ARIA: Forecasting Tipping Points - call for concept papers

Major parts of the Earth system are at risk of crossing climate tipping points within the next century, with severe consequences for biodiversity, food security, agriculture, and humanity.

Despite the potential impact, we’re poorly equipped to characterise the long-term trends of our climate systems, or predict the future risk of runaway, self-perpetuating change. Our best observational datasets are at a nascent stage, while our best climate models are computationally expensive and do not capture all the physical processes we need.

Combining expertise in observation and modelling with innovative sensing systems, ARIA (the UK’s Advanced Research and Innovation Agency) look to develop a proof-of-concept for an early warning system for climate tipping points that is affordable, sustainable and justified.

We’ll 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, we’re aiming to confidently predict when a system will tip, what the consequences be, and how quickly that change will unfold.

Our goal: to create an early warning system for tipping points that equips the world with the information we need to build resilience and accelerate proactive climate adaptation.

This solicitation seeks R&D Creators, which are individuals and teams that ARIA will fund 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

ARIA welcome applications from across academia, industry and national laboratories. We are keen to engage and support individuals who have not previously worked in climate science, but are excited to pivot their work to a new field.

Concept papers are designed to make the solicitation process as efficient as possible for applicants. By soliciting short concept papers (no more than three pages), ARIA reviewers are able to gauge the feasibility and relevance of the proposed project and give an initial indication of whether we think a full proposal would be competitive. We strongly encourage applicants to submit one.

Technical areas of focus The early warning system demonstration will focus on the tipping systems of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) and the adjacent Subpolar Gyre (SPG) circulation. These are prioritised as ‘at risk’ systems with different tipping dynamics, but are intimately connected with important interactions. The programme will be organised into three deeply connected technical areas:

• Technical area 1 (TA1): new sensing systems will accelerate innovation and development of low-cost sensing systems that address unmet observational needs in harsh environments.
• Technical area 2 (TA2): deployment will deploy existing and newly developed sensing systems in a coordinated multi-year field campaign targeted to the Greenland Ice Sheet and Subpolar Gyre to create an observational network to monitor these tipping systems.
• Technical area 3 (TA3): models for early warning will unlock the mathematical, physical and computational methods necessary to create and test an early warning system for tipping points.

We expect to invest at least £10m in TA1, £16m in TA2 and £20m in TA3 at the first (current) solicitation point (year 0), with further funding being unlocked at the second solicitation point (year 2) across a 5 year programme. We are open to considering a diverse range of projects, from those that focus on solely on innovation in sensing systems in TA1 or dynamical models in TA3 (e.g. £1m over 3 years), through initial field testing of new technologies in TA2 (e.g. £50k over 4 months), to projects that span across all three TAs with a comprehensive integration of measurement and modelling (e.g. £15m over 5 years). We are also open to proposals that target expansion or extension of capabilities within existing observing networks that unlock their potential to contribute to an early warning system. Due to the high ambition and aggressive timelines, applicants are encouraged to consider plans that will reach success (or failure) on fast timelines.

Delivery platforms considered for funding by the programme could include, but are not limited to:

• Small / cube / nano satellites
• Drones / airborne systems / high altitude platforms (HAPs)
• Drifters / floats / buoys
• Submersibles / gliders / sea drones.

We particularly welcome innovations that fill unmet needs in the observing ecosystem, for example:

• At-sea, under-sea and under-ice real-time communications and navigation, enabling fleet operation of autonomous vehicles.
• Full-depth ocean robotic platforms capable of routine sustained observations to abyssal depths.
• Lower-cost and lower-carbon footprint ice-capable vessels, both uncrewed and autonomous, enabling year-round sustained observations.
• Satellite constellations or high altitude platforms suitable for polar observing, with ultra-high bandwidth communications for full real-time data retrieval and rapid command transmission.

ARIA welcome applications from across the R&D ecosystem, including individuals, universities, research institutions, small, medium and large companies, charities and public sector research organisations.

If you would like help to find a project partner, contact Innovate UK Business Connect’s Sensors, Space, Sustainability or Industrial Maths teams.