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The Amazon rainforest is considered one of the Earth's tipping elements and may lose stability under ongoing climate change. Recently a decrease in tropical rainforest resilience has been identified globally from remotely sensed vegetation data. However, the underlying theory assumes a Gaussian distribution of forest disturbances, which is different from most observed forest stressors such as fires, deforestation, or windthrow. Those stressors often occur in power-law-like distributions and can be approximated by $\alpha$-stable L\'evy noise. Here, we show that classical critical slowing down indicators to measure changes in forest resilience are robust under such power-law disturbances. To assess the robustness of critical slowing down indicators, we simulate pulse-like perturbations in an adapted and conceptual model of a tropical rainforest. We find few missed early warnings and few false alarms are achievable simultaneously if the following steps are carried out carefully: First, the model must be known to resolve the timescales of the perturbation. Second, perturbations need to be filtered according to their absolute temporal autocorrelation. Third, critical slowing down has to be assessed using the non-parametric Kendall-$\tau$ slope. These prerequisites allow for an increase in the sensitivity of early warning signals. Hence, our findings imply improved reliability of the interpretation of empirically estimated rainforest resilience through critical slowing down indicators.

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 focus on `pathway resilience', i.e. the relative number of paths that allow us to move from the transitional operating space we occupy now as we leave the Holocene basin to a safe and just operating space in the Anthropocene. We develop a mathematical model to formalize this conceptualization and demonstrate how interactions between earth system resilience (biophysical processes) and world system resilience (social processes) impact pathway resilience. Our findings show that building earth system resilience is probably our only chance to reach a safe and just operating space. We also illustrate the importance of world system dynamics by showing how the notion of fairness coupled with regional inequality affects pathway resilience.

Only a fast and global transformation towards decarbonization and sustainability can keep the Earth in a civilization-friendly state. As hotspots for (green) innovation and experimentation, cities could play an important role in this transition. They are also known to profit from each other's ideas, with policy and technology innovations spreading to other cities. In this way, cities can be conceptualized as nodes in a globe-spanning learning network. The dynamics of this process are important for society's response to climate change and other challenges, but remain poorly understood on a macroscopic level. In this contribution, we develop an approach to identify whether network-based complex contagion effects are a feature of sustainability policy adoption by cities, based on dose-response contagion and surrogate data models. We apply this methodology to an example data set, comprising empirical data on the spreading of a public transport innovation (Bus Rapid Transit Systems) and a global inter-city connection network based on scheduled flight routes. We find evidence pointing towards a contagious spreading process which cannot be explained by either the network structure or the increase in global adoption rate alone. This suggests that the actions of a city's abstract "global neighborhood" within the network of cities may be an important factor in which policies and innovations are implemented, with potential connections to the emergence of social tipping processes. The methodology is generic, and can be used to compare the predictive power for innovation spreading of different kinds of inter-city network connections, e.g. via transport links, trade, or co-membership in political networks., Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, 1 table

Based on suggested interactions of potential tipping elements in the Earth's climate and in ecological systems, tipping cascades as possible dynamics are increasingly discussed and studied as their activation would impose a considerable risk for human societies and biosphere integrity. However, there are ambiguities in the description of tipping cascades within the literature so far. Here we illustrate how different patterns of multiple tipping dynamics emerge from a very simple coupling of two previously studied idealized tipping elements. In particular, we distinguish between a two phase cascade, a domino cascade and a joint cascade. While a mitigation of an unfolding two phase cascade may be possible and common early warning indicators are sensitive to upcoming critical transitions to a certain degree, the domino cascade may hardly be stopped once initiated and critical slowing down--based indicators fail to indicate tipping of the following element. These different potentials for intervention and anticipation across the distinct patterns of multiple tipping dynamics should be seen as a call to be more precise in future analyses on cascading dynamics arising from tipping element interactions in the Earth system.

