This poster provides an overview of the PROMOTE (Progressing Earth System Modelling for Tipping Point Early Warning Systems) project. One project aim is to develop a version of the UK Earth System Model (UKESM) that is suitable to become the model component of a potential early warning system of Subpolar Gyre or Greenland Ice Sheet tipping. In PROMOTE, we (i) undertake targeted development of UKESM to advance its representation of the Greenland Ice Sheet and North Atlantic Subpolar Gyre, (ii) develop innovative simulation techniques aiming to make the simulation of tipping behaviour in the Subpolar Gyre and Greenland Ice Sheet more controlled and efficient, (iii) use machine-learning and other analysis techniques as well as model simulations to inform the design of observational networks, and (iv) evaluate tipping processes and impacts of tipping in our newly developed model versions. PROMOTE is run by a team of scientists and model developers at 7 UK national research centres and universities during 2025-2030, and is part of the “Forecasting Tipping Points” programme funded by the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA).

How to cite: Schiemann, R., Blaker, A., Bruciaferri, D., Cornford, S., Dittus, A., Jackson, L., Jebri, F., Jeffery, H., Jones, C., Kuhlbrodt, T., Lang, C., Mulcahy, J., Naughten, K., Popova, E., Robson, J., Smith, R., Sinha, B., Swaminathan, R., Tett, S., and Wood, R.: An overview of the PROMOTE project: Progressing Earth System Modelling for Tipping Point Early Warning Systems, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-14794, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-14794, 2026.

Climate attractors are asymptotic steady states of the climate system, embedded in a high-dimensional phase space. They represent distinct climatic regimes, separated by unstable boundaries where small perturbations can cause the climate to transition from one attractor to another. Identifying climate attractors in simulations performed with state-of-the-art models is challenging [1] due to the high computational costs associated with running multi-millennial, multi-component simulations with a continuous spectrum of variability. Nevertheless, the number of attractors and their stability ranges can provide crucial information about the numerical representation of nonlinear interactions in a model, and reveal the  dynamical structure of the climate system.

In the search for climate attractors under the present-day continental configuration, we used a recently developed modelling framework called biogeodyn-MITgcmIS [2], in which the dynamical core of both the atmosphere and the ocean is provided by the MIT general circulation model, while offline coupling ensures the consistent evolution of vegetation and ice sheets. Using this coupled setup, we identified three distinct climatic states: a glacial state, an interglacial state, and a hot state with a strongly reduced Greenland ice sheet. These states coexist over a range of atmospheric CO₂ concentrations, thereby defining hysteresis paths between the attractors.

Here, we describe the methodology used to identify these attractors and highlight the crucial role of ice-sheet and vegetation evolution. We characterize the attractors in terms of their dominant feedback mechanisms. We find that, while the positive overturning cell mainly changes in intensity during the transition from the cold to the warm state, it collapses during the transition from the warm to the hot state. Crossing the warm-hot boundary involves substantial vegetation changes, the disappearance of the Greenland ice sheet, and a reduction of sea ice in the Antarctic region. Finally, we discuss the need to repeat similar investigations using different climate models to assess the robustness of the identified attractors and mechanisms.

[1] Brunetti and Ragon, Phys. Rev. E 107, 054214 (2023)

[2] Moinat et al., EGUsphere [preprint], https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2946 (2025)

How to cite: Brunetti, M. and Moinat, L.: In search of climate attractors, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-6664, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-6664, 2026.

As the aim of limiting global warming to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels is getting out of reach, the world enters a risk zone for climate tipping points. For several crucial tipping elements, such as the polar ice sheets and the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a tipping threshold below 2°C cannot be ruled out. We develop an emulator for tipping elements to assess the risks of continental and regional tipping points with severe impacts on global conditions for human life, namely the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, the Amazon rainforest, the AMOC and permafrost. Given the most recent advances in model capabilities for simulating coupled components of the Earth system, we directly parameterize the dynamic behaviour of our modelled tipping elements and their interactions according to a range of current process-based Earth system model experiments for the first time. With this empirically calibrated emulator, we assess tipping risks under overshoot scenarios and investigate the impact of several properties of temperature trajectories like peak temperatures, overshoot timescales and temperature reduction pathways, including carbon dioxide removal. Our results imply a crucial role for both emission mitigation and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) for tipping risks until 2200. We find that under current policies and actions, substantial deployment of CDR methods would have to take place well within this century to limit tipping risks in the next centuries to 10%. On millennial timescales, the return to a safe operating space w.r.t. tipping points is decided by the mitigation efforts of the next decades and the global storage capacity for carbon removal.

