Extreme Sensitivity and Climate Tipping Points

A climate state close to a tipping point will have a degenerate linear response to perturbations, which can be associated with extreme values of the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS). In this paper we contrast linearized (`instantaneous') with fully nonlinear geometric (`two-point') notions of ECS, in both presence and absence of tipping points. For a stochastic energy balance model of the global mean surface temperature with two stable...