Back to opportunities | Category Index
These are the intended use-case/justification for one or multiple variable groups. Opportunities are linked to relevant experiment groups. Identifying opportunities helps to provide a structure to map variables against requirements. Each opportunity description will convey why this combination of variables and experiments is important and how they contribute to impact.
| Attribute | Value |
|---|---|
| description | Several components of the Earth system are highly susceptible to reaching a critical threshold – a tipping point – beyond which amplifying feedbacks can result in abrupt and/or irreversible changes in response to anthropogenic climate change. Crossing a tipping point can lead the systems to transition to an alternative state, often with reduced resilience to perturbations and recovery. Once triggered, the tipping of one of these elements can have far-reaching impacts on the global climate, ecosystems and humankind. Recent assessments have highlighted the increasing risk for potential tipping, in particular beyond 1.5°C global warming, and also stressed the large $uncertainties associated with so far limited systematic efforts to investigate tipping across models. TIPMIP aims to close this gap by addressing tipping points across domains. Therefore, understanding the dynamics of tipping systems and associated risks is crucial for developing effective strategies to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of global environmental change. It has been identified as a topic of high interest for many IPCC member states and is subject of a dedicated expert meeting before the first AR7 lead author meeting. |
| desirable_ensemble_size | 1 |
| expected_impacts | The opportunity will allow to evaluate key large scale tipping elements such as ice-sheet collapse, permafrost carbon release, tropical forest dieback and weakening of the Atlantic meridional ocean circulation as well as possible feedbacks associated with each individual tipping element. Outputs will be used to evaluate the uncertainties associated with identifying the existence of tipping points in the biogeophysical Earth system; the critical thresholds and temperature/warming levels which may induce tipping; as well as the interactions and feedbacks between (possible) tipping elements. Outputs may be then used by impact models and other end-user groups to evaluate the downstream consequences of tipping in the Earth system on human society. |
| justification_of_resources | Almost all variables proposed for TIPMIP comply with standard Earth system modeling output, and serve two major purposes: (1) Analysing ESMs with respect to tipping points across all protocols. (2) Serving as forcing input for uncoupled/offline component models (e.g. standalone ice sheet models) in follow-up tailored tipping experiments. There is a strong overlap between TIPMIP variables and existing baseline variables, minimising additional computational costs while providing the base for a cross-domain analysis of tipping points. |
| lead_theme | Earth System |
| minimum_ensemble_size | 1 |
| name | Robust Risk Assessment of Tipping Points |
| opportunity_id | 82 |
| technical_notes | TipMIP set of experiments will be added once available on this system. See https://github.com/WCRP-CMIP/CMIP6Plus_CVs/issues/78 |
| data_request_themes | Impacts & Adaptation, Atmosphere, Land & Land-Ice, Ocean & Sea-Ice, Earth System |
| experiment_groups | picontrol, tipmip-experiments, scenarios, historical |
| mips | TIPMIP, PMIP, FireMIP |
| time_subsets | 80ac3156-a698-11ef-914a-613c0433d878 |
| variable_groups | tipmip_baseline, tipmip_extended |