How to cite: Lohmann, N., Donges, J., and Wunderling, N.: Carbon Dioxide Removal Pathways in Climate Overshoots Are Decisive for Tipping Risks in an Earth System Model-Based Tipping Dynamics Emulator, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-6801, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-6801, 2026.

Quantifying and comparing the performance of methods that detect abrupt changes in climate time series remains challenging due to limited ground-truth data and the complex, nonlinear and stochastic dynamics of the climate system. To address this gap, we present PONDS (Perturbed Observables in Noisy Dynamics Synthesiser), a new software package designed to generate synthetic, climate-like time series for benchmarking and methodological development. PONDS serves three core purposes: (1) mimicking real-world climate shift events through configurable perturbations applied to synthetic or observationally informed dynamical systems; (2) enabling evaluation of abrupt-shift detectors by providing standardized benchmark datasets with known structural and statistical properties; and (3) offering a flexible framework for incorporating alternative  time-series generators within a climate-data context.

PONDS provides a controlled environment for exploring the detectability of regime shifts under varying assumptions about noise characteristics and complexity of the shift events. This includes the generation of spatio-temporal clusters and time series of customizable configurations. For example, a user can generate shift cluster events that spatially overlap and shift event properties propagate. This bridging tool supports systematic sensitivity analysis and promotes reproducible comparison across detection algorithms.

PONDS aims to contribute to the session by offering a modular tool that is able to enhance data-driven abrupt shift detection tools and potential climate tipping points, by providing a benchmark oriented data synthesizer. It further helps to understand the various appearances of practically observed and theoretically expected shift events.

How to cite: Röhrich, L., Harteg, J., Kühlein, F., Donges, J., and Loriani, S.: PONDS - A Python Package for Generating Synthetic Datasets with Spatio-Temporal Shifts, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-2216, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-2216, 2026.

Droughts are a dominant climate stressor in Mediterranean ecosystems, and frequency and intensity of these events are expected to increase. Multi-year long-lasting droughts involving ‘memory’ effects, make short-term or event-specific analysis insufficient to assess ecosystem's responses. We present a remote-sensing framework that combines kernel-density-based phenological anomalies with cumulative sums (Cusums) trajectories to assess long-term functional change in Mediterranean forests of Central Chile. Using MODIS EVI, Moisture Stress Index (MSI) and Evapotranspiration (ET), we generate spatially explicit indicators that capture gradual deviations from the expected phenology and persistent directional shifts.

Our framework revealed persistent negative trajectories preceding the 2010–present megadrought, indicating chronic water stress and progressive loss of resilience. The spatially-explicit indicators highlighted spatially coherent degradation hotspots—northern sclerophyllous and southern deciduous forests—where canopy greenness, moisture, and evapotranspiration declined synchronously. By contrasting pre- and post-2010 relationships between vegetation indices and hydro-climatic variables, we detect a shift of forest-climate interactions consistent with increasing water limitation conditions.

Our results demonstrate how combining KDE-derived anomalies with cumulative change metrics enhance the detection of early and persistent vegetation stress from satellite time series. This provides a sensitive framework to detect early and persistent vegetation stress and to anticipate functional thresholds under continued aridification.

How to cite: Lastra, J., Chávez, R. O., Decuyper, M., Lau, A., and de Beurs, K.: Cumulative drought stress and forest functional changes in drought-prone Mediterranean forests, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-7125, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-7125, 2026.

