Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Fig. 1. A schematic illustration of possible future pathways of the climate against the background of the typical glacial–interglacial cycles (Lower Left). The interglacial state of the Earth System is at the top of the glacial–interglacial cycle, while the glacial state is at the bottom. Sea level follows temperature change relatively slowly through thermal expansion and the melting of glaciers and ice caps. The horizontal line in the middle of the figure represents the preindustrial temperature level, and the current position of the Earth System is shown by the small sphere on the red line close to the divergence between the Stabilized Earth and Hothouse Earth pathways. The proposed planetary threshold at ∼2 °C above the preindustrial level is also shown. The letters along the Stabilized Earth/ Hothouse Earth pathways represent four time periods in Earth’s recent past that may give insights into positions along these pathways (SI Appendix): A, Mid-Holocene; B, Eemian; C, Mid-Pliocene; and D, Mid-Miocene. Their positions on the pathway are approximate only. Their temperature ranges relative to preindustrial are given in SI Appendix, Table S1.
Fig. 2. Stability landscape showing the pathway of the Earth System out of the Holocene and thus, out of the glacial–interglacial limit cycle to its present position in the hotter Anthropocene. The fork in the road in Fig. 1 is shown here as the two divergent pathways of the Earth System in the future (broken arrows). Currently, the Earth System is on a Hothouse Earth pathway driven by human emissions of greenhouse gases and biosphere degradation toward a planetary threshold at ∼2 °C (horizontal broken line at 2 °C in Fig. 1), beyond which the system follows an essentially irreversible pathway driven by intrinsic biogeophysical feedbacks. The other pathway leads to Stabilized Earth, a pathway of Earth System stewardship guided by human-created feedbacks to a quasistable, human-maintained basin of attraction.“Stability” (vertical axis) is defined here as the inverse of the potential energy of the system. Systems in a highly stable state (deep valley) have low potential energy, and considerable energy is required to move them out of this stable state. Systems in an unstable state (top of a hill) have high potential energy, and they require only a little additional energy to push them off the hill and down toward a valley of lower potential energy.
August 14, 2018
Will Steffen (a,b,1), Johan Rockström (a), Katherine Richardson (c), Timothy M. Lenton (d), Carl Folke (a,e), Diana Liverman (f), Colin P. Summerhayes (g), Anthony D. Barnosky (h), Sarah E. Cornell (a), Michel Crucifix (i,j), Jonathan F. Donges (a,k), Ingo Fetzer (a), Steven J. Lade (a,b), Marten Scheffer (l), Ricarda Winkelmann (k,m), and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (a,k,m,1)
Edited by William C. Clark, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, and approved July 6, 2018 (received for review June 19, 2018)
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. Col- lective 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 trans- formed social values.
Earth System trajectories | climate change | Anthropocene | biosphere feedbacks | tipping elements
(a) Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, 10691 Stockholm, Sweden; (b) Fenner School of Environment and Society, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia; (c) Center for Macroecology, Evolution, and Climate, University of Copenhagen, Natural History Museum of Denmark, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark; (d) Earth System Science Group, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, EX4 4QE Exeter, United Kingdom; (e) The Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, The Royal Swedish Academy of Science, SE-10405 Stockholm, Sweden; (f) School of Geography and Development, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721; (g) Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge University, CB2 1ER Cambridge, United Kingdom; (h) Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305; (i) Earth and Life Institute, Université catholique de Louvain, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium; (j) Belgian National Fund of Scientific Research, 1000 Brussels, Belgium; (k) Research Domain Earth System Analysis, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, 14473 Potsdam, Germany; (l) Department of Environmental Sciences, Wageningen University & Research, 6700AA Wageningen, The Netherlands; and (m) Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Potsdam, 14469 Potsdam, Germany
Author contributions: W.S., J.R., K.R., T.M.L., C.F., D.L., C.P.S., A.D.B., S.E.C., M.C., J.F.D., I.F., S.J.L., M.S., R.W., and H.J.S. wrote the paper. The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND).
(1) To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: will.steffen@anu.edu.au or john@pik-potsdam.de.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1810141115/.
Published online August 6, 2018.
Fig. 3. Global map of potential tipping cascades. The individual tipping elements are color- coded according to estimated thresholds in global average surface temperature (tipping points) (12, 34). Arrows show the potential interactions among the tipping elements based on expert elicitation that could generate cascades. Note that, although the risk for tipping (loss of) the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is proposed at >5 °C, some marine-based sectors in East Antarctica may be vulnerable at lower temperatures (35–38).
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