Comparable to the traditional notion of stability in system dynamics, resilience is typically measured in a way that assesses the quality of a system's response, for example the speed of its recovery. We present a broadly applicable complementary measurement framework that quantifies resilience similarly to basin stability by estimating a "resilience basin" which reflects the extent of adverse influences that the system can recover from in a sufficient manner. In contrast to basin stability, the adverse influences considered here are not necessarily displacements in state space, but arbitrarily complex impacts to the system, quantified by adequate parameters. As a proof of concept, we present two applications: (i) the well-studied single-node power system as an easy-to-follow example and (ii) a stochastic model of a low-voltage DC power grid undergoing an unregulated energy transition consisting in the random appearance of prosumers. These act as decentral suppliers of photovoltaic power and alter the flow patterns while the grid topology remains unchanged. The resilience measurement framework is applied to evaluate the effect and efficiency of two response options: (i) upgrading the capacity of existing power lines and (ii) installing batteries in the prosumer households. The framework demonstrates that line upgrades can provide potentially unlimited resilience against energy decentralization, while household batteries are inherently limited (achieving <=70% of the resilience of line upgrades). Further, the framework aids in optimizing budget efficiency by pointing toward threshold budget values as well as budget-dependent ideal strategies for the allocation of line upgrades and for the battery charging algorithm., Comment: 22 pages, 11 figures; added plain language summary after abstract, added recent references, added section with simple application example, moved details of second application into Appendix, improved grammar

Tipping elements in the Earth System receive increased scientific attention over the recent years due to their nonlinear behavior and the risks of abrupt state changes. While being stable over a large range of parameters, a tipping element undergoes a drastic shift in its state upon an additional small parameter change when close to its tipping point. Recently, the focus of research broadened towards emergent behavior in networks of tipping elements, like global tipping cascades triggered by local perturbations. Here, we analyze the response to the perturbation of a single node in a system that initially resides in an unstable equilibrium. The evolution is described in terms of coupled nonlinear equations for the cumulants of the distribution of the elements. We show that drift terms acting on individual elements and offsets in the coupling strength are sub-dominant in the limit of large networks, and we derive an analytical prediction for the evolution of the expectation (i.e., the first cumulant). It behaves like a single aggregated tipping element characterized by a dimensionless parameter that accounts for the network size, its overall connectivity, and the average coupling strength. The resulting predictions are in excellent agreement with numerical data for Erd\"os-R\'enyi, Barab\'asi-Albert and Watts-Strogatz networks of different size and with different coupling parameters.

Spreading dynamics and complex contagion processes on networks are important mechanisms underlying the emergence of critical transitions, tipping points and other nonlinear phenomena in complex human and natural systems. Increasing amounts of temporal network data are now becoming available to study such spreading processes of behaviours, opinions, ideas, diseases and innovations to test hypotheses regarding their specific properties. To this end, we here present a methodology based on dose-response functions and hypothesis testing using surrogate data models that randomise most aspects of the empirical data while conserving certain structures relevant to contagion, group or homophily dynamics. We demonstrate this methodology for synthetic temporal network data of spreading processes generated by the adaptive voter model. Furthermore, we apply it to empirical temporal network data from the Copenhagen Networks Study. This data set provides a physically-close-contact network between several hundreds of university students participating in the study over the course of three months. We study the potential spreading dynamics of the health-related behaviour "regularly going to the fitness studio" on this network. Based on a hierarchy of surrogate data models, we find that our method neither provides significant evidence for an influence of a dose-response-type network spreading process in this data set, nor significant evidence for homophily. The empirical dynamics in exercise behaviour are likely better described by individual features such as the disposition towards the behaviour, and the persistence to maintain it, as well as external influences affecting the whole group, and the non-trivial network structure. The proposed methodology is generic and promising also for applications to other temporal network data sets and traits of interest., Comment: 26 pages, 13 figures, 1 table

In recent years, several global events have severely disrupted economies and social structures, undermining confidence in the resilience of modern societies. While empirical evidence on the dynamics and drivers of past societal collapse is mounting, a process-based understanding of these dynamics is still in its infancy. Here we aim to identify and illustrate the underlying drivers of such societal instability or even collapse. The inspiration for this work is Joseph Tainter's theory of the "collapse of complex societies", which postulates that the complexity of societies increases as they solve problems, leading to diminishing returns on complexity investments, and ultimately to collapse. In this work we have abstracted this theory into a low-dimensional and stylised model of two classes of networked agents, hereafter referred to as "laborers" and "administrators". We numerically modeled the dynamics of societal complexity, measured as the fraction of "administrators", which is assumed to affect the productivity of connected energy-producing "laborers". We show that collapse becomes increasingly likely as the complexity of the model society continuously increases in response to external stresses that emulate Tainter's abstract notion of problems that societies must solve. We also provide an analytical approximation of the system's dominant dynamics, which matches well with the numerical experiments, and use it to study the influence on network link density, social mobility and productivity. Our work advances the understanding of social-ecological collapse and illustrates its potentially direct link to an ever-increasing societal complexity in response to external shocks or stresses via a self-reinforcing feedback.