The Amazon rainforest is considered one of the core tipping elements in the climate system with a potential tipping point in the range of 2-6℃ of global warming. However, the complexity of tropical ecosystems makes climate change projections on the future of the Amazon rainforest inherently difficult. Furthermore, deforestation as an additional driver plays a key role in the Amazon rainforest and can synergistically interfere with global warming induced impacts. This creates a need for combined assessments of the safe operating space of the Amazon rainforest under global warming and deforestation. 
Here, we introduce a risk-assessment approach combining a simple tipping model with different data sources for local-scale tipping points, precipitation changes due to climate change (mean annual precipitation and maximum cumulative water deficit), strength of the atmospheric moisture-recycling feedback and future deforestation pathways. With this approach we can quantify the safe operating space of the Amazon rainforest and find 
that under current conditions of 1.4℃ of global warming and 17% of deforestation, more than a third of the Amazon rainforest is exposed to high risks of crossing critical thresholds indicating that substantial parts of the Amazon rainforest may have already left the safe operating space. Our results reiterate the need to hold the Paris climate target and also end net deforestation by 2030.

How to cite: Krönke, J., Staal, A., Donges, J. F., Rockström, J., and Wunderling, N.: A data-driven modelling approach to quantify the safe operating space of the Amazon rainforest under global warming and deforestation, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-6621, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-6621, 2026.

Detecting regime shifts in ecological systems is crucial for anticipating changes and guiding management actions or ecosystem restoration. When ecosystems are trapped in an undesirable state, assessing their resilience can provide guidance for deciding how and when to intervene on system to trigger a shift to a more desirable state. By understanding how strongly the system resists change, one can better anticipate the type, intensity and timing of such interventions.

To design effective interventions, it is necessary to distinguish causal effects from correlations and determine how acting on a given driver can change the system’s resilience. We show that adopting a causal approach provides tools to measure the resilience of a system — thus how far a bifurcation point is — and the effect of interventions, contributing to better ecosystem management.

We illustrate this approach using the example of freshwater eutrophication, where lakes can shift from a clear to a turbid state (and vice-versa). Using observational data combined with knowledge of causal interactions, we outline a protocol to measure system resilience and anticipate the effects of interventions — such as nutrient reduction or biomanipulation — tailored to the current regime. For example, causal effect estimation can help answering questions such as: given the current state of my system, what would be the effect of e.g. removing big fishes from the lake during one month? Should I reduce the resilience of the turbid state beforehand in order for that intervention to be sufficient, by e.g. reducing the nutrient input?

The method is designed as a general tool for experts and can be applied across multiple ecosystems exhibiting tipping dynamics. It provides a framework based on explicitly specifying the causal graph linking system variables, identifying which variables can be intervened upon, estimating resilience from observational data, and selecting interventions that achieve a predefined management goal while accounting for associated costs.

How to cite: Lanson, A., Wahl, J., and Runge, J.: A causal framework for anticipating and managing ecological regime shifts, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-20679, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-20679, 2026.

Global warming increases the risk of crossing critical temperature thresholds, so-called climate tipping points, which trigger large-scale, non-linear, and possibly irreversible changes in the Earth System accompanied by substantial impacts on the biosphere and human societies. However, precise temperature projections remain uncertain, largely due to the spread in climate sensitivity estimates. Equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) quantifies long-term temperature response to a doubling of atmospheric CO2. Here, we analyze how climate tipping risk is affected by ECS uncertainty by propagating a range of temperature projections from the simple climate model FaIR to PyCascades, a model of interacting tipping elements. Considered tipping elements are the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, the Greenland Ice Sheet, the Amazon rainforest, and the Atlantic Meridional Overturn Circulation. We find a nonlinear, logistic relationship between ECS and climate tipping risk for a wide range of atmospheric CO2 concentrations. The exact relation depends strongly on CO2 concentration, underlining the importance of both emissions and climate sensitivity in determining system stability. Higher ECS values strongly amplify the likelihood of crossing tipping points. Moreover, a recent observational constraint on ECS set a lower limit at 2.9°C, which implies a high tipping risk of at least 75 % for present-day atmospheric CO2 concentration. These results highlight the critical importance of narrowing ECS uncertainty and improving understanding of its drivers, as even moderate ECS estimates imply substantial long-term risks of triggering tipping events.

How to cite: Mühlhaus, R., Steinert, N. J., and Wunderling, N.: Observationally constrained climate sensitivity implies high climate tipping risk, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-3395, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-3395, 2026.

