Tipping Point Research Articles

Opportunities for Earth Observation to Inform Risk Management for Ocean Tipping Points

AbstractAs climate change continues, the likelihood of passing critical thresholds or tipping points increases. Hence, there is a need to advance the science for detecting such thresholds. In this paper, we assess the needs and opportunities for Earth Observation (EO, here understood to refer to satellite observations) to inform society in responding to the risks associated with ten potential large-scale ocean tipping elements: Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation; Atlantic Subpolar Gyre; Beaufort Gyre; Arctic halocline; Kuroshio Large Meander; deoxygenation; phytoplankton; zooplankton; higher level ecosystems (including fisheries); and marine biodiversity. We review current scientific understanding and identify specific EO and related modelling needs for each of these tipping elements. We draw out some generic points that apply across several of the elements. These common points include the importance of maintaining long-term, consistent time series; the need to combine EO data consistently with in situ data types (including subsurface), for example through data assimilation; and the need to reduce or work with current mismatches in resolution (in both directions) between climate models and EO datasets. Our analysis shows that developing EO, modelling and prediction systems together, with understanding of the strengths and limitations of each, provides many promising paths towards monitoring and early warning systems for tipping, and towards the development of the next generation of climate models.

Digital Advocacy Journalism’s Push for the Narrative Tipping Point of Singapore’s Capital Punishment

A narrative tipping point leading to the abolition of capital punishment will come from specific events and broader trends that move public opinion and the accompanying legal systems away from the justification for death penalties. Through Singapore’s independent digital journalist Kirsten Han’s reflection on her reportage and advocacy for the abolition of capital punishment in the republic, this paper seeks to highlight the role of digital advocacy in pushing for the narrative tipping point on the death penalty online. Against global trends of abolition, retentionist cultures on capital punishment remain resilient, particularly in countries that claim strong domestic support for authoritarian populist narratives of being “tough on crime.” Institutionally sustained and discursively binarized as “Asian values” against rights-based Western individualism and continuously reiterated by national leaders, Singapore’s policy on capital punishment is termed muscular retentionism. Contending with this dominance in cyberspace is Han’s affective emphasis on death row inmates facing imminent execution, particularly those condemned to death for drug trafficking. Using a partially autobiographical approach as the second author of this paper, she illustrates her experiences as a woman activist in Singapore, journeying with these inmates and documenting their experiences as part of the broader effort to move toward the narrative tipping point. Positioned against the largely impersonalized and instrumental justification of the traditional retentionist position established in the pre-Internet decades is Han’s rights-based emphasis on the sanctity of life. Receiving little attention in the republic’s mainstream media, cyberspace has oxygenated this perspective. Aside from facing legal and police scrutiny for her involvement in abolitionist campaigns, Han has also been subjected to misogynist ad-hominem attacks online from supporters of retention. Kirsten Han’s digital advocacy journalism poignantly sharpens the existing feminist critique in Singapore of the carceral regime with a more intersectional approach toward expanding the scope of the discussion to that of predominately male death row inmates. Her emphasis comes from the notion of difference feminism in considering the structural inequalities and power dynamics that render the more socially disadvantaged vulnerable to the regimes of punishment. Aside from being openly singled out and chastised by the state, it may remain difficult to determine the public impact of Han’s journalistic work. Nonetheless, through amplifying the otherwise invisible emotional states and voices of death row inmates and their families as individuals, she exposes the human cost in the regime of capital punishment and in the process inches Singapore toward the narrative tipping point.

"There's Going to be a Tipping Point Where I'm Not Gonna Be Able to Work": Communicative Resilience Amidst Precarity in the Careers of Individuals with Autoimmune Diseases.

Throughout their career, people living with autoimmune diseases must navigate workplace precarity amidst ongoing disruptions to health and wellbeing. Informed by the communication theory of resilience (CTR), we conduct semi-structured, narrative interviews with 25 individuals living with autoimmune diseases to examine their career-related disruptions and communicative resilience enactments. Data analysis reveals two major themes: (1) disability as a discursive-material disruption and (2) career-triggering illness complications. Theoretically, our findings extend anticipatory and adaptive-transformative CTR tensions through the moment-to-moment disruptions that intersect this community's careers and health journeys. Practically, we seek to re-imagine workplace accommodations and disability to better meet both the health and work needs of stigmatized and chronically ill individuals, such as individuals with autoimmune diseases.

The Doha Declaration and Lifestyle Medicine: Have We Reached a Tipping Point?

The Doha Declaration and Lifestyle Medicine: Have We Reached a Tipping Point?

