Important Role in the Next IPCC Report

Abrupt changes and tipping points

Thomas Frölicher leads the OCCR Ocean Modeling Group and has been a full professor for Climate and Environmental Physics at the University of Bern since 2014. He studied Environmental Natural Sciences at ETH Zurich and earned his PhD in Physics from the University of Bern. Subsequently, he worked for several years as a Postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University in the USA. His research focuses among other topics on ocean heatwaves. As a Lead Author, he has already contributed significantly to the IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate.

In his new role as Coordinating Lead Author of the upcoming IPCC report (AR7), he is responsible for the development and coordination of Chapter 8 titled: "Abrupt changes, low-likelihood high-impact events, and critical thresholds, including tipping points in the Earth system." This topic is being addressed with its own dedicated chapter for the first time in the IPCC Working Group I AR7 report. Keywords related to the chapter's content include:

• Definitions, characterization, time and spatial scales, reversibility
• Abrupt changes, low-likelihood high impact events and tipping points within the Earth system components and their ecosystems, their drivers and occurrence conditions
• Evidence from and limitations of observations, models, paleoclimate and Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge and local knowledge
• Local, regional and global climatic consequences relevant for impacts and risks, their magnitude, spatial extent, timing, reversibility, teleconnections, cascading and compounding effects
• Critical system-specific thresholds, including in the context of global warming levels, and early warning indicators

The publication of the Working Group I report of the IPCC for the Seventh Assessment Cycle (AR7) is scheduled for May 2028.