18 September 2026
Building the human pathway for climate-tipping-point warnings
Forecasting a climate tipping point is not simply a question of making a better measurement or running a more powerful model. For a warning to matter, it must reach people and institutions able to interpret it, decide what to do and act before their options narrow.
ARIA's Forecasting Tipping Points programme is working towards a trustworthy proof of concept for an early-warning system. Its core scientific focus is the North Atlantic Subpolar Gyre (SPG), with the Greenland Ice Sheet represented as a critical source of freshwater forcing. These systems are deeply connected: freshwater from Greenland can affect ocean circulation, while ocean conditions influence ice-sheet melt. The scientific challenge is formidable, but so is the practical one: what information would be useful, for whom, at what lead time, in what form and alongside which response options?
To start to answer these questions, ARIA partnered with the Ditchley Foundation and Telescope Foundation over the past 12 months. Together, they helped the programme bring climate scientists into conversation with people working in public policy, finance, insurance, marine science, communications, entrepreneurship and Arctic affairs. They provided an opportunity for the programme team to test, early and honestly, how an emerging warning system could become useful in the real world.
Through the partnership with Ditchley and Telescope, an inaugural cohort of Forecasting Tipping Points Fellows were appointed. The Fellows have already begun that work through structured cross-sector engagement with the programme. Their experience is helping to sharpen the questions the programme must answer: which decisions could genuinely change with better decadal foresight; what kinds of uncertainty decision-makers can use; how information might be communicated without overstating what science can yet say; and what institutions, relationships and capabilities would be needed to carry a credible warning into action.
Building the fellowship reinforced an important programme principle: an early-warning system is more than an alarm. It is an end-to-end chain—from ocean and ice-sheet observations, through uncertainty-aware state estimation, signal detection and decadal forecasting, to an output that is meaningful to a named user. In practice, co-design is needed to work backwards from decisions and their lead times, while retaining a clear view of the evidence, assumptions and limitations that underpin each output.
What this means for our second solicitation
Our second solicitation expands the programme into a targeted integration and translation oriented second phase. It is intended to connect the strongest scientific and technical capabilities into a coherent, decision-relevant minimum viable product for the SPG. The Fellows' contribution is one part of that work: helping to challenge whether the system's proposed outputs, uncertainty and routes to use are credible in real decision settings.
Building on our experience with the Fellows, we expect that teams in our Impacts and Response module will embed end users from the outset, to help them identify: the decision need or downstream user they will serve; the information, model or observing requirement it depends on; the uncertainty it must carry; and how its output will connect to and be tested by that user.
As the programme develops its second phase, the Fellows will continue to help challenge and develop this pathway. Their perspectives will inform how the programme explores potential decision contexts, tests usable storylines and products, and considers the organisational conditions needed for a durable public-good capability beyond the programme. This is exploratory work and the value lies in learning early: identifying where scientific advances could make a difference, where they cannot yet, and what must be built alongside the science for future warnings to be trusted and acted upon.
The programme will share further reflections as this work develops. We are also open to expanding the Fellowship as the work evolves. If you believe your experience could help connect climate-tipping-point science with the decisions, institutions or communities that need to act on it, please contact the ARIA Forecasting Tipping Points team.
Note: The formal solicitation remains the authoritative source for scope, eligibility and assessment for applications. This article is intended to explain the programme direction behind it: progress will depend on collaborative work that can demonstrate a measurable contribution to a trustworthy, actionable system, rather than excellent components operating in isolation.
Forecasting Tipping Points Fellows
The following biographies are reproduced and lightly formatted from Telescope Foundation's Fellowship announcement, published 16 July 2026.
Paul Buckley (UK)
Paul Buckley is a Principal Scientist at Cefas, Defra's executive agency for marine science, with more than 20 years' experience at the science–policy interface on marine and coastal climate change. As programme manager for the UK Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership, he works with hundreds of leading UK scientists to translate climate science for decision-makers, and contributes to ARIA's TiMBER project as a communications specialist studying how tipping points in the North-East Atlantic could affect the UK fisheries sector.
