Ben-Yami Maya, Morr Andreas, Bathiany Sebastian, Boers Niklas
Earth System Modelling, School of Engineering and Design, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany.
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany.
Sci Adv. 2024 Aug 2;10(31):eadl4841. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adl4841.
One way to warn of forthcoming critical transitions in Earth system components is using observations to detect declining system stability. It has also been suggested to extrapolate such stability changes into the future and predict tipping times. Here, we argue that the involved uncertainties are too high to robustly predict tipping times. We raise concerns regarding (i) the modeling assumptions underlying any extrapolation of historical results into the future, (ii) the representativeness of individual Earth system component time series, and (iii) the impact of uncertainties and preprocessing of used observational datasets, with focus on nonstationary observational coverage and gap filling. We explore these uncertainties in general and specifically for the example of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. We argue that even under the assumption that a given Earth system component has an approaching tipping point, the uncertainties are too large to reliably estimate tipping times by extrapolating historical information.
一种预警地球系统各组成部分即将发生的关键转变的方法是利用观测来检测系统稳定性的下降。也有人建议将这种稳定性变化外推到未来并预测临界点时间。在此，我们认为所涉及的不确定性过高，无法可靠地预测临界点时间。我们对以下方面表示担忧：（i）将历史结果外推到未来所依据的建模假设；（ii）单个地球系统组成部分时间序列的代表性；（iii）所用观测数据集的不确定性和预处理的影响，重点是观测覆盖的非平稳性和数据填补。我们从总体上探讨这些不确定性，并以大西洋经向翻转环流为例进行具体探讨。我们认为，即使假设给定的地球系统组成部分有一个即将到来的临界点，不确定性也太大，无法通过外推历史信息来可靠地估计临界点时间。
