So What Is in an Earth System Model?

Jones, Chris D.

doi:10.1029/2019ms001967

Cited by 6 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 23 publications

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“…Climate and Earth System Models (ESMs) are essentially similar to forecast models, except they are configured with data and information relevant for climate timescales and forced with past or future projections of external factors that influence climate, including long-lived greenhouse gases, aerosols, land use change, and volcanic eruptions [ 45 ]. Future projections usually use Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), which are plausible future descriptions of the external factors based on socio-economic scenarios of global societal development.…”

Section: Model Forecasts and Projectionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Use of meteorological data in biosecurity

Hemming

Macneill

2020

Emerging Topics in Life Sciences

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Pests, pathogens and diseases cause some of the most widespread and damaging impacts worldwide — threatening lives and leading to severe disruption to economic, environmental and social systems. The overarching goal of biosecurity is to protect the health and security of plants and animals (including humans) and the wider environment from these threats. As nearly all living organisms and biological systems are sensitive to weather and climate, meteorological, ‘met’, data are used extensively in biosecurity. Typical applications include, (i) bioclimatic modelling to understand and predict organism distributions and responses, (ii) risk assessment to estimate the probability of events and horizon scan for future potential risks, and (iii) early warning systems to support outbreak management. Given the vast array of available met data types and sources, selecting which data is most effective for each of these applications can be challenging. Here we provide an overview of the different types of met data available and highlight their use in a wide range of biosecurity studies and applications. We argue that there are many synergies between meteorology and biosecurity, and these provide opportunities for more widespread integration and collaboration across the disciplines. To help communicate typical uses of meteorological data in biosecurity to a wide audience we have designed the ‘Meteorology for biosecurity’ infographic.

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Section: Model Forecasts and Projectionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Use of meteorological data in biosecurity

Hemming

Macneill

2020

Emerging Topics in Life Sciences

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Reimagining Earth in the Earth System

Bonan,

Lucier,

Coen

et al. 2024

J Adv Model Earth Syst

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Terrestrial, aquatic, and marine ecosystems regulate climate at local to global scales through exchanges of energy and matter with the atmosphere and assist with climate change mitigation through nature‐based climate solutions. Climate science is no longer a study of the physics of the atmosphere and oceans, but also the ecology of the biosphere. This is the promise of Earth system science: to transcend academic disciplines to enable study of the interacting physics, chemistry, and biology of the planet. However, long‐standing tension in protecting, restoring, and managing forest ecosystems to purposely improve climate evidences the difficulties of interdisciplinary science. For four centuries, forest management for climate betterment was argued, legislated, and ultimately dismissed, when nineteenth century atmospheric scientists narrowly defined climate science to the exclusion of ecology. Today's Earth system science, with its roots in global models of climate, unfolds in similar ways to the past. With Earth system models, geoscientists are again defining the ecology of the Earth system. Here we reframe Earth system science so that the biosphere and its ecology are equally integrated with the fluid Earth to enable Earth system prediction for planetary stewardship. Central to this is the need to overcome an intellectual heritage to the models that elevates geoscience and marginalizes ecology and local land knowledge. The call for kilometer‐scale atmospheric and ocean models, without concomitant scientific and computational investment in the land and biosphere, perpetuates the geophysical view of Earth and will not fully provide the comprehensive actionable information needed for a changing climate.

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Quantifying process-level uncertainty contributions to TCRE and carbon budgets for meeting Paris Agreement climate targets

Jones

Friedlingstein

2020

Environ. Res. Lett.

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To achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement requires deep and rapid reductions in anthropogenic CO2 emissions, but uncertainty surrounds the magnitude and depth of reductions. Earth system models provide a means to quantify the link from emissions to global climate change. Using the concept of TCRE—the transient climate response to cumulative carbon emissions—we can estimate the remaining carbon budget to achieve 1.5 or 2 °C. But the uncertainty is large, and this hinders the usefulness of the concept. Uncertainty in carbon budgets associated with a given global temperature rise is determined by the physical Earth system, and therefore Earth system modelling has a clear and high priority remit to address and reduce this uncertainty. Here we explore multi-model carbon cycle simulations across three generations of Earth system models to quantitatively assess the sources of uncertainty which propagate through to TCRE. Our analysis brings new insights which will allow us to determine how we can better direct our research priorities in order to reduce this uncertainty. We emphasise that uses of carbon budget estimates must bear in mind the uncertainty stemming from the biogeophysical Earth system, and we recommend specific areas where the carbon cycle research community needs to re-focus activity in order to try to reduce this uncertainty. We conclude that we should revise focus from the climate feedback on the carbon cycle to place more emphasis on CO2 as the main driver of carbon sinks and their long-term behaviour. Our proposed framework will enable multiple constraints on components of the carbon cycle to propagate to constraints on remaining carbon budgets.

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So What Is in an Earth System Model?

Cited by 6 publications

References 23 publications

Use of meteorological data in biosecurity

Use of meteorological data in biosecurity

Reimagining Earth in the Earth System

Quantifying process-level uncertainty contributions to TCRE and carbon budgets for meeting Paris Agreement climate targets

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