Johan Rockström

Johan Rockström
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research | PIK

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319
Publications
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110,692
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Publications

Publications (319)
Cover Page
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Cover: Devastation in Asheville, North Carolina, following the effects of Hurricane Helene, which caused billions of dollars of damage in the Southeast United States and other regions. In this issue’s “2024 State of the Climate Report,” an international team of scientists, led by Oregon State University’s William Ripple and Christopher Wolf, presen...
Preprint
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Climate change research is broad, diverse and constantly growing. Cross- and interdisciplinary understanding is essential for generating robust science advice for policy. However, it is challenging to prioritise and navigate the ever-expanding peer-reviewed literature. To address this, we gathered input from experts across various research fields t...
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Our aim in the present article is to communicate directly to researchers, policymakers, and the public. As scientists and academics, we feel it is our moral duty and that of our institutions to alert humanity to the growing threats that we face as clearly as possible and to show leadership in addressing them. In this report, we analyze the latest t...
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Under current emission trajectories, temporarily overshooting the Paris global warming limit of 1.5 °C is a distinct possibility. Permanently exceeding this limit would substantially increase the probability of triggering climate tipping elements. Here, we investigate the tipping risks associated with several policy-relevant future emission scenari...
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The planetary boundaries framework defines a safe operating space for humanity. To date, these boundaries have mostly been investigated separately, and it is unclear whether breaching one boundary can lead to the transgression of another. By employing a dynamic global vegetation model, we systematically simulate the strength and direction of the ef...
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Non-technical Summary With unabating climate extremes, evidence of waning biosphere buffering capacity, and surging ocean surface temperature, Earth system analysts are posing the question: is global environmental change accelerating, driven by the depletion of our planet's resilience? No scientist contributed more actively to addressing this quest...
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Human actions compromise the many life-supporting functions provided by the freshwater cycle. Yet, scientific understanding of anthropogenic freshwater change and its long-term evolution is limited. Here, using a multi-model ensemble of global hydrological models, we estimate how, over a 145-year industrial period (1861–2005), streamflow and soil m...
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The Anthropocene signifies the start of a no-analogue trajectory of the Earth system that is fundamentally different from the Holocene. This new trajectory is characterized by rising risks of triggering irreversible and unmanageable shifts in Earth system functioning. We urgently need a new global approach to safeguard critical Earth system regulat...
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Precipitation is essential for food production in Sub-Saharan Africa, where more than 80 % of agriculture is rainfed. Although ~40 % of precipitation in certain regions is recycled moisture from Africa's tropical rainforest, there needs to be more knowledge about how this moisture supports the continent's agriculture. In this study, we quantify all...
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Operating within safe and just Earth system boundaries requires mobilizing key actors across scale to set targets and take actions accordingly. Robust, transparent and fair cross-scale translation methods are essential to help navigate through the multiple steps of scientifc and normative judgements in translation, with clear awareness of associate...
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Non-technical summary We identify a set of essential recent advances in climate change research with high policy relevance, across natural and social sciences: (1) looming inevitability and implications of overshooting the 1.5°C warming limit, (2) urgent need for a rapid and managed fossil fuel phase-out, (3) challenges for scaling carbon dioxide r...
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Safe and just Earth system boundaries (ESBs) for surface water and groundwater (blue water) have been defined for sustainable water management in the Anthropocene. Here we assessed whether minimum human needs could be met with surface water from within individual river basins alone and, where this is not possible, quantified how much groundwater wo...
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Life on planet Earth is under siege. We are now in an unchartedterritory. For several decades, scientists have consistently warnedof a future marked by extreme climatic conditions because of es-calating global temperatures caused by ongoing human activitiesthat release harmful greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Un-fortunately, time is up. We ar...
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This planetary boundaries framework update finds that six of the nine boundaries are transgressed, suggesting that Earth is now well outside of the safe operating space for humanity. Ocean acidification is close to being breached, while aerosol loading regionally exceeds the boundary. Stratospheric ozone levels have slightly recovered. The transgre...
