scholarly journals Identifying Crucial Issues in Climate Science: Drastic Change in the Earth System During Global Warming; Sapporo, Japan, 24 June 2008

Eos ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 90 (2) ◽  
pp. 15-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Motoyoshi Ikeda ◽  
Ralf Greve ◽  
Toshika Hara ◽  
Yutaka W. Watanabe ◽  
Atsumu Ohmura ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Drastic Change ◽  
Earth System ◽  
The Earth

scholarly journals Collateral transgression of planetary boundaries due to climate engineering by terrestrial carbon dioxide removal

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 783-796 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vera Heck ◽  
Jonathan F. Donges ◽  
Wolfgang Lucht
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Dioxide ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Carbon Dioxide Removal ◽  
Small Range ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Planetary Boundaries ◽  
Climate Engineering ◽  
Terrestrial Carbon ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Atmospheric Carbon

Abstract. The planetary boundaries framework provides guidelines for defining thresholds in environmental variables. Their transgression is likely to result in a shift in Earth system functioning away from the relatively stable Holocene state. As the climate system is approaching critical thresholds of atmospheric carbon, several climate engineering methods are discussed, aiming at a reduction of atmospheric carbon concentrations to control the Earth's energy balance. Terrestrial carbon dioxide removal (tCDR) via afforestation or bioenergy production with carbon capture and storage are part of most climate change mitigation scenarios that limit global warming to less than 2 °C. We analyse the co-evolutionary interaction of societal interventions via tCDR and the natural dynamics of the Earth's carbon cycle. Applying a conceptual modelling framework, we analyse how the degree of anticipation of the climate problem and the intensity of tCDR efforts with the aim of staying within a "safe" level of global warming might influence the state of the Earth system with respect to other carbon-related planetary boundaries. Within the scope of our approach, we show that societal management of atmospheric carbon via tCDR can lead to a collateral transgression of the planetary boundary of land system change. Our analysis indicates that the opportunities to remain in a desirable region within carbon-related planetary boundaries only exist for a small range of anticipation levels and depend critically on the underlying emission pathway. While tCDR has the potential to ensure the Earth system's persistence within a carbon-safe operating space under low-emission pathways, it is unlikely to succeed in a business-as-usual scenario.

scholarly journals Passive Remote Study of the Aerosol in the Upper Atmosphere of the Earth

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Oleksandr Zbrutskyi ◽  
◽  
Nevodovskyi P ◽  
Anatoliy Vid’machenko ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Energy Balance ◽  
Climate Changes ◽  
Upper Atmosphere ◽  
Anthropogenic Factors ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Relative Contribution ◽  
The Earth

Climate changes on planet Earth are mainly caused by disturbances in the energy balance of the Sun-Earth system. This process is the result of both natural changes in nature and the influence of anthropogenic factors. The combined effect of these factors can lead to threatening phenomena for mankind - a decrease in the power of the ozone layer, the formation of “ozone holes” and global warming on the planet and other disasters. The study of the causes of these factors and the determination of their relative contribution is one of the pressing problems of our time.

scholarly journals Topology of sustainable management of dynamical systems with desirable states: from defining planetary boundaries to safe operating spaces in the Earth system

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Heitzig ◽  
T. Kittel ◽  
J. F. Donges ◽  
N. Molkenthin
Keyword(s):  
State Space ◽  
Classical Mechanics ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The State ◽  
System Modelling ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Planetary Boundaries ◽  
Management Options ◽  
The Earth

