Université de Fribourg

Potential climatic transitions with profound impact on Europe: review of the current state of six ‘tipping elements of the climate system’

Levermann, Anders ; Bamber, Jonathan L. ; Drijfhout, Sybren ; Ganopolski, Andrey ; Haeberli, Winfried ; Harris, Neil R. P. ; Huss, Matthias ; Krüger, Kirstin ; Lenton, Timothy M. ; Lindsay, Ronald W. ; Notz, Dirk ; Wadhams, Peter ; Weber, Susanne

In: Climatic Change, 2011, vol. 110, no. 3-4, p. 845-878

We discuss potential transitions of six climatic subsystems with large-scale impact on Europe, sometimes denoted as tipping elements. These are the ice sheets on Greenland and West Antarctica, the Atlantic thermohaline circulation, Arctic sea ice, Alpine glaciers and northern hemisphere stratospheric ozone. Each system is represented by co-authors actively publishing in the corresponding field....