From historians to forecasters: the potential of bivalve records to assess resilience and provide early warnings for marine tipping points

Abstract

Amidst the ongoing climate crisis, the need for observation-based prediction of environmental tipping points becomes increasingly urgent. Detecting loss of resilience within a system can provide early warnings for tipping points. This requires long, regularly spaced time-series, characteristics that are rare among marine observational and proxy records. Due to their remarkable length and temporal resolution, records from bivalve shells offer a unique opportunity for assessing resilience in the marine environment. Here, we investigate the suitability of bivalve records for measuring changes in two resilience indicators, autocorrelation and variance. We find that increment-width records typically considered robust can provide reliable resilience assessments. However, while autocorrelation is a generally robust indicator for increment-width series, variance may exhibit biases mainly associated with age-related effects. This work provides guidelines for obtaining reliable resilience assessments from bivalve records, unlocking their potential to provide early warnings for tipping points.