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Non-technical summary There is increasing evidence of extreme events and irreversible damage occurring faster than expected. Despite inescapable evidence of intersecting crises facing the Earth system and numerous efforts and agreements, global society is not on track to achieve its sustainability objectives. The 10 ‘Must Haves’ initiative aims to...
Preprint
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Under current emission trajectories, at least temporarily overshooting the Paris global warming limit of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels is a distinct possibility. Permanently exceeding this limit would substantially increase the risks of triggering several climate tipping elements with associated high-end impacts on human societies and the Eart...
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The Anthropocene is characterized by the strengthening of planetary-scale interactions between the biophysical Earth system (ES) and human societies. This increasing social-ecological entanglement poses new challenges for studying possible future World-Earth system (WES) trajectories and World-Earth resilience defined as the capacity of the system...
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The stability and resilience of the Earth system and human well-being are inseparably linked1–3, yet their interdependencies are generally under-recognized; consequently, they are often treated independently4,5. Here, we use modelling and literature assessment to quantify safe and just Earth system boundaries (ESBs) for climate, the biosphere, wate...
Preprint
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Safe and just Earth System Boundaries (ESBs) for surface and groundwater (blue water) have been defined for sustainable water management in the Anthropocene. We evaluate where minimum human needs can be met within the surface water ESB and, where this is not possible, identify how much groundwater is required. 2.6 billion people live in catchments...
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Earth system scientist with passion for people and planet.
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The crises of both the climate and the biosphere are manifestations of the imbalance between human extractive, and polluting activities and the Earth’s regenerative capacity. Planetary boundaries define limits for biophysical systems and processes that regulate the stability and life support capacity of the Earth system, and thereby also define a s...
Book
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A Survival Guide for Humanity -- Transformation toward a well-being economics, by 2050. With scenarios to 2100.
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Living within planetary limits requires attention to justice as biophysical boundaries are not inherently just. Through collaboration between natural and social scientists, the Earth Commission defines and operationalizes Earth system justice to ensure that boundaries reduce harm, increase well-being, and reflect substantive and procedural justice....
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As part of the Earth4All project, collaborators have submitted this paper to delve further into the steps to be taken to widely transform our conventional agricultural system to provide food security and improve ecological resilience in a rapidly changing global climate. This article analyses the potential positive effects on soil ecology and crop...
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Current policies and actions make it very likely, at least temporarily, to overshoot the Paris climate targets of 1.5–<2.0 °C above pre-industrial levels. If this global warming range is exceeded, potential tipping elements such as the Greenland Ice Sheet and Amazon rainforest may be at increasing risk of crossing critical thresholds. This raises t...
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A waste-to-protein system that integrates a range of waste-to-protein upgrading technologies has the potential to converge innovations on zero-waste and protein security to ensure a sustainable protein future. We present...
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The Sustainable Development Goals aim to improve access to resources and services, reduce environmental degradation, eradicate poverty and reduce inequality. However, the magnitude of the environmental burden that would arise from meeting the needs of the poorest is under debate—especially when compared to much larger burdens from the rich. We show...
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Non-technical summary We summarize what we assess as the past year's most important findings within climate change research: limits to adaptation, vulnerability hotspots, new threats coming from the climate–health nexus, climate (im)mobility and security, sustainable practices for land use and finance, losses and damages, inclusive societal climate...
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Climate tipping points occur when change in a part of the climate system becomes self-perpetuating beyond a warming threshold, leading to substantial Earth system impacts. Synthesizing paleoclimate, observational, and model-based studies, we provide a revised shortlist of global "core" tipping elements and regional "impact" tipping elements and the...
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Researchers must help to define science-based targets for water, nutrients, carbon emissions and more to avoid cascading effects and stave off tipping points in Earth’s systems. Researchers must help to define science-based targets for water, nutrients, carbon emissions and more to avoid cascading effects and stave off tipping points in Earth’s sys...
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Prudent risk management requires consideration of bad-to-worst-case scenarios. Yet, for climate change, such potential futures are poorly understood. Could anthropogenic climate change result in worldwide societal collapse or even eventual human extinction? At present, this is a dangerously underexplored topic. Yet there are ample reasons to suspec...
