Tipping Points

2026

1. Preprint

   

   Planetary climate interactions of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

   Ziyan Wang, Teng Liu, Shang Wang, Sheng Fang, and 9 more authors

   arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.16924, Apr 2026

   Abs Bib

   The Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP), Earth’s "Third Pole", profoundly shapes the Asian monsoon and regional climate and exerts far-reaching influence on the global climate system. Yet its role in organizing planetary-scale climate interactions remains poorly quantified. Here we develop a climate network framework to explicitly resolve the planetary teleconnection architecture associated with the QTP across historical observations and future climate projections, with physical consistency assessed using Lagrangian trajectory diagnostics and targeted numerical experiments. We uncover a persistent and directional interaction structure linking the QTP with multiple major climate tipping elements. In particular, we identify a robust tripolar interaction mode coupling the QTP with both the Arctic and Antarctica through coherent atmospheric-oceanic pathways. Our findings establish the QTP as a critical planetary climate integrator, revealing a significant blind spot in current climate models and risk frameworks regarding cascading tipping dynamics in a warming world.

   @article{Wang2026Planetary,
     title = {Planetary climate interactions of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau},
     author = {Wang, Ziyan and Liu, Teng and Wang, Shang and Fang, Sheng and Meng, Jun and Chen, Xiaosong and Kurths, Jürgen and Havlin, Shlomo and Chen, Fahu and Rockstr{\"o}m, Johan and Chen, Deliang and Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim and Fan, Jingfang},
     year = {2026},
     journal = {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.16924},
     month = apr,
     doi = {10.48550/arXiv.2604.16924}
   }

2026

1. Sci. Adv.

   

   Data gaps and outliers distort critical-slowing-down-based resilience indicators

   Teng Liu, Andreas Morr, Sebastian Bathiany, Lana L Blaschke, and 4 more authors

   Science Advances, Mar 2026

   Abs Bib PDF Supp Code

   The resilience of natural systems, such as climate or ecosystems, is increasingly threatened by anthropogenic pressures, making it essential to quantify resilience changes before abrupt and irreversible regime shifts occur. Widely used data-driven resilience indicators based on variance and autocorrelation detect “critical slowing down,” a signature of decreasing stability and possible impending critical transitions in dynamical systems with alternative equilibria. However, the interpretation of these indicators is complicated by common data issues such as missing values and outliers, whose effects remain poorly understood. Here, we develop a general mathematical framework that rigorously characterizes the statistical dependency between variance- and autocorrelation-based resilience indicators, revealing that their agreement is fundamentally driven by the time series’ initial data point. Using synthetic and empirical data, we demonstrate that missing values substantially weaken the agreement of resilience indicators, while outliers introduce systematic biases that lead to overestimation of resilience based on temporal autocorrelation. Our results provide a necessary and rigorous foundation for preprocessing strategies and accuracy assessments across the growing number of disciplines that use empirical data to infer changes in system resilience. Data gaps and outliers distort the statistical indicators used to detect loss of resilience in natural systems.

   @article{liu2026SA,
     author = {Liu, Teng and Morr, Andreas and Bathiany, Sebastian and Blaschke, Lana L and Qian, Zhen and Diao, Chan and Smith, Taylor and Boers, Niklas},
     title = {Data gaps and outliers distort critical-slowing-down-based resilience indicators},
     journal = {Science Advances},
     volume = {12},
     number = {11},
     dimension = {true},
     pages = {eaee1916},
     year = {2026},
     month = mar,
     doi = {10.1126/sciadv.aee1916},
     url = {https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/sciadv.aee1916},
   }

2025

1. Nat. Geosci.

   

   Destabilization of Earth system tipping elements

   Niklas Boers^*, Teng Liu^*, Sebastian Bathiany, Maya Ben-Yami, and 8 more authors

   Nature Geoscience, Oct 2025

   Abs Bib PDF Code

   There is rising concern that several parts of the Earth system may abruptly transition to alternative stable states in response to anthropogenic climate and land-use change. Key candidates of such tipping elements include the Greenland Ice Sheet, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, the South American monsoon system and the Amazon rainforest. Owing to the complex dynamics and feedbacks between them via oceanic and atmospheric coupling, the levels of anthropogenic forcing at which transitions to alternative states can be expected remain uncertain. Here we demonstrate how such interactions can generate spurious signals and potentially mask genuine signs of destabilization. We further review and present observation-based evidence that the stability of these four tipping elements has declined in recent decades, suggesting that they have moved towards their critical thresholds, which may be crossed within the range of unmitigated anthropogenic warming. Our results call for better monitoring of these tipping elements and for increased efforts to stop greenhouse gas emissions and land-use change.

   @article{boers2025destabilization,
     title = {Destabilization of Earth system tipping elements},
     author = {Boers, Niklas and Liu, Teng and Bathiany, Sebastian and Ben-Yami, Maya and Blaschke, Lana L and Bochow, Nils and Boulton, Chris A and Lenton, Timothy M and Morr, Andreas and Nian, Da and Rypdal, Martin and Smith, Taylor},
     journal = {Nature Geoscience},
     volume = {18},
     number = {10},
     pages = {949--960},
     year = {2025},
     dimensions = {true},
     month = oct,
     doi = {10.1038/s41561-025-01787-0},
     publisher = {Nature Publishing Group UK London},
   }

2023

1. Nat. Clim. Change

   

   Teleconnections among tipping elements in the Earth system

   Teng Liu, Dean Chen, Lan Yang, Jun Meng, and 9 more authors

   Nature Climate Change, Jan 2023

   Abs Bib PDF Supp

   Tipping elements are components of the Earth system that may shift abruptly and irreversibly from one state to another at specific thresholds. It is not well understood to what degree tipping of one system can influence other regions or tipping elements. Here, we propose a climate network approach to analyse the global impacts of a prominent tipping element, the Amazon Rainforest Area (ARA). We find that the ARA exhibits strong correlations with regions such as the Tibetan Plateau (TP) and West Antarctic ice sheet. Models show that the identified teleconnection propagation path between the ARA and the TP is robust under climate change. In addition, we detect that TP snow cover extent has been losing stability since 2008. We further uncover that various climate extremes between the ARA and the TP are synchronized under climate change. Our framework highlights that tipping elements can be linked and also the potential predictability of cascading tipping dynamics.

   @article{liu2023teleconnections,
     title = {Teleconnections among tipping elements in the Earth system},
     author = {Liu, Teng and Chen, Dean and Yang, Lan and Meng, Jun and Wang, Zanchenling and Ludescher, Josef and Fan, Jingfang and Yang, Saini and Chen, Deliang and Kurths, Jürgen and Xiaosong, Chen and Havlin, Shlomo and Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim},
     journal = {Nature Climate Change},
     volume = {13},
     number = {1},
     pages = {67--74},
     dimensions = {true},
     month = jan,
     doi = {10.1038/s41558-022-01558-4},
     year = {2023},
     publisher = {Nature Publishing Group UK London},
   }