Abstract. To keep the Earth system in a desirable region of its state space, such as defined by the recently suggested "tolerable environment and development window", "guardrails", "planetary boundaries", or "safe (and just) operating space for humanity", one needs to understand not only the quantitative internal dynamics of the system and the available options for influencing it (management) but also the structure of the system's state space with regard to certain qualitative differences. Important questions are, which state space regions can be reached from which others with or without leaving the desirable region, which regions are in a variety of senses "safe" to stay in when management options might break away, and which qualitative decision problems may occur as a consequence of this topological structure? In this article, we develop a mathematical theory of the qualitative topology of the state space of a dynamical system with management options and desirable states, as a complement to the existing literature on optimal control which is more focussed on quantitative optimization and is much applied in both the engineering and the integrated assessment literature. We suggest a certain terminology for the various resulting regions of the state space and perform a detailed formal classification of the possible states with respect to the possibility of avoiding or leaving the undesired region. Our results indicate that, before performing some form of quantitative optimization such as of indicators of human well-being for achieving certain sustainable development goals, a sustainable and resilient management of the Earth system may require decisions of a more discrete type that come in the form of several dilemmas, e.g. choosing between eventual safety and uninterrupted desirability, or between uninterrupted safety and larger flexibility. We illustrate the concepts and dilemmas drawing on conceptual models from climate science, ecology, coevolutionary Earth system modelling, economics, and classical mechanics, and discuss their potential relevance for the climate and sustainability debate, in particular suggesting several levels of planetary boundaries of qualitatively increasing safety.

scholarly journals The Morphology of Prometheus, Literary Geography and the Geoethical Project

Geosciences ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 340
Author(s):  
Charles Travis
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Atomic Bomb ◽  
Ethical Problem ◽  
Earth System ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Michael Mann ◽  
Literary Geography ◽  
Cultural Contingencies ◽  
History Of

This paper explores mappings, musings and ‘thought experiments’ in literary geography to consider how they may contribute to geoethical pedagogy and research. Representations of Prometheus from the fourteenth century onwards have traveled along three broad symbological roads: first, as the creator, and bringer of fire; second as a bound figure in chains, and thirdly, unbound. However, it was the harnessing of fire by our species a millennium prior that gave rise to the myth of Prometheus and set into motion the geophysical process of combustion which “facilitated the transformation of much of the terrestrial surface […] and in the process pushed the parameters of the earth system into a new geological epoch.” As the geophysicist Professor Michael Mann observes, global warming and loss of biodiversity constitutes an ethical problem. The remediation of the Prometheus myth in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or the modern Prometheus (1818), Jonathan Fetter-Vorm’s Trinity: A Graphic History of the First Atomic Bomb (2012) and William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies (1954) provides the means to explore the geographical, historical and cultural contingencies of geoethical dilemmas contributing to the framing of the Anthropocene and Gaia heuristics. This paper argues for the necessity of scholars in the arts, humanities and geosciences to share and exchange idiographic and nomothetic perspectives in order to forge a geoethical dialectic that fuses poetic and positivistic methods into transcendent ontologies and epistemologies to address the existential questions of global warming and loss of biodiversity as we enter the age of the Anthropocene.

scholarly journals Topology of sustainable management in dynamical Earth system models with desirable states

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 435-488
Author(s):  
J. Heitzig ◽  
T. Kittel
Keyword(s):  
State Space ◽  
Sustainable Management ◽  
Classical Mechanics ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
The State ◽  
System Modelling ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Management Options ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Operating Space

Abstract. To keep the Earth system in a desirable region of its state space, such as the recently suggested "tolerable environment and development window", "planetary boundaries", or "safe (and just) operating space", one not only needs to understand the quantitative internal dynamics of the system and the available options for influencing it (management), but also the structure of the system's state space with regard to certain qualitative differences. Important questions are: which state space regions can be reached from which others with or without leaving the desirable region? Which regions are in a variety of senses "safe" to stay in when management options might break away, and which qualitative decision problems may occur as a consequence of this topological structure? In this article, as a complement to the existing literature on optimal control which is more focussed on quantitative optimization and is much applied in both the engineering and the integrated assessment literature, we develop a mathematical theory of the qualitative topology of the state space of a dynamical system with management options and desirable states. We suggest a certain terminology for the various resulting regions of the state space and perform a detailed formal classification of the possible states with respect to the possibility of avoiding or leaving the undesired region. Our results indicate that before performing some form of quantitative optimization, the sustainable management of the Earth system may require decisions of a more discrete type that come in the form of several dilemmata, e.g., choosing between eventual safety and uninterrupted desirability, or between uninterrupted safety and increasing flexibility. We illustrate the concepts and dilemmata with conceptual models from classical mechanics, climate science, ecology, economics, and coevolutionary Earth system modelling and discuss their potential relevance for the climate and sustainability debate.

scholarly journals How does ocean ventilation change under global warming?

