  We study the problem of predicting rare critical transition events for a
class of slow-fast nonlinear dynamical systems. The state of the system of
interest is described by a slow process, whereas a faster process drives its
evolution and induces critical transitions. By taking advantage of recent
advances in reservoir computing, we present a data-driven method to predict the
future evolution of the state. We show that our method is capable of predicting
a critical transition event at least several numerical time steps in advance.
We demonstrate the success as well as the limitations of our method using
numerical experiments on three examples of systems, ranging from low
dimensional to high dimensional. We discuss the mathematical and broader
implications of our results.
