@article{KitzmannRomanczukWunderlingetal.2022,
  author    = {Kitzmann, Niklas H. and Romanczuk, Pawel and Wunderling, Nico and Donges, Jonathan},
  title     = {Detecting contagious spreading of urban innovations on the global city network},
  series = {European physical journal special topics},
  volume    = {231},
  journal   = {European physical journal special topics},
  number    = {9},
  publisher = {Springer},
  address   = {Heidelberg},
  issn      = {1951-6355},
  doi       = {10.1140/epjs/s11734-022-00470-4},
  pages     = {1609 -- 1624},
  year      = {2022},
  abstract  = {Only a fast and global transformation towards decarbonization and sustainability can keep the Earth in a civilization-friendly state. As hotspots for (green) innovation and experimentation, cities could play an important role in this transition. They are also known to profit from each other's ideas, with policy and technology innovations spreading to other cities. In this way, cities can be conceptualized as nodes in a globe-spanning learning network. The dynamics of this process are important for society's response to climate change and other challenges, but remain poorly understood on a macroscopic level. In this contribution, we develop an approach to identify whether network-based complex contagion effects are a feature of sustainability policy adoption by cities, based on dose-response contagion and surrogate data models. We apply this methodology to an exemplary data set, comprising empirical data on the spreading of a public transport innovation (Bus Rapid Transit Systems) and a global inter-city connection network based on scheduled flight routes. Although our approach is not able to identify detailed mechanisms, our results point towards a contagious spreading process, and cannot be explained by either the network structure or the increase in global adoption rate alone. Further research on the role of a city's abstract "global neighborhood" regarding its policy and innovation decisions is thus both needed and promising, and may connect with research on social tipping processes. The methodology is generic, and can be used to compare the predictive power for innovation spreading of different kinds of inter-city network connections, e.g. via transport links, trade, or co-membership in political networks.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Wunderling2021,
  author    = {Wunderling, Nico},
  title     = {Nichtlineare Dynamiken und Interaktionen von Kippelementen im Erdsystem},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-52514},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-525140},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {ix, 303},
  year      = {2021},
  abstract  = {With ongoing anthropogenic global warming, some of the most vulnerable components of the Earth system might become unstable and undergo a critical transition. These subsystems are the so-called tipping elements. They are believed to exhibit threshold behaviour and would, if triggered, result in severe consequences for the biosphere and human societies. Furthermore, it has been shown that climate tipping elements are not isolated entities, but interact across the entire Earth system. Therefore, this thesis aims at mapping out the potential for tipping events and feedbacks in the Earth system mainly by the use of complex dynamical systems and network science approaches, but partially also by more detailed process-based models of the Earth system. In the first part of this thesis, the theoretical foundations are laid by the investigation of networks of interacting tipping elements. For this purpose, the conditions for the emergence of global cascades are analysed against the structure of paradigmatic network types such as Erd{\"o}s-R{\´e}nyi, Barab{\´a}si-Albert, Watts-Strogatz and explicitly spatially embedded networks. Furthermore, micro-scale structures are detected that are decisive for the transition of local to global cascades. These so-called motifs link the micro- to the macro-scale in the network of tipping elements. Alongside a model description paper, all these results are entered into the Python software package PyCascades, which is publicly available on github. In the second part of this dissertation, the tipping element framework is first applied to components of the Earth system such as the cryosphere and to parts of the biosphere. Afterwards it is applied to a set of interacting climate tipping elements on a global scale. Using the Earth system Model of Intermediate Complexity (EMIC) CLIMBER-2, the temperature feedbacks are quantified, which would arise if some of the large cryosphere elements disintegrate over a long span of time. The cryosphere components that are investigated are the Arctic summer sea ice, the mountain glaciers, the Greenland and the West Antarctic Ice Sheets. The committed temperature increase, in case the ice masses disintegrate, is on the order of an additional half a degree on a global average (0.39-0.46 °C), while local to regional additional temperature increases can exceed 5 °C. This means that, once tipping has begun, additional reinforcing feedbacks are able to increase global warming and with that the risk of further tipping events. This is also the case in the Amazon rainforest, whose parts are dependent on each other via the so-called moisture-recycling feedback. In this thesis, the importance of drought-induced tipping events in the Amazon rainforest is investigated in detail. Despite the Amazon rainforest is assumed to be adapted to past environmental conditions, it is found that tipping events sharply increase if the drought conditions become too intense in a too short amount of time, outpacing the adaptive capacity of the Amazon