Astrid Krizus (Canada)
Astrid Krizus is Climate and TD Economics Communications Manager at TD Bank Group, where she supports the bank's sustainability strategy and external thought leadership. She previously served as Deputy Director of Communications and Climate Advisor in the Prime Minister of Canada's Office, and as lead speechwriter to Canada's Prime Minister, translating climate policy into clear public narrative.
Andrew Forth (UK)
Andrew Forth is Head of Policy & Advocacy at Climate Group, a global NGO working with more than 650 businesses and nearly 200 subnational governments to accelerate the path to net zero. He previously served as Director of Policy & Public Affairs at the Royal Institute of British Architects, and has also worked at the Confederation of British Industry and as a researcher in the UK Parliament.
Julie Calkins (UK, USA)
Julie Calkins leads foresight research and advocacy on climate and nature risk at Generation. Trained as a natural systems scientist, her career spans Antarctic research, ocean and atmospheric modelling, and public health, including work with the UK government with Chief Scientific Advisors and UKRI. She previously mobilised tens of millions of euros in investment for new ventures through a European Commission-funded programme on climate risk and adaptation.
Laura Wellesley-Squires (UK)
Laura Wellesley-Squires is Forest, Land and Agriculture Lead at Arc, a non-profit building the information infrastructure needed to unlock investment in resilient, sustainable food and agriculture systems. She was previously a Senior Research Fellow at Chatham House, researching food system resilience, chokepoint and compound risk in global food trade, and the structural barriers to sustainable agribusiness transition.
Zahrah Fauzee (UK)
Zahrah Fauzee is a qualified actuary with a background in financial modelling. He began his career at a Big Four consultancy specialising in credit-loss modelling and helping banks assess corporate and sovereign credit risk. Now working in asset management, he focuses on portfolio construction, asset allocation and multi-asset investment strategy, with a particular interest in how macroeconomic trends, climate and other emerging risks shape financial markets. Currently pursuing CFA Level I, he enjoys combining quantitative analysis with strategic market insights to inform investment decision-making.
Nick Bæk Heilmann (Greenland and Denmark)
Nick Bæk Heilmann is a Greenlandic advisor specialising in Arctic and Greenlandic affairs, helping international organisations, researchers and policymakers understand Greenlandic perspectives on climate change, sustainable development and Arctic geopolitics. Drawing on experience at Greenland's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Denmark's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Danish Embassy in London, he brings expertise in Arctic governance, stakeholder engagement and Inuit cultural context.
Jakob Mökander (UK, Sweden)
Dr Jakob Mökander is Vice President, Policy – Europe & UK at General Catalyst, a global venture-capital firm. He previously served as Director of Science & Technology Policy at the Tony Blair Institute, building and leading a team advising political leaders in more than 40 countries on AI adoption, research funding and digital sovereignty. He holds a PhD from the University of Oxford focused on AI auditing and governance, and remains affiliated with Yale's Digital Ethics Center.
Aikaterini Liakopoulou (Belgium)
Aikaterini Liakopoulou is a board member, executive advisor and deeptech scaling specialist working at the intersection of deeptech and venture capital. Since 2017, she has partnered with the €10 billion European Innovation Council Fund, the European Investment Bank and the European Institute of Technology, and advises founders through Breakthrough Energy, NATO DIANA and the European Union Agency for the Space Programme, among others.
Ryan Allison (UK)
Ryan Allison is Climate and Nature Investment Research Lead at Standard Life plc, where he develops the Group's climate and nature investment strategy and its suite of climate and nature risk metrics. A Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, he has co-authored papers for the IFoA Biodiversity and Natural Capital Working Party and was a lead author of recent nature-related publications through the joint PRA–FCA Climate Financial Risk Forum.
Ruth Bryson (UK)
Ruth Bryson is Head of Responsible Business – Stewardship, Climate and Nature at Royal London, the UK's largest mutual life, pensions and investment company, where she leads the development of its sustainability strategy, climate-risk management and approach to responsible investment. An actuary by background, she has previously developed climate-scenario analysis for insurers and pension providers, including for the Climate Financial Risk Forum.