Signals from the future: An interdisciplinary engagement to early warning signals

Detecting early warning signals is critical for mitigating complex scientific and 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, some of the current research remains fragmented within disciplinary silos such as meteorology, ecology, psychology, virology, biomedicine, ethics and economics. This domain-specific approach can create silos and hinder the development of comprehensive early warning systems that span multiple systems and practices.This position paper presents an interdisciplinary engagement towards 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 recognise the existence of cross-over of critical concepts such as Critical Slowing Down (CSD) across certain fields, and emphasise the need to broaden such methodological cross-pollination to fields in which early warning signals are not yet or have only recently been recognised.We propose to build on this recognition by calling for the introduction of an interdisciplinary platform for early warning signal synergy. This platform aims to develop shared conceptual frameworks, standardised analytical tools, and communication protocols across a wide range of domains. This integrated framework, which aligns early warning signal-research within high-level societal strategies such as Precision Medicine, One-Health and Planetary Health, promises to enhance our collective capacity to anticipate and respond to complex, interconnected societal challenges in an increasingly uncertain future.