EAE1022 Lecture Notes - Lecture 30: Human Behaviour, Earth System Science, Cryosphere
5 Oct 2018
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Eae1022 lecture 30 - earth, atmosphere and environment. The reality of complexity: goal of modelling is to simplify to fundamentals, but sometimes even fundamentals are compl ex, complexities often stem from feedbacks and interactions between systems. Feedback and interactions: earth system comprises components that vary continuously in 3 dimensions. Fluxes of energy, mass and momentum are constant between different parts of the earth sys tem. Feedbacks and interactions between different (cid:862)parts(cid:863) of systems can be fundamental to thei r regulation need to be modelled. Some problems require an integrated view of the physical earth system where feedbacks and i nteractions between many systems are important (e. g. climate change, land use la(cid:374)d cover change): models become complex very rapidly! Complexity can increase uncertainty: tempting to think that increasing complexity will decrease uncertainty, but the addition of more and more components into the system, each with their own uncertai nty, can act to increase uncertainty.
