About

TipESM is a project funded by the European Union Horizon Europe Funding Programme. 

Start date: 1 January 2024 

End date: 31 December 2027 

Coordinating organisation: Danish Meteorological Institute 

Coordinator: Dr Shuting Yang (sy@dmi.dk)

What TipESM is and does

TipESM brings together scientists from a range of disciplines to deliver a step change in our understanding of climate tipping points in the Earth system, including their impact on ecosystems and society, combined with a set of early warning indicators and safe future emission pathways that minimise the risk of exceeding such tipping points.

TipESM assembles the latest Earth System Models (ESMs), including recent improvements to key processes: ice sheets, vegetation and land use, permafrost, marine and terrestrial biogeochemistry. In cooperation with the WCRP/Future-Earth project TIPMIP, TipESM will organise an international collaboration to design and realise a common ESM experiment protocol that will facilitate analysis of the likelihood of occurrence, and potential reversibility, of tipping elements at different levels and duration of global warming. These experiments, will be combined with more project-specific ESM experiments, designed to investigate interactions and feedbacks across the Earth system. 

Based on the TipESM experiments, existing simulations and observations, we will investigate tipping points, their driving processes, potential early warning signals and cascading effects across the climate, ecosystems and society. Including the most important components of the Earth system in our ESMs will also allow TipESM to identify potentially unknown tipping elements, their precursors and impacts.

TipESM brings together expertise from climate science and climate impacts to investigate both the role of gradual climate change for tipping in individual ecosystems and society, and the impact of crossing specific climate tipping points for society, ecosystems, and biodiversity. Project findings will be synthesised into a tipping points risk register. 

New knowledge and data from TipESM will be regularly communicated to a broad range of research communities, policymakers and the public, contributing to a prepared and resilient society.


How TipESM works. (DMI, CC BY 4.0)


Expected impacts

TipESM delivers a unique contribution to the climate research landscape through advancing our knowledge on the risk of climate Tipping Points and their potential impact on ecological systems and society.

  • Advancing knowledge and solution in Earth system science, pathways to climate neutrality, climate change adaptation, climate services, social science for climate action and understanding of climate-ecosystem interactions
  • Contribute substantially to key international assessments (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, European Environment Agency)
  • Increasing the transparency, robustness, trustworthiness and practical usability of the knowledge base on climate and Earth system change for use by policymakers, practitioners, other stakeholders and citizens
  • Strengthening the European Research Area with increased knowledge on the risks of crossing climate Tipping Points

EU Flag TipESM is funded by the European Union, Horizon Europe Funding Programme for research and innovation. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.