Forecasting Tipping Points funding

Programme aiming to enhance our climate change response by developing an early warning system for tipping points.

ARIA (the UK’s Advanced Research and Innovation Agency) is looking to develop a proof-of-concept for an early warning system for climate tipping points that is affordable, sustainable and justified.

Combining expertise in observation and modelling with innovative sensing systems, ARIA hopes to achieve this through a targeted deployment of low-cost sensing systems, to be tested in a multi-year field campaign, whose data can be integrated with advances in physics – and AI-driven models to push the frontiers of knowledge for climate tipping points.

By unifying these approaches, ARIA aims to confidently predict when a system will tip, what the consequences be, and how quickly that change will unfold.

R&D Creators are sought for ARIA funding to

• co-design an affordable and sustainable harmonised network of remote and in situ sensing systems, initially targeting observations of processes within the Greenland Ice Sheet and Subpolar Gyre that are crucial for understanding instabilities in these systems but are not well served by existing measurements
• rapidly deploying sensing systems in a comprehensive, multi-year, coordinated field campaign in the Greenland Ice Sheet and Subpolar Gyre, to demonstrate new technologies and sow the seeds of long-term monitoring capability
• develop, test and cross-validate competing modelling approaches to characterise the tipping points, the subsequent impacts and the economic consequences of crossing tipping points in Greenland Ice Sheet and Subpolar Gyre

The total budget at this stage is £46 million. ARIA will consider projects of all sizes, from a £50,000, four month field test of new technology, to a £15 million multi-year project spanning several technical areas.

Find out more about the Forecasting Tipping Points funding programme and how to apply.

First published 30 October 2024