TY - GEN A1 - Levermann, Anders A1 - Petoukhov, Vladimir A1 - Schewe, Jacob A1 - Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim T1 - Abrupt monsoon transitions as seen in paleorecords can be explained by moisture-advection feedback T2 - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1603130113 SN - 0027-8424 VL - 113 SP - E2348 EP - E2349 PB - National Acad. of Sciences CY - Washington ER - TY - GEN A1 - Shan, Yuli A1 - Guan, Dabo A1 - Hubacek, Klaus A1 - Zheng, Bo A1 - Davis, Steven J. A1 - Jia, Lichao A1 - Liu, Jianghua A1 - Liu, Zhu A1 - Fromer, Neil A1 - Mi, Zhifu A1 - Meng, Jing A1 - Deng, Xiangzheng A1 - Li, Yuan A1 - Lin, Jintai A1 - Schroeder, Heike A1 - Weisz, Helga A1 - Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim T1 - City-level climate change mitigation in China T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - 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. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 1096 KW - carbon-dioxide emissions KW - fired power plants KW - co2 emissions KW - energy use KW - cluster analysis KW - uncertainties KW - urbanization KW - methodology KW - combustion KW - inventory Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-471541 SN - 1866-8372 IS - 1096 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Vinke, Kira A1 - Gabrysch, Sabine A1 - Paoletti, Emanuela A1 - Rockström, Johan A1 - Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim T1 - Corona and the climate BT - a comparison of two emergencies JF - Global sustainability N2 - Lessons from the corona crisis can help manage the even more daunting challenge of anthropogenic global warming. KW - adaptation and mitigation KW - ecology and biodiversity KW - human behaviour KW - natural resources (biological and non-biological) KW - policies KW - politics KW - and governance Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2020.20 SN - 2059-4798 VL - 3 PB - Cambridge Univ. Press CY - Cambridge ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ganopolski, A. A1 - Winkelmann, Ricarda A1 - Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim T1 - Critical insolation-CO2 relation for diagnosing past and future glacial inception JF - Nature : the international weekly journal of science N2 - 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. Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1038/nature16494 SN - 0028-0836 SN - 1476-4687 VL - 529 SP - 200 EP - U159 PB - Nature Publ. Group CY - London ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Rahmstorf, Stefan A1 - Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim T1 - Der Klimawandel T3 - Becksche Reihe Y1 - 2006 SN - 3-406-50866-9 VL - 2366 PB - Beck CY - München ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim A1 - Crutzen, P. J. A1 - Clark, W. C. A1 - Hunt, J. T1 - Earth system analysis for sustainability N2 - 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 Y1 - 2005 SN - 0013-9157 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wu, Ye Wu A1 - Zhou, Changsong A1 - Xiao, Jinghua A1 - Kurths, Jürgen A1 - Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim T1 - Evidence for a bimodal distribution in human communication N2 - 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. Y1 - 2010 UR - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03784371 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1013140107 SN - 0027-8424 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Donges, Jonathan Friedemann A1 - Donner, Reik Volker A1 - Trauth, Martin H. A1 - Marwan, Norbert A1 - Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim A1 - Kurths, Jürgen T1 - Nonlinear detection of paleoclimate-variability transitions possibly related to human evolution JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America N2 - 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. KW - African climate KW - Plio-Pleistocene KW - climate-driven evolution KW - dynamical transitions KW - nonlinear time series analysis Y1 - 2011 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1117052108 SN - 0027-8424 VL - 108 IS - 51 SP - 20422 EP - 20427 PB - National Acad. of Sciences CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Steffen, Will A1 - Röckstrom, Johan A1 - Richardson, Katherine A1 - Lenton, Timothy M. A1 - Folke, Carl A1 - Liverman, Diana A1 - Summerhayes, Colin P. A1 - Barnosky, Anthony D. A1 - Cornell, Sarah E. A1 - Crucifix, Michel A1 - Donges, Jonathan Friedemann A1 - Fetzer, Ingo A1 - Lade, Steven J. A1 - Scheffer, Marten A1 - Winkelmann, Ricarda A1 - Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim T1 - Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America N2 - 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. KW - Earth System trajectories KW - climate change KW - Anthropocene KW - biosphere feedbacks KW - tipping elements Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1810141115 SN - 0027-8424 VL - 115 IS - 33 SP - 8252 EP - 8259 PB - National Acad. of Sciences CY - Washington ER -