Evaluating the skill of a geometric early warning for tipping in a rapidly forced nonlinear system

Abstract

The future behavioural fate of a forced nonlinear system can depend sensitively on the forcing profile as well as natural fluctuations within the system. This is especially the case for rate-induced tipping, where the forcing pushes the system to a basin boundary of a future behaviour and small changes in the forcing can lead to drastically different eventual behaviours. This sensitivity may be present only for a limited period of time, for example when the forcing is most rapidly changing. Moreover, critical slowing down based methods fail to be informative in such cases. We investigate a geometric early warning to evaluate when a system is in such a sensitive state. This involves computing the R-tipping indicator, namely the signed distance to an approximate R-tipping threshold. The latter is a dynamic state that embeds knowledge of the system and future behaviour of the forcing. We contrast this with early warnings of bifurcation-induced tipping, where tipping is associated with passing a threshold on slow variation of forcing. As an example, we consider methods of early prediction of the future state for a 3-box model of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) with specified rapid forcing. We show that the skill of the geometric early warning compares favourably with simple thresholds.