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 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.

A digital contract for restoration of the Earth System mediated by a Planetary Boundary Exchange Unit

2021 ◽  
pp. 205301962098727
Author(s):  
Orfeu Bertolami ◽  
Frederico Francisco
Keyword(s):  
Earth System ◽  
New Governance ◽  
Validation Process ◽  
Operational Conditions ◽  
Blockchain Technology ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Optimal Functioning ◽  
Operating Space ◽  
Exchange Unit ◽  
Safe Operating

In this paper, we propose a new governance paradigm for managing the Earth System based on a digital contract inspired on blockchain technology. This proposal allows for a radical decentralisation of the procedures of controlling, maintaining and restoring ecosystems by a set of networks willing to engage in improving the operational conditions of local ecosystems so to contribute to an optimal functioning of the Earth System. These procedures are aimed to improve local Planetary Boundary parameters so that they approach the optimal Holocene reference values, the so-called Safe Operating Space, via a reciprocal validation process and an exchange unit that internalises the state of the Earth System.

scholarly journals Earth history and evolution of life in curriculum the high school of the State of São Paulo

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 296-303
Author(s):  
Cristiane Prado Scott dos Santos ◽  
Joseli Maria Piranha
Keyword(s):  
National Curriculum ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
School Curriculum ◽  
Sao Paulo ◽  
The State ◽  
São Paulo ◽  
Earth System ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Content Organization ◽  
Life Itself

Among the main obstacles to the literacy of the Earth System Sciences, the content organization in official curricula stands out. The knowledge of this science has been shown as fundamental for the formation of citizens who know how to use natural resources regarding environmental questions and life itself. Faced with such issues, the present study has done a documentary analysis of the Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais para o Ensino Médio (PCNEM in Portuguese, or National Curriculum Parameters of Secondary Education) and of the Currículo do Estado de São Paulo (CESP in Portuguese, or School Curriculum of the State of São Paulo), with aim at suggesting effective teaching alternatives for citizens formation. Both the PCNEM and the CESP present contents in a fragmented way through traditional disciplines, such as has been the educational structure in Brazil for decades. The PCNEM suggest an interdisciplinary approach of these contents, while the CESP do not mention this type of approach, but relates skills to be developed to each type of content, and so presents interdisciplinary teaching as valuable. As an alternative to this pedagogical structure, it is proposed that the contents encompassed in the Earth System Science should be treated in an interdisciplinary context, allowing the integrated development of contents and contributing to the teacher’s work.

scholarly journals A Thought Experiment on Sustainable Management of the Earth System

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jobst Heitzig ◽  
Wolfram Barfuss ◽  
Jonathan F. Donges
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Game Theory ◽  
Optimal Control ◽  
Sustainable Management ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Earth System ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Right ◽  
Safe Operating ◽  
Qualitative Decision

We introduce and analyse a simple formal thought experiment designed to reflect a qualitative decision dilemma humanity might currently face in view of climate change. In it, each generation can choose between just two options, either setting humanity on a pathway to certain high wellbeing after one generation of suffering, or leaving the next generation in the same state as this one with the same options, but facing a continuous risk of permanent collapse. We analyse this abstract setup regarding the question of what the right choice would be both in a rationality-based framework including optimal control, welfare economics and game theory, and by means of other approaches based on the notions of responsibility, safe operating spaces, and sustainability paradigms. Despite the simplicity of the setup, we find a large diversity and disagreement of assessments both between and within these different approaches.

The Frontiers of Deep Learning for Earth System Modelling 

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Hall
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Bias Correction ◽  
Neural Nets ◽  
Generative Adversarial Networks ◽  
System Modelling ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Adversarial Networks ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Medium Range ◽  
Earth System Modelling

<p>This talk gives an overview of cutting-edge artificial intelligence applications and techniques for the earth-system sciences. We survey the most important recent contributions in areas including extreme weather, physics emulation, nowcasting, medium-range forecasting, uncertainty quantification, bias-correction, generative adversarial networks, data in-painting, network-HPC coupling, physics-informed neural nets, and geoengineering, amongst others. Then, we describe recent AI breakthroughs that have the potential to be of greatest benefit to the geosciences. We also discuss major open challenges in AI for science and their potential solutions. This talk is a living document, in that it is updated frequently, in order to accurately relect this rapidly changing field.</p>

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 Coupling technologies for Earth System Modelling

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 1987-2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Valcke ◽  
V. Balaji ◽  
A. Craig ◽  
C. DeLuca ◽  
R. Dunlap ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
System Modelling ◽  
Climate Modelling ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Common Features ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Future Challenges ◽  
Computing Platforms ◽  
Design Characteristics ◽  
Earth System Modelling

Abstract. This paper presents a review of the software currently used in climate modelling in general and in CMIP5 in particular to couple the numerical codes representing the different components of the Earth system. The coupling technologies presented show common features, such as the ability to communicate and regrid data, but also offer different functions and implementations. Design characteristics of the different approaches are discussed as well as future challenges arising from the increasing complexity of scientific problems and computing platforms.

scholarly journals Deep reinforcement learning in World-Earth system models to discover sustainable management strategies

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Strnad ◽  
Wolfram Barfuss ◽  
Jonathan Donges ◽  
Jobst Heitzig
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Reinforcement Learning ◽  
Sustainable Management ◽  
System Analysis ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Management Options ◽  
System Models ◽  
The World ◽  
Earth System Models

