scholarly journals Improved Understanding of the Earth System and Its Implications: Earth System Science 2010: Global Change, Climate and People: Edinburgh, United Kingdom, 10-13 May 2010

Eos ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 91 (43) ◽  
pp. 397-397
Author(s):  
Sarah Cornell ◽  
Catherine Downy
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Global Change ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Earth System Science ◽  
System Science ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Change Climate

Why Simulate?

1991 ◽  
Author(s):  
James C. G. Walker
Keyword(s):  
Global Change ◽  
Trace Element Composition ◽  
Atmospheric Composition ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Earth System Science ◽  
System Science ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Future ◽  
Systems Simulation

Our world is a product of complex interactions among atmosphere, ocean, rocks, and life that Earth system science seeks to understand. Earth system science deals with such properties of the environment as composition and climate and populations and the ways in which they affect one another. It also concerns how these interactions caused environmental properties to change in the past and how they may change in the future. The Earth system can be studied quantitatively because its properties can be represented by numbers. At present, however, most of the numbers in Earth system science are observational rather than theoretical, and so our description of the Earth system's objective properties is much more complete than our quantitative understanding of how the system works. Quantitative theoretical understanding grows out of a simulation of the system or parts of the system and numerical experimentation with simulated systems. Simulation experiments can answer questions like What is the effect of this feature? or What would happen in that situation? Simulation also gives meaning to observations by showing how they may be related. As an illustration, consider that area of Earth system science known as global change. There is now an unambiguous observational record of global change in many important areas of the environment. For elements of climate and atmospheric composition this record is based on direct measurement over periods of a decade to a century. For other environmental variables, particularly those related to the composition of the ocean, the record of change consists of measurements of isotopic or trace-element composition of sediments deposited over millions of years. This evidence of global change is profoundly affecting our view of what the future holds in store for us and what options exist. It should also influence our understanding of how the interaction of biota and environment has changed the course of Earth history. But despite the importance of global change to our prospects for the future and our understanding of the past, the mechanisms of change are little understood. There are many speculative suggestions about the causes of change but few quantitative and convincing tests of these suggestions.

Plastics in the Earth system

Science ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 373 (6550) ◽  
pp. 51-55
Author(s):  
Aron Stubbins ◽  
Kara Lavender Law ◽  
Samuel E. Muñoz ◽  
Thomas S. Bianchi ◽  
Lixin Zhu
Keyword(s):  
Organic Carbon ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Earth System Science ◽  
System Science ◽  
Global Problem ◽  
The Earth

Plastic contamination of the environment is a global problem whose magnitude justifies the consideration of plastics as emergent geomaterials with chemistries not previously seen in Earth’s history. At the elemental level, plastics are predominantly carbon. The comparison of plastic stocks and fluxes to those of carbon reveals that the quantities of plastics present in some ecosystems rival the quantity of natural organic carbon and suggests that geochemists should now consider plastics in their analyses. Acknowledging plastics as geomaterials and adopting geochemical insights and methods can expedite our understanding of plastics in the Earth system. Plastics also can be used as global-scale tracers to advance Earth system science.

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