Tipping elements occur in various systems such as in socio-economics, ecology and the climate system. In many cases, the individual tipping elements are not independent from each other, but they interact across scales in time and space. To model systems of interacting tipping elements, we here introduce the PyCascades open source software package for studying interacting tipping elements (doi: 10.5281/zenodo.4153102). PyCascades is an object-oriented and easily extendable package written in the programming language Python. It allows for investigating under which conditions potentially dangerous cascades can emerge between interacting dynamical systems, with a focus on tipping elements. With PyCascades it is possible to use different types of tipping elements such as double-fold and Hopf types and interactions between them. PyCascades can be applied to arbitrary complex network structures and has recently been extended to stochastic dynamical systems. This paper provides an overview of the functionality of PyCascades by introducing the basic concepts and the methodology behind it. In the end, three examples are discussed, showing three different applications of the software package. First, the moisture recycling network of the Amazon rainforest is investigated. Second, a model of interacting Earth system tipping elements is discussed. And third, the PyCascades modelling framework is applied to a global trade network.

Societal transformations are necessary to address critical global challenges, such as mitigation of anthropogenic climate change and reaching UN sustainable development goals. Recently, social tipping processes have received increased attention, as they present a form of social change whereby a small change can shift a sensitive social system into a qualitatively different state due to strongly self-amplifying (mathematically positive) feedback mechanisms. Social tipping processes have been suggested as key drivers of sustainability transitions emerging in the fields of technological and energy systems, political mobilization, financial markets and sociocultural norms and behaviors. Drawing from expert elicitation and comprehensive literature review, we develop a framework to identify and characterize social tipping processes critical to facilitating rapid social transformations. We find that social tipping processes are distinguishable from those of already more widely studied climate and ecological tipping dynamics. In particular, we identify human agency, social-institutional network structures, different spatial and temporal scales and increased complexity as key distinctive features underlying social tipping processes. Building on these characteristics, we propose a formal definition for social tipping processes and filtering criteria for those processes that could be decisive for future trajectories to global sustainability in the Anthropocene. We illustrate this definition with the European political system as an example of potential social tipping processes, highlighting the potential role of the FridaysForFuture movement. Accordingly, this analytical framework for social tipping processes can be utilized to illuminate mechanisms for necessary transformative climate change mitigation policies and actions., Comment: 24 pages, 4 figures

The term 'resilience' is increasingly being used in social-technical-environmental systems sciences and particularly also in the Earth system sciences. However, the diversity of resilience concepts and a certain (sometimes intended) openness of proposed definitions can lead to misunderstandings and may impede their application to complex systems modelling. We propose a guideline that aims to ease communication as well as to support systematic development of research questions and models in the context of resilience. It can be applied independently of the modelling framework or underlying theory of choice. At the heart of this guideline is a checklist consisting of four questions to be answered: (i) Resilience of what? (ii) Resilience regarding what? (iii) Resilience against what? (iv) Resilience how? We refer to the answers to these resilience questions as the "system", the "sustainant", the "adverse influence", and the "response options". The term 'sustainant' is a neologism describing the feature of the system (state, structure, function, pathway, ...) that should be maintained (or restored quickly enough) in order to call the system resilient. The use of this proposed guideline in the field of Earth system resilience is demonstrated for the application example of a potential climate tipping element: the Amazon rainforest. The example illustrates the diversity of possible answers to the checklist's questions as well as their benefits in structuring the modelling process. The guideline supports the modeller in communicating precisely what is actually meant by 'resilience' in a specific context. This combination of freedom and precision could help to advance the resilience discourse by building a bridge between those demanding unambiguous definitions and those stressing the benefits of generality and flexibility of the resilience concept., Comment: 21 pages, 2 figures, 1 table

