Background/Question/Methods
Complex systems ranging from ecosystems to financial markets and the climate can have tipping points where a sudden shift to a contrasting regime may occur. It is n nn n otably hard to predict such critical transitions as the state of the system may show little change before the threshold is reached. Also, models of complex systems are usually not accurate enough to predict reliably where tipping points are. Interestingly, however, it now appears that certain generic symptoms may occur in a wide class of systems as they approach a critical point.
Results/Conclusions
At first sight it may seem surprising that disparate phenomena such as the collapse of an overharvested population and ancient climatic transitions could be announced by similar signals. However, universal properties tend to rule the dynamics near a critical point, regardless of differences in the details of each system. Therefore, critical transitions in a range of complex systems are in fact related. After explaining why this is so, and how we can derive generic early warning signals from this insight, I will highlight recent advances in fields ranging from medicine and climate science to ecology, and outline some of the key-challenges ahead.