Rate-induced tipping and climate change
ckrtj@email.unc.edu
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The climate is changing due to the heat trapping caused by the rapid increase in greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere. One way to see the challenge we face is that we cannot, as a species, adapt to the new conditions quickly enough. The inability to continually adjust is what happens in rate-induced tipping. While climate tipping scenarios are mostly viewed in terms of bifurcation-based tipping or noise-induced tipping, it may be that rate-induced tipping is the most relevant because parameters effecting these shifts are changing more rapidly than the ability of the system to adjust. I will discuss the dynamical systems behind rate-induced tipping, which has been developed over the past ten years, open questions, applications to climate related systems and interesting new directions in which noise and rate change are working together. I will explain why the unifying dynamical systems theme is finding heteroclinic orbits.