In this study, we investigate how specific micro interaction structures (motifs) affect the occurrence of tipping cascades on networks of stylized tipping elements. We compare the properties of cascades in Erd\"os-R\'enyi networks and an exemplary moisture recycling network of the Amazon rainforest. Within these networks, decisive small-scale motifs are the feed forward loop, the secondary feed forward loop, the zero loop and the neighboring loop. Of all motifs, the feed forward loop motif stands out in tipping cascades since it decreases the critical coupling strength necessary to initiate a cascade more than the other motifs. We find that for this motif, the reduction of critical coupling strength is 11% less than the critical coupling of a pair of tipping elements. For highly connected networks, our analysis reveals that coupled feed forward loops coincide with a strong 90% decrease of the critical coupling strength. For the highly clustered moisture recycling network in the Amazon, we observe regions of very high motif occurrence for each of the four investigated motifs suggesting that these regions are more vulnerable. The occurrence of motifs is found to be one order of magnitude higher than in a random Erd\"os-R\'enyi network. This emphasizes the importance of local interaction structures for the emergence of global cascades and the stability of the network as a whole.

Vital parts of the climate system, such as the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, are at risk even within the aspired aims of the Paris Agreement to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 -- 2{\deg}C. These so-called natural tipping elements are characterized by rapid qualitative shifts in their states once a critical threshold, e.g., of global mean temperature, is transgressed. We argue that the prevention of such unwanted tipping through effective climate policies may critically depend on cascading Domino effects from (anticipated) climate impacts to emission reductions via wanted social tipping in attitudes, behaviors and policies. Specifically, the latter has recently been noted as a key aspect in addressing contemporary global challenges, such as climate change, via self-amplifying positive feedbacks similar to the processes observable in climate tipping elements. Our discussion is supported with data on commonly observed linkages between (subjective) climate change knowledge, concern and consequential potential action and we argue that the presence of such interrelations serves as a necessary condition for the possibility of rapid climate action.

Social tipping, where minorities trigger larger populations to engage in collective action, has been suggested as one key aspect in addressing contemporary global challenges. Here, we refine Granovetter's widely acknowledged theoretical threshold model of collective behavior as a numerical modelling tool for understanding social tipping processes and resolve issues that so far have hindered such applications. Based on real-world observations and social movement theory, we group the population into certain or potential actors, such that -- in contrast to its original formulation -- the model predicts non-trivial final shares of acting individuals. Then, we use a network cascade model to explain and analytically derive that previously hypothesized broad threshold distributions emerge if individuals become active via social interaction. Thus, through intuitive parameters and low dimensionality our refined model is adaptable to explain the likelihood of engaging in collective behavior where social tipping like processes emerge as saddle-node bifurcations and hysteresis.

In ecology, climate and other fields, (sub)systems have been identified that can transition into a qualitatively different state when a critical threshold or tipping point in a driving process is crossed. An understanding of those tipping elements is of great interest given the increasing influence of humans on the biophysical Earth system. Complex interactions exist between tipping elements, e.g. physical mechanisms connect subsystems of the climate system. Based on earlier work on such coupled nonlinear systems, we systematically assessed the qualitative long-term behaviour of interacting tipping elements. We developed an understanding of the consequences of interactions on the tipping behaviour allowing for tipping cascades to emerge under certain conditions. The (narrative) application of these qualitative results to real-world examples of interacting tipping elements indicates that tipping cascades with profound consequences may occur: the interacting Greenland ice sheet and thermohaline ocean circulation might tip before the tipping points of the isolated subsystems are crossed. The eutrophication of the first lake in a lake chain might propagate through the following lakes without a crossing of their individual critical nutrient input levels. The possibility of emerging cascading tipping dynamics calls for the development of a unified theory of interacting tipping elements and the quantitative analysis of interacting real-world tipping elements., Comment: 22 pages, 8 figures

