Signals from the Future An Interdisciplinary Engagement to Early Warning Signals

Detecting early warning signals is critical for mitigating complex societal challenges across diverse domains, including climate disasters, ecological collapse, disease outbreaks, and technological failures. While the fundamental premise – that timely detection of early warning signals enables preventive action – is conceptually consistent across fields, current research remains fragmented within disciplinary silos such as meteorology, ecology, psychology, virology, biomedicine, ethics and economics. This domain-specific approach creates silos and hinders the development of comprehensive early warning systems that span multiple systems and practices.This position paper presents an interdisciplinary engagement toward early warning signals, arguing that the lack of systematic cross-disciplinary integration represents a missed opportunity. Through a comparative examination of detection approaches, signal characteristics, and decision-making frameworks across multiple research domains, we identify common theoretical foundations and practical convergences that transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries. We highlight the value of methodological cross-pollination, noting that indicators of Critical Slowing Down (CSD) translate effectively from ecological systems to genomic networks, demonstrating the universality of underlying dynamical principles.We propose to build on this recognition by calling for the introduction of an interdisciplinary platform for early warning signal synergy, to develop shared conceptual frameworks, standardized analytical tools, and communication protocols across domains.