@misc{LevermannPetoukhovScheweetal.2016, author = {Levermann, Anders and Petoukhov, Vladimir and Schewe, Jacob and Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim}, title = {Abrupt monsoon transitions as seen in paleorecords can be explained by moisture-advection feedback}, series = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America}, volume = {113}, journal = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America}, publisher = {National Acad. of Sciences}, address = {Washington}, issn = {0027-8424}, doi = {10.1073/pnas.1603130113}, pages = {E2348 -- E2349}, year = {2016}, language = {en} } @misc{ShanGuanHubaceketal.2018, author = {Shan, Yuli and Guan, Dabo and Hubacek, Klaus and Zheng, Bo and Davis, Steven J. and Jia, Lichao and Liu, Jianghua and Liu, Zhu and Fromer, Neil and Mi, Zhifu and Meng, Jing and Deng, Xiangzheng and Li, Yuan and Lin, Jintai and Schroeder, Heike and Weisz, Helga and Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim}, title = {City-level climate change mitigation in China}, series = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {1096}, issn = {1866-8372}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-47154}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-471541}, pages = {18}, year = {2018}, abstract = {As national efforts to reduce CO2 emissions intensify, policy-makers need increasingly specific, subnational information about the sources of CO2 and the potential reductions and economic implications of different possible policies. This is particularly true in China, a large and economically diverse country that has rapidly industrialized and urbanized and that has pledged under the Paris Agreement that its emissions will peak by 2030. We present new, city level estimates of CO2 emissions for 182 Chinese cities, decomposed into 17 different fossil fuels, 46 socioeconomic sectors, and 7 industrial processes. We find that more affluent cities have systematically lower emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP), supported by imports from less affluent, industrial cities located nearby. In turn, clusters of industrial cities are supported by nearby centers of coal or oil extraction. Whereas policies directly targeting manufacturing and electric power infrastructure would drastically undermine the GDP of industrial cities, consumption based policies might allow emission reductions to be subsidized by those with greater ability to pay. In particular, sector based analysis of each city suggests that technological improvements could be a practical and effective means of reducing emissions while maintaining growth and the current economic structure and energy system. We explore city-level emission reductions under three scenarios of technological progress to show that substantial reductions (up to 31\%) are possible by updating a disproportionately small fraction of existing infrastructure.}, language = {en} } @article{VinkeGabryschPaolettietal.2020, author = {Vinke, Kira and Gabrysch, Sabine and Paoletti, Emanuela and Rockstr{\"o}m, Johan and Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim}, title = {Corona and the climate}, series = {Global sustainability}, volume = {3}, journal = {Global sustainability}, publisher = {Cambridge Univ. Press}, address = {Cambridge}, issn = {2059-4798}, doi = {10.1017/sus.2020.20}, pages = {7}, year = {2020}, abstract = {Lessons from the corona crisis can help manage the even more daunting challenge of anthropogenic global warming.}, language = {en} } @article{GanopolskiWinkelmannSchellnhuber2016, author = {Ganopolski, A. and Winkelmann, Ricarda and Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim}, title = {Critical insolation-CO2 relation for diagnosing past and future glacial inception}, series = {Nature : the international weekly journal of science}, volume = {529}, journal = {Nature : the international weekly journal of science}, publisher = {Nature Publ. Group}, address = {London}, issn = {0028-0836}, doi = {10.1038/nature16494}, pages = {200 -- U159}, year = {2016}, abstract = {The past rapid growth of Northern Hemisphere continental ice sheets, which terminated warm and stable climate periods, is generally attributed to reduced summer insolation in boreal latitudes(1-3). Yet such summer insolation is near to its minimum at present(4), and there are no signs of a new ice age(5). This challenges our understanding of the mechanisms driving glacial cycles and our ability to predict the next glacial inception(6). Here we propose a critical functional relationship between boreal summer insolation and global carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration, which explains the beginning of the past eight glacial cycles and might anticipate future periods of glacial inception. Using an ensemble of simulations generated by an Earth system model of intermediate complexity constrained by palaeoclimatic data, we suggest that glacial inception was narrowly missed before the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The missed inception can be accounted for by the combined effect of relatively high late-Holocene CO2 concentrations and the low orbital eccentricity of the Earth(7). Additionally, our analysis suggests that even in the absence of human perturbations no substantial build-up of ice sheets would occur within the next several thousand years and that the current interglacial would probably last for another 50,000 years. However, moderate anthropogenic cumulative CO2 emissions of 1,000 to 1,500 gigatonnes of carbon will postpone the next glacial inception by at least 100,000 years(8,9). Our simulations demonstrate that under natural conditions alone the Earth system would be expected to remain in the present delicately balanced interglacial climate state, steering clear of both large-scale glaciation of the Northern Hemisphere and its complete deglaciation, for an unusually long time.}, language = {en} } @book{RahmstorfSchellnhuber2006, author = {Rahmstorf, Stefan and Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim}, title = {Der Klimawandel}, series = {Becksche Reihe}, volume = {2366}, journal = {Becksche Reihe}, publisher = {Beck}, address = {M{\"u}nchen}, isbn = {3-406-50866-9}, pages = {144 S.}, year = {2006}, language = {de} } @article{SchellnhuberCrutzenClarketal.2005, author = {Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim and Crutzen, P. J. and Clark, W. C. and Hunt, J.