Analysis of Earth system dynamics in the Anthropocene requires to explicitly take into account the increasing magnitude of processes operating in human societies, their cultures, economies and technosphere and their growing feedback entanglement with those in the physical, chemical and biological systems of the planet. However, current state-of-the-art Earth System Models do not represent dynamic human societies and their feedback interactions with the biogeophysical Earth system and macroeconomic Integrated Assessment Models typically do so only with limited scope. This paper (i) proposes design principles for constructing World-Earth Models (WEM) for Earth system analysis of the Anthropocene, i.e., models of social (World) - ecological (Earth) co-evolution on up to planetary scales, and (ii) presents the copan:CORE open simulation modeling framework for developing, composing and analyzing such WEMs based on the proposed principles. The framework provides a modular structure to flexibly construct and study WEMs. These can contain biophysical (e.g. carbon cycle dynamics), socio-metabolic/economic (e.g. economic growth) and socio-cultural processes (e.g. voting on climate policies or changing social norms) and their feedback interactions, and are based on elementary entity types, e.g., grid cells and social systems. Thereby, copan:CORE enables the epistemic flexibility needed for contributions towards Earth system analysis of the Anthropocene given the large diversity of competing theories and methodologies used for describing socio-metabolic/economic and socio-cultural processes in the Earth system by various fields and schools of thought. To illustrate the capabilities of the framework, we present an exemplary and highly stylized WEM implemented in copan:CORE that illustrates how endogenizing socio-cultural processes and feedbacks could fundamentally change macroscopic model outcomes.

Increasingly complex, non-linear World-Earth system models are used for describing the dynamics of the biophysical Earth system and the socio-economic and socio-cultural World of human societies and their interactions. Identifying pathways towards a sustainable future in these models for informing policy makers and the wider public, e.g. pathways leading to a robust mitigation of dangerous anthropogenic climate change, is a challenging and widely investigated task in the field of climate research and broader Earth system science. This problem is particularly difficult when constraints on avoiding transgressions of planetary boundaries and social foundations need to be taken into account. In this work, we propose to combine recently developed machine learning techniques, namely deep reinforcement learning (DRL), with classical analysis of trajectories in the World-Earth system. Based on the concept of the agent-environment interface, we develop an agent that is generally able to act and learn in variable manageable environment models of the Earth system. We demonstrate the potential of our framework by applying DRL algorithms to two stylized World-Earth system models. Conceptually, we explore thereby the feasibility of finding novel global governance policies leading into a safe and just operating space constrained by certain planetary and socio-economic boundaries. The artificially intelligent agent learns that the timing of a specific mix of taxing carbon emissions and subsidies on renewables is of crucial relevance for finding World-Earth system trajectories that are sustainable on the long term., Comment: 16 pages, 8 figures

Adaptive networks are a versatile approach to model phenomena such as contagion and spreading dynamics, critical transitions and structure formation that emerge from the dynamic coevolution of complex network structure and node states. Here, we study critical transitions in contagion dynamics on multilayer adaptive networks with dynamic node states and present an application to the governance of sustainable resource use. We focus on a three layer adaptive network model, where a polycentric governance network interacts with a social network of resource users which in turn interacts with an ecological network of renewable resources. We uncover that sustainability is favored for slow interaction timescales, large homophilic network adaptation rate (as long it is below the fragmentation threshold) and high taxation rates. Interestingly, we also observe a trade-off between an eco-dictatorship (reduced model with a single governance actor that always taxes unsustainable resource use) and the polycentric governance network of multiple actors. In the latter setup, sustainability is enhanced for low but hindered for high tax rates compared to the eco-dictatorship case. These results highlight mechanisms generating emergent critical transitions in contagion dynamics on multilayer adaptive network and show how these can be understood and approximated analytically, relevant for understanding complex adaptive systems from various disciplines ranging from physics and epidemiology to sociology and global sustainability science. The paper also provides insights into potential critical intervention points for policy in the form of taxes in the governance of sustainable renewable resource use that can inform more process-detailed social-ecological modeling.