2006 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 805-826
Author(s):  
A. Gnanadesikan ◽  
J. L. Russell ◽  
F. Zeng
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Mixed Layer ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Upper Ocean ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Ocean Ventilation ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Biological Cycling ◽  
Coupled Climate Models ◽  
Low Latitudes

Abstract. Since the upper ocean takes up much of the heat added to the earth system by anthropogenic global warming, one would expect that global warming would lead to an increase in stratification and a decrease in the ventilation of the ocean interior. However, multiple simulations in global coupled climate models using an ideal age tracer which is set to zero in the mixed layer and ages at 1 yr/yr outside this layer show that the intermediate depths in the low latitudes become younger under global warming. This paper reconciles these apparently contradictory trends, showing that a decrease in upwelling of old water from below is responsible for the change. Implications for global biological cycling are considered.

scholarly journals Collateral transgression of planetary boundaries due to climate engineering by terrestrial carbon dioxide removal

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vera Heck ◽  
Jonathan F. Donges ◽  
Wolfgang Lucht
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Carbon Dioxide ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Carbon Dioxide Removal ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Planetary Boundaries ◽  
Climate Engineering ◽  
Terrestrial Carbon ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Atmospheric Carbon

Abstract. The planetary boundaries framework as proposed by Rockström et al. (2009) provides guidelines for defining thresholds in environmental variables. Their transgression is likely to result in a shift in Earth system functioning away from the relatively stable Holocene state. As the climate change boundary is already transgressed, several climate engineering methods are discussed, aiming at a reduction of atmospheric carbon concentrations to control the Earth's energy balance. Terrestrial carbon dioxide removal (tCDR) via afforestation or bioenergy production with carbon capture and storage are part of most climate change mitigation scenarios that limit global warming to less than 2 °C. We analyse the co-evolutionary interaction of societal interventions via tCDR and the natural dynamics of the Earth's carbon cycle. Applying a conceptual modelling framework, we analyse how societal monitoring and management of atmospheric CO2 concentrations with the aim of staying within a "safe" level of global warming might influence the state of the Earth system with respect to other carbon-related planetary boundaries. Within the scope of our approach, we show that societal management of atmospheric carbon via tCDR can lead to a transgression of the planetary boundaries of land system change and ocean acidification. Our analysis indicates that the opportunities to remain in a desirable region within carbon-related planetary boundaries depend critically on the sensitivity and strength of the tCDR management system, as well as underlying emission pathways. While tCDR has the potential to ensure the Earth system's persistence within a carbon safe operating space under low emission pathways, this potential decreases rapidly for medium to high emission pathways.

scholarly journals Assessing Carbon Dioxide Removal Through Global and Regional Ocean Alkalization under High and Low Emission Pathways

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Lenton ◽  
Richard J. Matear ◽  
David P. Keller ◽  
Vivian Scott ◽  
Naomi E. Vaughan
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Ocean Acidification ◽  
Atmospheric Co2 ◽  
System Model ◽  
Carbon Uptake ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Surface Warming ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Low Emission ◽  
Atmospheric Co2 Concentrations

Abstract. Atmospheric CO2 levels continue to rise, increasing the risk of severe impacts on the Earth system, and on the ecosystem services that it provides. Artificial Ocean Alkalization (AOA) is capable of reducing atmospheric CO2 concentrations, surface warming and addressing ocean acidification. Here we simulate global and regional responses to alkalinity addition (0.25 PmolAlk/year) using the CSIRO-Mk3L-COAL Earth System Model in the period 2020–2100, under high (RCP8.5) and low (RCP2.6) emissions. While regionally there are large changes associated with locations of AOA, globally we see only a very weak dependence on where and when AOA is applied. We see that under RCP2.6, while the carbon uptake associated with AOA is only ~ 60 % of the total under RCP8.5, the relative changes in temperature are larger, as are the changes in pH (1.4×) and aragonite saturation (1.7×). The results of this modelling study are significant as they demonstrate that AOA is more effective under lower emissions, and the higher the emissions the more AOA required to achieve the same reduction in global warming and ocean acidification. Finally, our simulations show AOA in the period 2020–2100 is capable of offsetting global warming and ameliorating ocean acidification increases due to low emissions, but regionally the response is more variable.

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