Bei einer Hitzewelle in der Antarktis lag die Temperatur 38,5° über dem Durchschnittswert. Dieser enorm hohe Wert schockiert Forschende und ist bisher nicht erklärbar. Der Guardian stellt den Kontext ausführlich dar und hat dazu mehrere Fachleute befragt. Eine neue Publikation spricht von einem regime shift beim antarktischen Sommer-Meereis. Er gefährdet u.a. den Krill und die Kolonien der Kaiserpinguine. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/06/simply-mind-boggling-world-record-temperature-jump-in-antarctic-raises-fears-of-catastrophe

Studie: https://journals.ametsoc.org/configurable/content/journals$002fclim$002f37$002f7$002fJCLI-D-23-0479.1.xml?t:ac=journals%24002fclim%24002f37%24002f7%24002fJCLI-D-23-0479.1.xml

While these different potential processes behind particular patterns are not all associated with alternative stable states, they are all associated with regime shifts (barring some very narrow definition of "regime shift").

The title of this paper is about "regime shifts", but most of the paper focuses "alternative stable states". My impression is that "alternative stable states" and their associated attractors represent one possible cause of regime shifts, so it's interesting that that is where all of the emphasis is placed.

This model directly assumes a critical transition from no vegetation to full vegetation at a transition point along a precipitation gradient, so the non-linear transition of the system is built in to the model. If vegetation increased smoothly with precipitation we wouldn't expect alternative stable states or regime shifts. This isn't to say that the model isn't useful for illustrative purposes, just that it basically assumes in the notable result.

Distinguishing between these two possibilities will be difficult since in most cases we lack a sufficiently thorough understanding of the processes driving the system to know for sure whether an important process has undergone a sudden change.