Have we Reached a “Tipping Point” in Climate Change Reporting? How Mainstream Newspapers Cover Heatwaves

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the evolution of media coverage on heatwaves from 2010 to 2022 focusing on six countries (UK, USA, India, Australia, Canada, and China) through analysis of 27,964 newspaper reports. By employing content analysis and named entity recognition, we examine the volume of heatwave-related reports, their connection to climate change, and the incorporation of environmental science within media narratives. We explain our findings with reference to the concept of a dynamic or mobile public sphere. We identify three types of diffusion in the reporting of climate change in public spheres, which we term temporal diffusion, geographical diffusion, and political diffusion. These concepts illustrate the spread of ideas across time, space, and ideology. These shifts are characterised by an escalating media focus on heatwaves over time and the increasing association between heatwaves and anthropogenic climate change, a diffusion from countries in the Global North to the Global South, and a broadening attention from predominantly left-wing media across a wider ideological spectrum. This study contributes to our understanding of how journalistic practice, accumulated media attention, and environmental science can lead to significant shifts in transnationally linked public spheres, encouraging broader societal recognition of and engagement with climate change issues.

Tipping point detection and early warnings in climate, ecological, and human systems

Abstract. Tipping points characterize the situation when a system experiences abrupt, rapid, and sometimes irreversible changes in response to only a gradual change in environmental conditions. Given that such events are in most cases undesirable, numerous approaches have been proposed to identify if a system is approaching a tipping point. Such approaches have been termed early warning signals and represent a set of methods for identifying statistical changes in the underlying behaviour of a system across time or space that would be indicative of an approaching tipping point. Although the idea of early warnings for a class of tipping points is not new, in the last 2 decades, the topic has generated an enormous amount of interest, mainly theoretical. At the same time, the unprecedented amount of data originating from remote sensing systems, field measurements, surveys, and simulated data, coupled with innovative models and cutting-edge computing, has made possible the development of a multitude of tools and approaches for detecting tipping points in a variety of scientific fields. However, we miss a complete picture of where, how, and which early warnings have been used so far in real-world case studies. Here we review the literature of the last 20 years to show how the use of these indicators has spread from ecology and climate to many other disciplines. We document what metrics have been used; their success; and the field, system, and tipping points involved. We find that, despite acknowledged limitations and challenges, in the majority of the case studies we reviewed, the performance of most early warnings was positive in detecting tipping points. Overall, the generality of the approaches employed – the fact that most early warnings can in theory be observed in many dynamical systems – explains the continuous multitude and diversification in their application across scientific domains.

Tree Mortality May Lead to Carbon Tipping Point in the Amazon by 2050s

Tree Mortality May Lead to Carbon Tipping Point in the Amazon by 2050s

Social Media Virality: Reaching the Tipping Point

Social media virality has become a key factor in determining how far to extend social media marketing and digital promotion campaigns. The point at which content transitions to viral spread underpins promotion-level decisions. We employ a logistic equation to identify tipping point decisions for viral content online promotions in given contexts. We consider case studies indicative of viral content on social media following a traditional S-curve when examined in a single domain. Our study contributes to understanding the decision mechanics of reaching a tipping point in a manner that reflects the concerns of digital marketers and online marketing strategies generally. We also see our approach to determining this point as furthering social media research in an area of growing importance and assessing how viral content can be managed.

Corruption in the Global Economy at a Tipping Point: How to Identify and Mitigate Corrupt Practices

Corruption in the Global Economy at a Tipping Point: How to Identify and Mitigate Corrupt Practices

Evidence of Ecosystem Tipping Point on St. Lawrence Island: Widespread Lake Drainage Events After 2018

AbstractInfluenced by climate change, numerous lakes in permafrost regions are draining, showing significant spatial variability. This study focuses on St. Lawrence Island, where over the last two decades, 771 of 3,271 lakes have drained—a rate around 40 times higher than across the entire northern permafrost region. The surge in lake drainage began in 2018, coinciding with record low sea ice extent in the Bering Sea and unprecedented bird mortalities. Using satellite imagery and machine learning methods, we analyzed drainage events to identify the climatic drivers and potential climate thresholds affecting the island's lake ecosystems. Our findings indicate that autumn peak temperatures above 6°C more than triple the drainage probability, and warming‐induced permafrost thawing may be the direct driver of lake drainage. This research highlights the vulnerability of Arctic lake ecosystems to climate change and assists in developing predictive models for permafrost response, crucial for mitigating impacts on Arctic communities.

Arrhythmia Research at a Tipping Point: The Need for Disruptive Science and Technology.

Arrhythmia Research at a Tipping Point: The Need for Disruptive Science and Technology.