Preprint
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A waste-to-protein system that integrates a range of waste-to-protein upgrading technologies has the potential to converge innovations on zero-waste and protein security to ensure a sustainable protein future. We present a global overview of food-safe and feed-safe waste resource potential and technologies to sort and transform such waste streams w...
Preprint
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Environmental assessments increasingly call for just transformations, yet do not offer concrete visions of what these might be. This paper conceptualizes and operationalizes Earth system justice (ESJ) through articulating just ends which minimize significant harm to humans from Earth system change while ensuring access to needed resources for all a...
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[Free access to the full text at: https://rdcu.be/cL78K] Green water — terrestrial precipitation, evaporation and soil moisture — is fundamental to Earth system dynamics and is now extensively perturbed by human pressures at continental to planetary scales. However, green water lacks explicit consideration in the existing planetary boundaries fra...
Preprint
The UN 2030 Agenda includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals towards improving access to resources and services, reducing environmental degradation and bringing down inequality. However, there is debate on the magnitude of the environmental burden that would arise from meeting the needs of the poorest, especially compared to much larger burdens fro...
Preprint
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We develop a framework within which to conceptualize World-Earth System resilience. Our notion of World-Earth System resilience emphasizes the need to move beyond the basin of attraction notion of resilience as we are not in a basin we can stay in. We are on a trajectory to a new basin and we have to avoid falling into undesirable basins. We thus f...
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The biosphere crisis requires changes to existing business practices. We ask how corporations can become sustainability leaders, when constrained by multiple barriers to collaboration for biosphere stewardship. We describe how scientists motivated, inspired and engaged with ten of the world’s largest seafood companies, in a collaborative process ai...
Preprint
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Climate tipping elements play a crucial role for the stability of the Earth system under human pressures and are potentially at risk of disintegrating within and partially even below the Paris temperature guardrails of 1.5-2.0°C above pre-industrial levels. However, current policies and actions make it very likely to, at least temporarily, transgre...
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Avoiding catastrophic climate change requires rapid decarbonization and improved ecosystem stewardship at a planetary scale. The carbon released through the burning of fossil fuels would take millennia to regenerate on Earth. Though the timeframe of carbon recovery for ecosystems such as peatlands, mangroves and old-growth forests is shorter (centu...
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Non-technical summary Transformation of the world towards sustainability in line with the 2030 Agenda requires progress on multiple dimensions of human well-being. We track development of relevant indicators for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 1–7 against gross domestic product (GDP) per person in seven world regions and the world as a whole....
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Non-technical summary We summarize some of the past year's most important findings within climate change-related research. New research has improved our understanding about the remaining options to achieve the Paris Agreement goals, through overcoming political barriers to carbon pricing, taking into account non-CO 2 factors, a well-designed implem...
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A global agenda-setting opportunity to reverse ongoing planetary destruction is coming in 2022 with Stockholm+50. The independent Earth Commission will propose a safe and just corridor for humanity to spearhead its transformative agenda, defining goals for a stable Earth integrating justice.
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Reversing the alarming trend of rising food insecurity requires transformations towards just, sustainable and healthy food systems with an explicit focus on the most vulnerable and fragile regions.
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The Earth's oceans are one of the largest sinks in the Earth system for anthropogenic CO2 emissions, acting as a negative feedback on climate change. Earth system models project that climate change will lead to a weakening ocean carbon uptake rate as warm water holds less dissolved CO2 and as biological productivity declines. However, most Earth sy...
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Climate science provides strong evidence of the necessity of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, in line with the Paris Climate Agreement. The IPCC 1.5°C special report (SR1.5) presents 414 emissions scenarios modelled for the report, of which around 50 are classified as '1.5°C scenarios', with no or low temperature overshoot. These emission scenario...
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Keeping the Earth system in a stable and resilient state, to safeguard Earth's life support systems while ensuring that Earth's benefits, risks, and related responsibilities are equitably shared, constitutes the grand challenge for human development in the Anthropocene. Here, we describe a framework that the recently formed Earth Commission will us...