rainforest. In these cases, the frequency of tipping cascades also increases to 50\% (or above) of all tipping events. In the model that was developed in this study, the southeastern region of the Amazon basin is hit hardest by the simulated drought patterns. This is also the region that already nowadays suffers a lot from extensive human-induced changes due to large-scale deforestation, cattle ranching or infrastructure projects. Moreover, on the larger Earth system wide scale, a network of conceptualised climate tipping elements is constructed in this dissertation making use of a large literature review, expert knowledge and topological properties of the tipping elements. In global warming scenarios, tipping cascades are detected even under modest scenarios of climate change, limiting global warming to 2 °C above pre-industrial levels. In addition, the structural roles of the climate tipping elements in the network are revealed. While the large ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica are the initiators of tipping cascades, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) acts as the transmitter of cascades. Furthermore, in our conceptual climate tipping element model, it is found that the ice sheets are of particular importance for the stability of the entire system of investigated climate tipping elements. In the last part of this thesis, the results from the temperature feedback study with the EMIC CLIMBER-2 are combined with the conceptual model of climate tipping elements. There, it is observed that the likelihood of further tipping events slightly increases due to the temperature feedbacks even if no further CO\$_2\$ would be added to the atmosphere. Although the developed network model is of conceptual nature, it is possible with this work for the first time to quantify the risk of tipping events between interacting components of the Earth system under global warming scenarios, by allowing for dynamic temperature feedbacks at the same time.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{KloseWunderlingWinkelmannetal.2021,
  author    = {Klose, Ann Kristin and Wunderling, Nico and Winkelmann, Ricarda and Donges, Jonathan},
  title     = {What do we mean, 'tipping cascade'?},
  series = {Environmental research letters : ERL},
  volume    = {16},
  journal   = {Environmental research letters : ERL},
  number    = {12},
  publisher = {IOP Publ. Ltd.},
  address   = {Bristol},
  issn      = {1748-9326},
  doi       = {10.1088/1748-9326/ac3955},
  pages     = {11},
  year      = {2021},
  abstract  = {Based on suggested interactions of potential tipping elements in the Earth's climate and in ecological systems, tipping cascades as possible dynamics are increasingly discussed and studied. The activation of such tipping cascades would impose a considerable risk for human societies and biosphere integrity. However, there are ambiguities in the description of tipping cascades within the literature so far. Here we illustrate how different patterns of multiple tipping dynamics emerge from a very simple coupling of two previously studied idealized tipping elements. In particular, we distinguish between a two phase cascade, a domino cascade and a joint cascade. A mitigation of an unfolding two phase cascade may be possible and common early warning indicators are sensitive to upcoming critical transitions to a certain degree. In contrast, a domino cascade may hardly be stopped once initiated and critical slowing down-based indicators fail to indicate tipping of the following element. These different potentials for intervention and anticipation across the distinct patterns of multiple tipping dynamics should be seen as a call to be more precise in future analyses of cascading dynamics arising from tipping element interactions in the Earth system.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{WunderlingWilleitDongesetal.2020,
  author    = {Wunderling, Nico and Willeit, Matteo and Donges, Jonathan and Winkelmann, Ricarda},
  title     = {Global warming due to loss of large ice masses and Arctic summer sea ice},
  series = {Nature Communications},
  volume    = {11},
  journal   = {Nature Communications},
  number    = {1},
  publisher = {Nature Publishing Group},
  address   = {Berlin},
  issn      = {2041-1723},
  doi       = {10.1038/s41467-020-18934-3},
  pages     = {14},
  year      = {2020},
  abstract  = {Several large-scale cryosphere elements such as the Arctic summer sea ice, the mountain glaciers, the Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheet have changed substantially during the last century due to anthropogenic global warming. However, the impacts of their possible future disintegration on global mean temperature (GMT) and climate feedbacks have not yet been comprehensively evaluated. Here, we quantify this response using an Earth system model of intermediate complexity. Overall, we find a median additional global warming of 0.43 degrees C (interquartile range: 0.39-0.46 degrees C) at a CO2 concentration of 400 ppm. Most of this response (55\%) is caused by albedo changes, but lapse rate together with water vapour (30\%) and cloud feedbacks (15\%) also contribute significantly. While a decay of the ice sheets would occur on centennial to millennial time scales, the Arctic might become ice-free during summer within the 21st century. Our findings imply an additional increase of the GMT on intermediate to long time scales. The disintegration of cryosphere elements such as the Arctic summer sea ice, mountain glaciers, Greenland and West Antarctica is associated with temperature and radiative feedbacks. In this work, the authors quantify these feedbacks and find an additional global warming of 0.43 degrees C.},
  language  = {en}
}