NeurCADRecon: Neural Representation for Reconstructing CAD Surfaces by Enforcing Zero Gaussian Curvature

Despite recent advances in reconstructing an organic model with the neural signed distance function (SDF), the high-fidelity reconstruction of a CAD model directly from low-quality unoriented point clouds remains a significant challenge. In this paper, we address this challenge based on the prior observation that the surface of a CAD model is generally composed of piecewise surface patches, each approximately developable even around the feature line. Our approach, named NeurCADRecon , is self-supervised, and its loss includes a developability term to encourage the Gaussian curvature toward 0 while ensuring fidelity to the input points (see the teaser figure). Noticing that the Gaussian curvature is non-zero at tip points, we introduce a double-trough curve to tolerate the existence of these tip points. Furthermore, we develop a dynamic sampling strategy to deal with situations where the given points are incomplete or too sparse. Since our resulting neural SDFs can clearly manifest sharp feature points/lines, one can easily extract the feature-aligned triangle mesh from the SDF and then decompose it into smooth surface patches, greatly reducing the difficulty of recovering the parametric CAD design. A comprehensive comparison with existing state-of-the-art methods shows the significant advantage of our approach in reconstructing faithful CAD shapes.

Characterizing Climatic Socio‐Environmental Tipping Points in Coastal Communities: A Conceptual Framework for Research and Practice

AbstractThe concept of climate tipping points in socio‐environmental systems is increasingly being used to describe nonlinear climate change impacts and encourage social transformations in response to climate change. However, the processes that lead to these tipping points and their impacts are highly complex and deeply uncertain. This is due to numerous interacting environmental and societal system components, constant system evolution, and uncertainty in the relationships between events and their consequences. In the face of this complexity and uncertainty, this research presents a conceptual framework that describes systemic processes that could lead to tipping points socio‐environmental systems, with a focus on coastal communities facing sea level rise. Within this context, we propose an organizational framework for system description that consists of elements, state variables, links, internal processes, and exogenous influences. This framework is then used to describe three mechanisms by which socio‐environmental tipping could occur: feedback processes, cascading linkages, and nonlinear relationships. We presented this conceptual framework to an expert panel of coastal practitioners and found that it has potential to characterize the effects of secondary climatic impacts that are rarely the focus of coastal risk analyses. Finally, we identify salient areas for further research that can build upon the proposed conceptual framework to inform practical efforts that support climate adaptation and resilience.

Coastal Adaptation Pathways and Tipping Points for Typical Mediterranean Beaches under Future Scenarios

Coastal zones experience increasing climatic and human pressures, which lead to growing risks and tipping points (TPs) under future scenarios and natural resource scarcity. To avoid crossing TPs with irreversible coastal losses, this paper proposes the development of adaptation pathways based on advanced coastal oceanography and engineering knowledge that enables a comprehensive assessment of evolving coastal risks. These pathways feature sequential interventions steered by simulations and observations as a function of available coastal resources (mainly space and sediment) and risks for infrastructure and socioeconomic assets. Such an adaptation has been developed for urban and peri-urban Mediterranean beaches, considering conventional coastal engineering together with nature-based solutions (NbS). Both types of interventions are assessed in terms of key physical variables, which serve to evaluate performance and estimate TPs. This analysis supports the new coastal protection and management plan promoted by the regional government of Catalonia and the coastal adaptation plan of the central government of Spain. The approach and results illustrate the potential of adaptation pathways for beach sustainability, enhancing the compatibility between short-/long-term coastal protection objectives under present/future climate and management scenarios. The development of adaptation pathways underpins increasing stakeholder cooperation to achieve shared decisions for coastal sustainability.

Decolonizing Narratives in Communication: A Case Study of "The Tipping Point to Decolonise Sustainability"

Narratives hold immense power in shaping reality and mobilising resources. Acknowledging the intimate connection between the climate crisis and racial injustices is vital. In this regard, decolonial perspectives are increasingly indispensable to tackling the challenges in this emergent crisis, where human-led corporations, practices, and politics drive ecological shifts. While techno-managerial solutions abound in our daily conversations and policy praxis, storytelling offers profound potential to reimagine our world. This article shows how collaborative practices are crucial in weaving together stories and experiences by echoing the emotional resonance of the climate crisis narrative to communicate our environmental reality and cultivate informed public awareness. Using the case study of The Tipping Point to Decolonise Sustainability, an initiative centred on climate storytelling, highlights how collaboration can spur discussions on decolonising sustainability. The article shows how we can craft an equitable future by acknowledging the power of storytelling and working together to communicate environmental reality.