<p>The identification of pathways leading to robust mitigation of dangerous anthropogenic climate change is nowadays of particular interest <br>not only to the scientific community but also to policy makers and the wider public. </p><p>Increasingly complex, non-linear World-Earth system models are used for describing the dynamics of the biophysical Earth system and the socio-economic and socio-cultural World of human societies and their interactions. Identifying pathways towards a sustainable future in these models is a challenging and widely investigated task in the field of climate research and broader Earth system science.  This problem is especially difficult when caring for both environmental limits and social foundations need to be taken into account.</p><p>In this work, we propose to combine recently developed machine learning techniques, namely deep reinforcement learning (DRL), with classical analysis of trajectories in the World-Earth system as an approach to extend the field of Earth system analysis by a new method. Based on the concept of the agent-environment interface, we develop a method for using a DRL-agent that is able to act and learn in variable manageable environment models of the Earth system in order to discover management strategies for sustainable development.</p><p>We demonstrate the potential of our framework by applying DRL algorithms to stylized World-Earth system models. The agent can apply management options to an environment, an Earth system model, and learn by rewards provided by the environment. We train our agent with a deep Q-neural network extended by current state-of-the-art algorithms. Conceptually, we thereby explore the feasibility of finding novel global governance policies leading into a safe and just operating space constrained by certain planetary and socio-economic boundaries.  </p><p>We find that the agent is able to learn novel, previously undiscovered policies that navigate the system into sustainable regions of the underlying conceptual models of the World-Earth system. In particular, the artificially intelligent agent learns that the timing of a specific mix of taxing carbon emissions and subsidies on renewables is of crucial relevance for finding World-Earth system trajectories that are sustainable in the long term. Overall, we show in this work how concepts and tools from artificial intelligence can help to address the current challenges on the way towards sustainable development.</p><p>Underlying publication</p><p>[1] Strnad, F. M.; Barfuss, W.; Donges, J. F. & Heitzig, J. Deep reinforcement learning in World-Earth system models to discover sustainable management strategies Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science, AIP Publishing LLC, 2019, 29, 123122</p>

Butterflies, Elephants and Gravity to Model Human-Earth Interactions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurits Ertsen
Keyword(s):  
Initial Conditions ◽  
Scale Up ◽  
Human Dimensions ◽  
System Modelling ◽  
Earth System ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Scale Down ◽  
Butterfly Effect ◽  
To Come ◽  
Small Change

<p>The call for this session mentions that “Earth system resilience critically depends on the nonlinear interplay of positive and negative feedbacks of biophysical and increasingly also socio-economic processes. These include dynamics in [many physical events], as well as the dynamics and perturbations associated with human activities.“ In this contribution, I would like to mobilize a few notions to discuss this issue.</p><p>A typical approach is to scale up human dimensions to Earth system model scales. Humans become aggregated into social structures, even societies, that change every year or so. I propose to scale down the Earth system to humans, both in terms of space and time. I think this offers exiting possibilities to study climate and earth systems in a different way, but also allows for answering the question how we could act today, tomorrow and next week in order to understand which long-term scenarios over decades are more likely to occur.</p><p>This would move us away from the view of the Earth as a single system or pattern to a perspective of Earth as an interconnected world of different non-human and human agencies. I would position this idea against the rather popular metaphor of the butterfly effect, “the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state”. This may be too simple, as one butterfly will meet many other butterflies along the way. As such, the butterfly effect may be a specific example that claims a certain agency for smaller actors within the Earth System, but that builds its analysis on pattern replication through non-linear relations.</p><p>Our (perceived) knowledge of patterns colors our analysis of those patterns. We are all familiar with the metaphor of the men observing different parts of the elephant. The metaphor assumes that we know that what the men are examining is an elephant. However, once we do not know either what they are looking at, we need to start with them seeing different things. In the perspective that we know the elephant, the men are just short-sighted. In the more realistic setting that we cannot be certain about what the men observe, we are the ones that need to come up with a convincing way to analyze what is happening, has happened or may happen.</p><p>Much work in Earth system modelling model patterns in society, but do not explain how these patterns are the result of continuously performing agencies. The models are built to mimic the patterns that we observed. I propose to replace the patterns we use to explain the same patterns – whether they are power relations or gravity – with representations of the interacting agencies that together produce the Earth system that we think we observe. Gravity may be a nice explanation of the observed pattern that we do not glide away from the surface, but it remains just that. In our modelling efforts, we may apply the notion that gravity acts.</p>

scholarly journals Describing Earth System Simulations with the Metafor CIM

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 1669-1689 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. N. Lawrence ◽  
V. Balaji ◽  
P. Bentley ◽  
S. Callaghan ◽  
C. DeLuca ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Coupled Model ◽  
System Modelling ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Model Intercomparison ◽  
Controlled Vocabularies ◽  
Common Information ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Common Information Model ◽  
Intercomparison Project ◽  
Near Term

Abstract. The Metafor project has developed a Common Information Model (CIM) using the ISO1900 series formalism to describe the sorts of numerical experiments carried out by the earth system modelling community, the models they use, and the simulations that result. Here we describe the mechanism by which the CIM was developed, and its key properties. We introduce the conceptual and application versions and the controlled vocabularies developed in the context of supporting the fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). We describe how the CIM has been used in experiments to describe model coupling properties and describe the near term expected evolution of the CIM.

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