From trends to optimized forecasts: Quantifying the skill and advancing the utility of dynamics-based early warnings for tipping events

DEMS WORKING PAPER SERIES On the stability of global forecasting models

Predicting tipping points: The many shades of non-equilibrium and catch-22s of early-warning

The potential of crossing climate tipping points (TP) has reached the attention of many researchers and the general public. On the one hand, the basis for this concern is strengthening, with simulations showing that abrupt transitions might occur even for moderate emission scenarios. On the other hand, our understandin...

On the Reliability of Estimated Return Periods for Climate Extremes

This study reflects on the probability of observing an extreme event of interest within a finite dataset, whether derived from observations or model simulations, to inform risk assessment or climate adaptation efforts. To do so, we adopt the concept of engineering reliability, which is defined as the probability that...

Revisiting Dynamical System-Based Financial Forecasting: The Role of Smoothing Methods

This study examines the role of causal smoothing in dynamical system-based financial forecasting by integrating an asymmetric backward Savitzky-Golay (SG) filter into the new Price Reversion Model (nPRM) and comparing it with conventional moving-average preprocessing on the S&P 500 index. Despite the theoretical advant...

Mixture Models for Predictive Densities

Understanding inflation expectations is central to monetary policy analysis, particularly in emerging economies, where uncertainty and structural change can amplify forecasting challenges. Surveys of professional forecasters increasingly rely on histogram-based density forecasts to capture not only point predictions bu...

Developing an early warning indicator for strongly forced systems far from equilibrium: increased variance of the quasi-equilibrium

Early warning indicators (EWIs) have been developed in an attempt to forewarn of approaching tipping points. In the case of bifurcation-induced tipping (Ashwin et al 2025 Proc. R. Soc. A 481 20250405), the most commonly used EWIs are related to the phenomenon of ‘Critical Slowing Down (CSD)’, which involves an increase...