Use of Yolo Detection for 3D Pose Tracking of Cardiac Catheters Using Bi-Plane Fluoroscopy

The increasing rate of minimally invasive procedures and the growing prevalence of cardiovascular disease have led to a demand for higher-quality guidance systems for catheter tracking. Traditional methods for catheter tracking, such as detection based on single points and applying masking techniques, have been limited in their ability to provide accurate pose information. In this paper, we propose a novel deep learning-based method for catheter tracking and pose detection. Our method uses a Yolov5 bounding box neural network with postprocessing to perform landmark detection in four regions of the catheter: the tip, radio-opaque marker, bend, and entry point. This allows us to track the catheter’s position and orientation in real time, without the need for additional masking or segmentation techniques. We evaluated our method on a dataset of fluoroscopic images from two distinct datasets and achieved state-of-the-art results in terms of accuracy and robustness. Our model was able to detect all four landmark features (tip, marker, bend, and entry) used to generate a pose for a catheter with 0.285 ± 0.143 mm, 0.261 ± 0.138 mm, 0.424 ± 0.361 mm, and 0.235 ± 0.085 mm accuracy. We believe that our method has the potential to significantly improve the accuracy and efficiency of catheter tracking in medical procedures that utilize bi-plane fluoroscopy guidance.

Governance for Earth system tipping points – A research agenda

Tipping points in the Earth system could be passed within the Paris Agreement's temperature goal range (1.5°C–2°C). Tipping processes are a feature of complex Earth system dynamics that present major governance challenges not addressed by existing global governance institutions. The common governance toolkit is a poor match for dealing with tipping processes, especially non-linear change, and radical intertemporality. To support the development of effective responses to anticipated, rapid state changes in the Earth system, there is an urgent need for new interdisciplinary research programs focused specifically on tipping-point governance. We distinguish two domains of action in a multi-phase framework - prevention and impact governance - and identify key research areas and questions that need to be addressed. These include developing governance principles, identifying actors and institutions that should be involved or need to be created, and determining the appropriate temporal and spatial scales for governance efforts.

Reflecting on the Science of Climate Tipping Points to Inform and Assist Policy Making and Address the Risks they Pose to Society

AbstractThere is a diverging perception of climate tipping points, abrupt changes and surprises in the scientific community and the public. While such dynamics have been observed in the past, e.g., frequent reductions of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation during the last ice age, or ice sheet collapses, tipping points might also be a possibility in an anthropogenically perturbed climate. In this context, high impact—low likelihood events, both in the physical realm as well as in ecosystems, will be potentially dangerous. Here we argue that a formalized assessment of the state of science is needed in order to establish a consensus on this issue and to reconcile diverging views. This has been the approach taken by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Since 1990, the IPCC has consistently generated robust consensus on several complex issues, ranging from the detection and attribution of climate change, the global carbon budget and climate sensitivity, to the projection of extreme events and their impact. Here, we suggest that a scientific assessment on tipping points, conducted collaboratively by the IPCC and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, would represent an ambitious yet necessary goal to be accomplished within the next decade.

At The Tipping Point: The Challenges and Opportunities for Midwifery Education in Australia

At The Tipping Point: The Challenges and Opportunities for Midwifery Education in Australia

Beyond the First Tipping Points of Southern Hemisphere Climate

Analysis of observations, reanalysis, and model simulations, including those using machine learning methods specifically designed for regime identification, has revealed changes in aspects of the Southern Hemisphere (SH) circulation and Australian climate and extremes over the last half-century that indicate transitions to new states. In particular, our analysis shows a dramatic shift in the metastability of the SH climate that occurred in the late 1970s, associated with a large-scale regime transition in the SH atmospheric circulation, with systematic changes in the subtropical jet, blocking, zonal winds, and storm tracks. Analysis via nonstationary clustering reveals a regime shift coincident with a sharp transition to warmer oceanic sea surface temperatures and increased baroclinicity in the large scales of the Antarctic Circumpolar Circulation (ACC), extending across the whole hemisphere. At the same time, the background state of the tropical Pacific thermocline shoaled, leading to an increased likelihood of El Niño events. The SH climate shift in the late 1970s is the first hemispheric regime shift that can be directly attributed to anthropogenic climate change. These changes in dynamics are associated with additional regional tipping points, including reductions in mean and extreme rainfall in south-west Western Australia (SWWA) and streamflow into Perth dams, and also with increases in mean and extreme rainfall over northern Australia since the late 1970s. The drying of south-eastern Australia (SEA) occurred against a background of accelerating increases in average and extreme temperatures across the whole continent since the 1990s, implying further inflection points may have occurred. Analysis of climate model simulations capturing the essence of these observed shifts indicates that these systematic changes will continue into the late 21st century under high greenhouse gas emission scenarios. Here, we review two decades of work, revealing for the first time that tipping points characteristic of regime transitions are inferred to have already occurred in the SH climate system.