Human-induced environmental changes are rapidly reshaping the Earth system, with significant implications for human habitability. While existing safe and just Earth System Boundaries (ESBs) have delineated critical planetary thresholds, the future evolution of human habitable conditions remains unclear, especially given the transgression of all eight global ESBs and the underexplored "just" dimension of health and well-being. Here we propose the habitable composite volume (HCV), defined on a three–dimensional environmental phase space P, to quantify the collapsing boundaries of human habitability under the Great Acceleration. During the historical period (1981–2014), global HCV declined by approximately 27%, from 0.66 to 0.48. Under the projections of Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, the high-emission scenario poses the greatest risk, with HCV declining by up to 78% from 2015 to 2100 and collapsing areas encompassing 91.6% of global land, drastically reducing viable living space. Of greatest concern is that, high-risk regions—where collapse coincides with dense populations—expand nearly tenfold (1.7% to 16-18%) under moderate-to-high emissions, disproportionately affecting vulnerable developing regions first before extending to every continent. These findings highlight the escalating risks to human habitability and underscore the urgency of both mitigation and adaptation strategies to address this global crisis.

How to cite: Wang, F., Ran, Q., Ye, G., Li, Q., Wei, T., Yuan, N., Yang, Q., Xiao, C., Zhou, T., Zhai, P., Ha, K.-J., Franzke, C. L. E., Chen, C., Chen, D., and Dong, W.: Future Simulations Project a Significant Decrease in Habitability Space of Safe and Just Earth System Boundaries, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-4451, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-4451, 2026.

In the Planetary Boundaries framework, Biosphere Integrity is considered one of the “core boundaries” due to its vital role in the Earth system and its numerous interconnections with other boundaries (Rockström et al. 2009, Steffen et al. 2015, Richardson et al. 2023). The Planetary Boundary of Biosphere Integrity is assessed based on genetic diversity and functional integrity. While the current control variable for the genetic diversity component takes both terrestrial and marine life into account, the control variable for the functional integrity component so far only includes terrestrial life. In order to advance the representation of marine life within the boundary of functional biosphere integrity, we suggest the addition of a marine control variable that addresses the combined effect of multiple stressors on marine ecosystem health. The aim of the work presented here is to develop the basis for a multiple-stressor index that takes into account the interaction of ocean warming and ocean acidification. The index seeks to quantify the cumulative impact of anthropogenic stressors on marine ecosystems, such as kelp forests. Most species of kelp are considered foundation species due to their strong role in structuring the ecosystem. Macrocystis pyrifera (giant kelp) is the first species to be included in the development of this multiple-stressor index due to its global distribution, its important role in providing ecosystem services, and the current data availability (Roethler et al., 2025). Future work will consist of including other species and ecosystems, as well as additional stressors.

References:
Rockström, J., Steffen, W., Noone, K. et al. A safe operating space for humanity. Nature 461, 472–475 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/461472a
Steffen, W. et al.,Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet.Science347,1259855(2015).DOI:10.1126/science.1259855 
Richardson, K. et al., Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries.Sci. Adv.9,eadh2458(2023).DOI:10.1126/sciadv.adh2458
Roethler, M. et al., Global Meta-Analysis Reveals the Impacts of Ocean Warming and Acidification on Kelps. Ecological Monographs95(3):e70034(2025). https://doi.org/10.1002/ecm.70034

How to cite: Alvarado Amaro, A., Dupont, S., Caesar, L., and Mathesius, S.: Assessing multiple stressors on marine ecosystems in the context of the Planetary Boundaries framework , EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-15460, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-15460, 2026.

The Planetary Boundaries (PB) Framework seeks to identify key Earth system processes that sustain planetary stability and are vulnerable to large-scale perturbations driven by human activities (Richardson et al. 2023). The Planetary Health Check 2025 reports that seven of the nine Planetary Boundaries have already been exceeded, including the recently transgressed boundary of ocean acidification (Sakschewski et al. 2025). Ocean acidification poses substantial risks to marine ecosystems by altering the carbonate system at rates that challenge the capacity of calcifying organisms to adapt to the new conditions. These changes threaten ecosystem functioning, marine carbon sequestration, and the provision of marine ecosystem services. In addition, ocean acidification is associated with a measurable decline in the ocean’s buffer capacity (Müller et al. 2023), which reduces the efficiency of the ocean sink for anthropogenic CO₂ and thereby weakens the ocean’s capacity to mitigate climate change. In this contribution, we examine the rationale underlying earlier assumptions and methodological choices in the assessment of ocean acidification within the PB Framework, and discuss approaches that could improve its representation and evaluation. These include an explicit consideration of subsurface acidification, the consideration of regional variability in the derivation of a global threshold, and the exploration of alternative indicators for evaluating the state and impacts of ocean acidification. We demonstrate how incorporating the best available scientific understanding and the most recent observational evidence into the assessment of the Planetary Boundary of ocean acidification can advance the current methodology and help ensure its scientific robustness and relevance.