Tipping points occur in diverse systems in various disciplines such as ecology, climate science, economy or engineering. Tipping points are critical thresholds in system parameters or state variables at which a tiny perturbation can lead to a qualitative change of the system. Many systems with tipping points can be modeled as networks of coupled multistable subsystems, e.g. coupled patches of vegetation, connected lakes, interacting climate tipping elements or multiscale infrastructure systems. In such networks, tipping events in one subsystem are able to induce tipping cascades via domino effects. Here, we investigate the effects of network topology on the occurrence of such cascades. Numerical cascade simulations with a conceptual dynamical model for tipping points are conducted on Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi, Watts-Strogatz and Barab\'asi-Albert networks. Additionally, we generate more realistic networks using data from moisture-recycling simulations of the Amazon rainforest and compare the results to those obtained for the model networks. We furthermore use a directed configuration model and a stochastic block model which preserve certain topological properties of the Amazon network to understand which of these properties are responsible for its increased vulnerability. We find that clustering and spatial organization increase the vulnerability of networks and can lead to tipping of the whole network. These results could be useful to evaluate which systems are vulnerable or robust due to their network topology and might help to design or manage systems accordingly., Comment: 22 pages, 12 figures

To achieve the ambitious aims of the Paris climate agreement, the majority of fossil-fuel reserves needs to remain underground. As current national government commitments to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions are insufficient by far, actors such as institutional and private investors and the social movement on divestment from fossil fuels could play an important role in putting pressure on national governments on the road to decarbonization. Using a stochastic agent-based model of co-evolving financial market and investors' beliefs about future climate policy on an adaptive social network, here we find that the dynamics of divestment from fossil fuels shows potential for social tipping away from a fossil-fuel based economy. Our results further suggest that socially responsible investors have leverage: a small share of 10--20\,\% of such moral investors is sufficient to initiate the burst of the carbon bubble, consistent with the Pareto Principle. These findings demonstrate that divestment has potential for contributing to decarbonization alongside other social movements and policy instruments, particularly given the credible imminence of strong international climate policy. Our analysis also indicates the possible existence of a carbon bubble with potentially destabilizing effects to the economy., Comment: 22 pages, 4 figures

Reinforcement learning in multiagent systems has been studied in the fields of economic game theory, artificial intelligence and statistical physics by developing an analytical understanding of the learning dynamics (often in relation to the replicator dynamics of evolutionary game theory). However, the majority of these analytical studies focuses on repeated normal form games, which only have a single environmental state. Environmental dynamics, i.e., changes in the state of an environment affecting the agents' payoffs has received less attention, lacking a universal method to obtain deterministic equations from established multistate reinforcement learning algorithms. In this work we present a novel methodological extension, separating the interaction from the adaptation time scale, to derive the deterministic limit of a general class of reinforcement learning algorithms, called temporal difference learning. This form of learning is equipped to function in more realistic multistate environments by using the estimated value of future environmental states to adapt the agent's behavior. We demonstrate the potential of our method with the three well established learning algorithms Q learning, SARSA learning and Actor-Critic learning. Illustrations of their dynamics on two multiagent, multistate environments reveal a wide range of different dynamical regimes, such as convergence to fixed points, limit cycles, and even deterministic chaos., Comment: 18 pages, 10 figures, adjustments to fit approx. PRE version

Magnetic storms constitute the most remarkable large-scale phenomena of nonlinear magnetospheric dynamics. Studying the dynamical organization of macroscopic variability in terms of geomagnetic activity index data by means of complexity measures provides a promising approach for identifying the underlying processes and associated time-scales. Here, we apply a suite of characteristics from recurrence quantification analysis (RQA) and recurrence network analysis (RNA) in order to unveil some key nonlinear features of the hourly Disturbance storm-time (Dst) index during periods with magnetic storms and such of normal variability. Our results demonstrate that recurrence-based measures can serve as excellent tracers for changes in the dynamical complexity along non-stationary records of geomagnetic activity. In particular, trapping time (characterizing the typical length of "laminar phases" in the observed dynamics) and recurrence network transitivity (associated with the number of the system's effective dynamical degrees of freedom) allow for a very good discrimination between magnetic storm and quiescence phases. In general, some RQA and RNA characteristics distinguish between storm and non-storm times equally well or even better than other previously considered nonlinear characteristics like Hurst exponent or symbolic dynamics based entropy concepts. Our results point to future potentials of recurrence characteristics for unveiling temporal changes in the dynamical complexity of the magnetosphere.

