Ambitious emission reductions maintain Earth resilience, conditional on climate and carbon feedbacks and tipping points
Earth resilience is a guiding principle for navigating safe futures in the Anthropocene, but operational quantification remains limited. We introduce a path-based resilience indicator estimating the probability of returning to a safe Holocene-like state by 2100 via the share of trajectories that fulfil not only temperature-but also dynamic warming rate-and tipping safety demands, rendering it effective for analyses of overshoot. It is conditioned on emission scenarios and analysed considering uncertainties in climate and carbon sensitivity and tipping dynamics. We find that a net-zero-by-2050 scenario has an estimated resilience of 34%, in contrast to <1% for current policies. To gain ∼10%pt resilience, emissions need to be cut by 35% in 2035 compared to an NDC scenario. On average, 7.3%pt are gained with every 5 years of decarbonising earlier than 2050. Therefore, early decarbonisation can hedge against the risk of tipping and strong climate and carbon feedbacks.
Authors
- Jobst Heitzig (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0442-8077)
- Ricarda Winkelmann (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1248-3217)
- Johan Rockström (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8988-2983)
- Nico Wunderling (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3566-323X)
- Jonathan F. Donges (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5233-7703)
- John Martin Anderies (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0138-8655)
- Max Bechthold (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-7113-4814)
- Chris Smith
Institutions
- Goethe University Frankfurt (DE)
- International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (AT)
- Stockholm Resilience Centre (SE)
- Stockholm University (SE)
- University of Potsdam (DE)
- Leibniz Association (DE)
- Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (DE)
- Bolin Centre for Climate Research (SE)
- Arizona State University (US)
- Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (DE)
Publication Details
- Published
- 2026-11-01
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.22541/essoar.15011368/v1
- Primary Topic
- Climate Change Policy and Economics
- Type
- preprint
Funders
- Fetzer Institute
- Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung
- International Max Planck Research School for Environmental, Cellular and Molecular Microbiology
- Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung
- Klaus Tschira Stiftung
- European Regional Development Fund