Richardson, K., Steffen, W., Lucht, W., Bendtsen, J., Cornell, S. E., Donges, J. F., ... & Rockström, J. (2023). Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries. Science advances, 9(37), eadh2458.

Sakschewski, B., Caesar, L., Andersen, L., Bechthold, M., Bergfeld, L., Beusen, A., ... & Rockström, J. (2025). Planetary Health Check 2025: a scientific assessment of the state of the planet. Planetary Boundaries Science (PBScience), 144.

Müller, J. D., Gruber, N., Carter, B., Feely, R., Ishii, M., Lange, N., ... & Zhu, D. (2023). Decadal trends in the oceanic storage of anthropogenic carbon from 1994 to 2014. AGU Advances, 4(4), e2023AV000875.

How to cite: Mathesius, S. and Caesar, L.: Ocean Acidification in the Planetary Boundaries Framework, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-12218, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-12218, 2026.

Accurately assessing the planetary boundary for China’s functional biosphere integrity is constrained by the scarcity of high-precision agricultural land-use data. To address this limitation, we reconstructed China’s historical cropping patterns based on our recently developed 1-km crop harvest area dataset and used these inputs to drive the dynamic global vegetation model LPJmL, enabling spatially explicit assessments of China’s functional biosphere integrity since the industrial period. We quantified the Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production (HANPP) and an ecological disruption metric (EcoRisk) to characterize the spatiotemporal evolution of functional biosphere integrity and its deviation from the Holocene baseline. We further identified China-specific planetary boundary thresholds and assessed the spatial heterogeneity of transgression patterns in terms of functional biosphere integrity. Our results indicated that the Huang-Huai-Hai Region and the Middle-Lower Yangtze Region experienced persistently high risks of boundary transgression, while Northeast and Southern China regions transitioned from a safe operating space to high-risk states during the mid-to-late 20th century. Notably, while HANPP has stabilized or declined in response to recent ecological policies, EcoRisk remains at a critically high level. These findings provide a valuable reference for assessing biosphere integrity in China and offer a framework for translating planetary boundary thresholds to regional scales.

How to cite: Xie, Y., Dai, K., Cheng, C., and Wu, X.: Assessing planetary boundary transgressions in China’s functional biosphere integrity, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-15605, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-15605, 2026.

Recent research has raised concerns that the Earth’s global surface temperature (GST) change relative to preindustrial levels (mean temperature 1850-1900), a key indicator closely connected to the planetary boundary for climate change, is in a human-caused phase of acceleration rather than just following a linear trajectory. However, at this point, reliably tracking this acceleration signal in a timely manner and clearly distinguishing it from natural variability remains difficult.

To address this, we propose a new method to regularly forecast the GST change, including both a prediction of the annual-mean of the current year and a projection of the 20-year mean up to 10 years ahead. The forecasts comprise both the global surface air temperature (GSAT) change as primary metric, also used by the IPCC for assessing the degree of compliance with Paris Agreement temperature limits, and for legacy purposes as well the global mean surface temperature (GMST) change, which (mainly) is a blend of surface water temperature over the oceans and surface air temperature over land.

We introduce and demonstrate the method over the 1990 to 2025 timespan. It provides annual-mean results for any current year, and the related 20-year-mean estimates, as early as of July of the year, followed by monthly updates until the current year is observationally complete (within the first quarter of the follow-on year). By combining monthly observational GMST and GSAT data from reliable sources, including reanalysis and seasonal prediction data, a typical GST forecast accuracy within 0.03 °C is achieved as of August of the current year for the annual mean, and a typical 10-year projection accuracy of within 0.05 °C for the 20-year-mean. The latter is a critical metric for early clues on emerging next-decade changes in the Earth system.