Complex networks are usually characterized in terms of their topological, spatial, or information-theoretic properties and combinations of the associated metrics are used to discriminate networks into different classes or categories. However, even with the present variety of characteristics at hand it still remains a subject of current research to appropriately quantify a network's complexity and correspondingly discriminate between different types of complex networks, like infrastructure or social networks, on such a basis. Here, we explore the possibility to classify complex networks by means of a statistical complexity measure that has formerly been successfully applied to distinguish different types of chaotic and stochastic time series. It is composed of a network's averaged per-node entropic measure characterizing the network's information content and the associated Jenson-Shannon divergence as a measure of disequilibrium. We study 29 real world networks and show that networks of the same category tend to cluster in distinct areas of the resulting complexity-entropy plane. We demonstrate that within our framework, connectome networks exhibit among the highest complexity while, e.g, transportation and infrastructure networks display significantly lower values. Furthermore, we demonstrate the utility of our framework by applying it to families of random scale-free and Watts-Strogatz model networks. We then show in a second application that the proposed framework is useful to objectively construct threshold-based networks, such as functional climate networks or recurrence networks, by choosing the threshold such that the statistical network complexity is maximized.

Earth system analysis is the study of the joint dynamics of biogeophysical, social and technological processes on our planet. To advance our understanding of possible future development pathways and identify management options for navigating to safe operating spaces while avoiding undesirable domains, computer models of the Earth system are developed and applied. These models hardly represent dynamical properties of technological processes despite their great planetary-scale influence on the biogeophysical components of the Earth system and the associated risks for human societies posed, e.g., by climatic change or novel entities. In this contribution, we reflect on the technosphere from the perspective of Earth system analysis with a threefold focus on agency, networks and complex coevolutionary dynamics. First, we argue that Haff's conception of the technosphere takes an extreme position in implying a strongly constrained human agency in the Earth system. Assuming that the technosphere develops according to dynamics largely independently of human intentions, Haff's perspective appears incompatible with a humanistic view that underlies the sustainability discourse at large and, more specifically, current frameworks such as UN sustainable development goals and the safe and just operating space for humanity. Second, as an alternative to Haff's static three-stratum picture, we propose complex adaptive networks as a concept for describing the interplay of social agents and technospheric entities and their emergent dynamics for Earth system analysis. Third, we argue that following a coevolutionary approach in conceptualising and modelling technospheric dynamics, also including the socio-cultural and biophysical spheres of the Earth system, could resolve the apparent conflict between the discourses on sustainability and the technosphere., Comment: 16 pages, 2 figures

Transformations to create more sustainable social-ecological systems are urgently needed. Structural change is a feature of transformations of social-ecological systems that is of critical importance but is little understood. Here, we propose a framework for conceptualising and modelling sustainability transformations based on adaptive networks. Adaptive networks focus attention on the interplay between the structure of a social-ecological system and the dynamics of individual entities. Adaptive networks could progress transformations research by: 1) focusing research on changes in structure; 2) providing a conceptual framework that clarifies the temporal dynamics of social-ecological transformations compared to the most commonly used heuristic in resilience studies, the ball-and-cup diagram; 3) providing quantitative modelling tools in an area of study dominated by qualitative methods. We illustrate the potential application of adaptive networks to social-ecological transformations using a case study of illegal fishing in the Southern Ocean and a theoretical model of socially networked resource users.

The effects of El Ni\~no's two distinct flavors, East Pacific (EP) and Central Pacific (CP)/Modoki El Ni\~no, on global climate variability have been studied intensively in recent years. Most of these studies have made use of linear multivariate statistics or composite analysis. Especially the former assumes the same type of linear statistical dependency to apply across different phases of the El Ni\~no--Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which appears not necessarily a justified assumption. Here, we statistically evaluate the likelihood of co-occurrences between very high or very low seasonal precipitation sums over vast parts of the global land surface and the presence of the respective EP and CP types of both, El Ni\~no and La Ni\~na. By employing event coincidence analysis, we uncover differential imprints of both flavors on very low and very high seasonal precipitation patterns over distinct regions across the globe, which may severely affect, among others, agricultural and biomass production or public health. We particularly find that EP periods exhibit statistically significant event coincidence rates with hydrometeorological anomalies at larger spatial scales, whereas sparser patterns emerge along with CP periods. Our statistical analysis confirms previously reported interrelations for EP periods and uncovers additional distinct regional patterns of very high/low seasonal precipitation, such as increased rainfall over Central Asia alongside CP periods that have to our knowledge not been reported so far. Our results demonstrate that a thorough distinction of El Ni\~no and La Ni\~na into their two respective flavors could be crucial for understanding the emergence of strong regional hydrometeorological anomalies and anticipating their associated ecological and socioeconomic impacts.