}, title = {Earth system analysis for sustainability}, issn = {0013-9157}, year = {2005}, abstract = {Anthropogenic interference has resulted in climate change, ocean acidification, eutrophication and toxic pollution of the earth and it's ecosystems. The Earth System Analysis is an international research program on global environmental change to understand these processes in order to work towards global sustainability}, language = {en} } @article{WuZhouXiaoetal.2010, author = {Wu, Ye Wu and Zhou, Changsong and Xiao, Jinghua and Kurths, J{\"u}rgen and Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim}, title = {Evidence for a bimodal distribution in human communication}, issn = {0027-8424}, doi = {10.1073/pnas.1013140107}, year = {2010}, abstract = {Interacting human activities underlie the patterns of many social, technological, and economic phenomena. Here we present clear empirical evidence from Short Message correspondence that observed human actions are the result of the interplay of three basic ingredients: Poisson initiation of tasks and decision making for task execution in individual humans as well as interaction among individuals. This interplay leads to new types of interevent time distribution, neither completely Poisson nor power-law, but a bimodal combination of them. We show that the events can be separated into independent bursts which are generated by frequent mutual interactions in short times following random initiations of communications in longer times by the individuals. We introduce a minimal model of two interacting priority queues incorporating the three basic ingredients which fits well the distributions using the parameters extracted from the empirical data. The model can also embrace a range of realistic social interacting systems such as e-mail and letter communications when taking the time scale of processing into account. Our findings provide insight into various human activities both at the individual and network level. Our analysis and modeling of bimodal activity in human communication from the viewpoint of the interplay between processes of different time scales is likely to shed light on bimodal phenomena in other complex systems, such as interevent times in earthquakes, rainfall, forest fire, and economic systems, etc.}, language = {en} } @article{DongesDonnerTrauthetal.2011, author = {Donges, Jonathan Friedemann and Donner, Reik Volker and Trauth, Martin H. and Marwan, Norbert and Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim and Kurths, J{\"u}rgen}, title = {Nonlinear detection of paleoclimate-variability transitions possibly related to human evolution}, series = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America}, volume = {108}, journal = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America}, number = {51}, publisher = {National Acad. of Sciences}, address = {Washington}, issn = {0027-8424}, doi = {10.1073/pnas.1117052108}, pages = {20422 -- 20427}, year = {2011}, abstract = {Potential paleoclimatic driving mechanisms acting on human evolution present an open problem of cross-disciplinary scientific interest. The analysis of paleoclimate archives encoding the environmental variability in East Africa during the past 5 Ma has triggered an ongoing debate about possible candidate processes and evolutionary mechanisms. In this work, we apply a nonlinear statistical technique, recurrence network analysis, to three distinct marine records of terrigenous dust flux. Our method enables us to identify three epochs with transitions between qualitatively different types of environmental variability in North and East Africa during the (i) Middle Pliocene (3.35-3.15 Ma B. P.), (ii) Early Pleistocene (2.25-1.6 Ma B. P.), and (iii) Middle Pleistocene (1.1-0.7 Ma B. P.). A deeper examination of these transition periods reveals potential climatic drivers, including (i) large-scale changes in ocean currents due to a spatial shift of the Indonesian throughflow in combination with an intensification of Northern Hemisphere glaciation, (ii) a global reorganization of the atmospheric Walker circulation induced in the tropical Pacific and Indian Ocean, and (iii) shifts in the dominating temporal variability pattern of glacial activity during the Middle Pleistocene, respectively. A reexamination of the available fossil record demonstrates statistically significant coincidences between the detected transition periods and major steps in hominin evolution. This result suggests that the observed shifts between more regular and more erratic environmental variability may have acted as a trigger for rapid change in the development of humankind in Africa.}, language = {en} } @article{SteffenRoeckstromRichardsonetal.2018, author = {Steffen, Will and R{\"o}ckstrom, Johan and Richardson, Katherine and Lenton, Timothy M. and Folke, Carl and Liverman, Diana and Summerhayes, Colin P. and Barnosky, Anthony D. and Cornell, Sarah E. and Crucifix, Michel and Donges, Jonathan Friedemann and Fetzer, Ingo and Lade, Steven J. and Scheffer, Marten and Winkelmann, Ricarda and Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim}, title = {Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene}, series = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America}, volume = {115}, journal = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America}, number = {33}, publisher = {National Acad. of Sciences}, address = {Washington}, issn = {0027-8424}, doi = {10.1073/pnas.1810141115}, pages = {8252 -- 8259}, year = {2018}, abstract = {We explore the risk that self-reinforcing feedbacks could push the Earth System toward a planetary threshold that, if crossed, could prevent stabilization of the climate at intermediate temperature rises and cause continued warming on a "Hothouse Earth" pathway even as human emissions are reduced. Crossing the threshold would lead to a much higher global average temperature than any interglacial in the past 1.2 million years and to sea levels significantly higher than at any time in the Holocene. We examine the evidence that such a threshold might exist and where it might be. If the threshold is crossed, the resulting trajectory would likely cause serious disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies. Collective human action is required to steer the Earth System away from a potential threshold and stabilize it in a habitable interglacial-like state. Such action entails stewardship of the entire Earth System-biosphere, climate, and societies-and could include decarbonization of the global economy, enhancement of biosphere carbon sinks, behavioral changes, technological innovations, new governance arrangements, and transformed social values.}, language = {en} }