We show that the approach enhances the accuracy and timeliness of early-warning estimates of the ongoing GST change, including of GST change acceleration of current-year versus center-year-1990 20-year-mean trend rates and of the related level of exceedance over natural trend-rate variability. As an example, our prediction of September 2025 for the annual-mean GSAT change in 2025 was 1.48 °C, four months ahead of the January 2026 announcement of the EU Copernicus Climate Change Service of a GSAT change of 1.47 °C. By improving in this way our ability to detect and characterize GST change dynamics in a timely and reliable manner, this work provides valuable insights into the warming state of the climate system and its proximity to critical thresholds such as tipping points, along with co-informing on the Earth energy imbalance and potential destabilization tendencies in climate feedback processes. The findings also help inform discussions on the urgency of climate mitigation efforts to avoid exceeding planetary boundaries.

How to cite: Pichler, M. and Kirchengast, G.: Earlier warning on global warming: a new method for timely tracking and forecasting of global surface temperature change and accelerations, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-14279, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-14279, 2026.

Time use provides a universal physically conserved variable for measuring human activity at multiple scales. While time use research spans several disciplines, focus has been mainly on the national scale, and global analysis is just now becoming possible with the development of a suitable dataset. Emergent global patterns in time allocation can constrain the possibility space of human systems represented in future scenarios, for example by assessing the implied change in time use for post-growth economies or from transitioning to sustainable agriculture. Here we present a synthesis of globally gap-filled, demographically consistent time use data across 36 physical outcome-oriented activities, and pair it with a long-term reconstruction of labour by sector. The complete set of daily and economic activities reveals that the employed share of the global population has been constant over time at about 40% and mean working hours average 2.6 hours per day per capita. We also demonstrate how person-hours can be downscaled to 1-degree spatial resolution to link labour activity to other spatial features, such as cropland, extraction sites, or urban areas. The dataset is intended to enable further high-level research into human-Earth interactions.

How to cite: Fajzel, W. and Galbaith, E.: Global time use for human-Earth system interactions, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-15173, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-15173, 2026.

This dissertation seeks to investigate how the Earth Systems Boundaries (ESBs), a safe and just corridor framework, can be integrated as an “what if” scenario to digital earth twins such as Destination Earth (DestinE). DestinE is a technological replica of Earth that provides continuous data for real-time monitoring and simulation of environmental and human activities, and provides “what if” scenarios, which is expected to be completed by 2030 (European Commission, 2025).The ESBs integration to a digital twin such as DestinE can contribute to systemic monitoring, simulation, and modelling of earth and human activities holistically at a level that could provide greater sustainability information concerning decision making and real-time data, and therefore contribute to city, business, and resource management optimization. 

How to cite: Romero, M.:   Digital Earth Twin’s Systemic Integration and Transformational Pathways , EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-8302, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-8302, 2026.

How to cite: Hartvig, Á. D., Leoncio Hehl, D., Tan, R. Y. W., and Eker, S.: Positive tipping cascades in the power system driven by adoption of grid-scale batteries , EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-20651, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-20651, 2026.

Food is the foundation of our society. We often take it for granted, but stocks are rarely available for longer than a year, and food production can be disrupted by catastrophic events, both locally and globally. To highlight such major risks to the food system, we analyzed FAO crop production data from 1961 to 2023 to find the largest crop production shock for every country and identify its causes. We show that large crop production shocks regularly happen in all countries. This is most often driven by climate (especially droughts), but disruptions by other causes like economic disruptions, environmental hazards (especially storms) and conflict also occur regularly. The global mean of largest country-level shocks averaged -29%, with African countries experiencing the most extreme collapses (-80% in Botswana), while Asian and Central European nations faced more moderate largest shocks (-5 to -15%). While global shocks above 5% are rare (occurring once in 63 years), continent-level shocks of this magnitude happen every 1.8 years on average. These results show that large disruptions to our food system frequently happen on a local to regional scale and can plausibly happen on a global scale as well. We therefore argue that more preparation and planning are needed to avoid such global disruptions to food production. 

How to cite: Jehn, F. U., Mulhall, J., Blouin, S., Gajewski, L., and Wunderling, N.: The Largest Crop Production Shocks: Magnitude, Causes and Frequency, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-2788, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-2788, 2026.