The adaptive voter model has been widely studied as a conceptual model for opinion formation processes on time-evolving social networks. Past studies on the effect of zealots, i.e. nodes aiming to spread their fixed opinion throughout the system, only considered the voter model on a static network. Here, we extend the study of zealotry to the case of an adaptive network topology co-evolving with the state of the nodes and investigate opinion spreading induced by zealots depending on their initial density and connectedness. Numerical simulations reveal that below the fragmentation threshold a low density of zealots is sufficient to spread their opinion to the whole network. Beyond the transition point, zealots must exhibit an increased degree as compared to ordinary nodes for an efficient spreading of their opinion. We verify the numerical findings using a mean-field approximation of the model yielding a low-dimensional set of coupled ordinary differential equations. Our results imply that the spreading of the zealot opinion in the adaptive voter model is strongly dependent on the rate of link rewiring and the average degree of normal nodes in comparison with that of the zealots. In order to avoid a complete dominance of the zealots' opinion, there are two possible strategies for the remaining nodes: adjusting the rate of rewiring and/or the number of connections with other nodes, respectively., Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures

Complex network approaches have been successfully applied for studying transport processes in complex systems ranging from road, railway or airline infrastructure over industrial manufacturing to fluid dynamics. Here, we utilize a generic framework for describing the dynamics of geophysical flows such as ocean currents or atmospheric wind fields in terms of Lagrangian flow networks. In this approach, information on the passive advection of particles is transformed into a Markov chain based on transition probabilities of particles between the volume elements of a given partition of space for a fixed time step. We employ perturbation-theoretic methods to investigate the effects of modifications of transport processes in the underlying flow for three different problem classes: efficient absorption (corresponding to particle trapping or leaking), constant input of particles (with additional source terms modeling, e.g., localized contamination), and shifts of the steady state under probability mass conservation (as arising if the background flow is perturbed itself). Our results demonstrate that in all three cases, changes to the steady state solution can be analytically expressed in terms of the eigensystem of the unperturbed flow and the perturbation itself. These results are potentially relevant for developing more efficient strategies for coping with contaminations of fluid or gaseous media such as ocean and atmosphere by oil spills, radioactive substances, non-reactive chemicals or volcanic aerosols., Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures

El Ni\~no exhibits distinct Eastern Pacific (EP) and Central Pacific (CP) types which are commonly, but not always consistently, distinguished from each other by different signatures in equatorial climate variability. Here, we propose an index based on evolving climate networks to objectively discriminate between both flavors by utilizing a scalar-valued evolving climate network measure that quantifies spatial localization and dispersion in El Ni\~no's associated teleconnections. Our index displays a sharp peak (high localization) during EP events, whereas during CP events (larger dispersion) it remains close to the baseline observed during normal periods. In contrast to previous classification schemes, our approach specifically account for El Ni\~no's global impacts. We confirm recent El Ni\~no classifications for the years 1951 to 2014 and assign types to those cases were former works yielded ambiguous results. Ultimately, we study La Ni\~na episodes and demonstrate that our index provides a similar discrimination into two types.

Spatial networks have recently attracted great interest in various fields of research. While the traditional network-theoretic viewpoint is commonly restricted to their topological characteristics (often disregarding existing spatial constraints), this work takes a geometric perspective, which considers vertices and edges as objects in a metric space and quantifies the corresponding spatial distribution and alignment. For this purpose, we introduce the concept of edge anisotropy and define a class of measures characterizing the spatial directedness of connections. Specifically, we demonstrate that the local anisotropy of edges incident to a given vertex provides useful information about the local geometry of geophysical flows based on networks constructed from spatio-temporal data, which is complementary to topological characteristics of the same flow networks. Taken both structural and geometric viewpoints together can thus assist the identification of underlying flow structures from observations of scalar variables.