of a Nearby Catastrophic Shift , 2007, The American Naturalist.

[29]  Christina M. Patricola,et al.  Dynamics of the West African Monsoon under Mid-Holocene Precessional Forcing: Regional Climate Model Simulations , 2007 .

[30]  Timothy M. Lenton,et al.  A modified method for detecting incipient bifurcations in a dynamical system , 2007 .

[31]  Yi Wang,et al.  On the cause of abrupt vegetation collapse in North Africa during the Holocene: Climate variability vs. vegetation feedback , 2006 .

[32]  S. Carpenter,et al.  Rising variance: a leading indicator of ecological transition. , 2006, Ecology letters.

[33]  Heiko Jansen,et al.  The Planet Simulator: Towards a user friendly model , 2005 .

[34]  György Szabó,et al.  Dynamics of populations on the verge of extinction , 2005 .

[35]  T. Kleinen,et al.  Detection of climate system bifurcations by degenerate fingerprinting , 2004 .

[36]  Guiling Wang.  A Conceptual Modeling Study on Biosphere–Atmosphere Interactions and Its Implications for Physically Based Climate Modeling , 2004 .

[37]  C. Wissel.  A universal law of the characteristic return time near thresholds , 1984, Oecologia.

[38]  Hermann Held,et al.  The potential role of spectral properties in detecting thresholds in the Earth system: application to the thermohaline circulation , 2003 .

[39]  Victor Brovkin,et al.  Holocene climate instability during the termination of the African Humid Period , 2003 .

[40]  Guiling Wang,et al.  Role of the biosphere in the mid‐Holocene climate of West Africa , 2003 .

[41]  Victor Brovkin,et al.  Carbon cycle, vegetation, and climate dynamics in the Holocene: Experiments with the CLIMBER‐2 model , 2002 .

[42]  S. Carpenter,et al.  Catastrophic shifts in ecosystems , 2001, Nature.

[43]  N. Zeng,et al.  The Role of Vegetation–Climate Interaction and Interannual Variability in Shaping the African Savanna , 2000 .

[44]  Joseph D. Ortiz,et al.  Abrupt onset and termination of the African Humid Period:rapid climate responses to gradual insolation forcing , 2000 .

[45]  Victor Brovkin,et al.  Simulation of an abrupt change in Saharan vegetation in the Mid‐Holocene , 1999 .

[46]  V. Brovkin,et al.  On the stability of the atmosphere‐vegetation system in the Sahara/Sahel region , 1998 .

[47]  Martin Claussen,et al.  On multiple solutions of the atmosphere–vegetation system in present‐day climate , 1998 .

[48]  V. Brovkin,et al.  A continuous climate-vegetation classification for use in climate-biosphere studies , 1997 .

[49]  M. Claussen.  Modeling bio-geophysical feedback in the African and Indian monsoon region , 1997 .

[50]  M. Claussen.  On coupling global biome models with climate models , 1994 .

[51]  Ulli Wolff,et al.  Critical slowing down , 1990 .

[52]  Werner Horsthemke,et al.  Noise-induced transitions , 1984 .

[53]  Klaus Fraedrich,et al.  Catastrophes and resilience of a zero‐dimensional climate system with ice‐albedo and greenhouse feedback , 1979 .

[54]  B. Efron.  Bootstrap Methods: Another Look at the Jackknife , 1979 .

[55]  H. C. Teh,et al.  Neutron-Scattering Observations of Critical Slowing Down of an Ising System , 1973 .