What is global change?

Last updated 01 November 2004

Originally answered 1 November 2004

Full Question

What is the definition of “global change?”

Answer

According to the U.S. Global Change Research Act of 1990, global change is defined as:

“Changes in the global environment (including alterations in climate, land productivity, oceans
or other water resources, atmospheric chemistry, and ecological systems) that may alter the
capacity of the Earth to sustain life.”

The U.S. Global Change Research Act of 1990 is the public law that established the U.S. Global
Change Research Program (USGCRP) and the U.S. Global Change Research Information Office
(GCRIO).

A Physical Scientists' Perspective of the Human Dimension

of Global Change

John E. Lewis and Eric C. Wood

[The following presentation was initially offered as a keynote address at the Second
International Congress of Arctic Social Sciences, (ICASS II) Rovaniemi, Finland, 1995.
It was published in Unity and Diversity in Arctic Societies, in 1996 by the
International Arctic Social Sciences Association. Reprinted with permission of the
authors and publisher.]

Introduction and Preamble

Over forty years ago, C.P. Snow expressed concern over the separation of the two scientific
cultures - the natural and the social - and urged for more cooperation in their research. Now,
more than ever, there is an urgency to bring the two together. However, problems exist when
trying to foster cooperation mainly on questions of the underlying scientific paradigms and the
testing of proofs. These factors have traditionally separated the two cultures. The root of the
conflicts arises because, as Blaikie (1985) puts it, "both sets of disciplines tend to have different
conceptions about the domain and status of proof in the pursuit of knowledge....". The main
problem seems to derive from the positivist expectation that (e.g.) the explanation of social
phenomena should be tested in the same way as most natural science ones."

Both Kuhn ( 1970) and Phillips ( 1971 ) have raise pointed concerns . If we are going to benefit
from the "cooperation of natural and social scientists", then we are going to have to get beyond
the constraints of the paradigms of the individual disciplines. Researchers will have to be willing
to accept the validity of multiple paradigms, which appears to go against the norms of science as
we have defined it. Or perhaps, the only way this integration of the disciplines will work is for all
partners to work under a totally new paradigm, which might be called a "universal paradigm
shift". These are not new thoughts but given the preceding remarks as a backdrop, let us now
turn our attention to a discussion of global change.

Institutional impediments, lack of political will and socio-economic forces have placed major
strains on the sub-Arctic and Arctic environments. Global change is occurring at an ever
increasing rate, and this change is nowhere felt more than in the delicate environmental systems
within both the oceanic and terrestrial regimes for the northern latitudes. These regions face a
myriad of environmental problems that at times appear to be overwhelming - depleting of fishing
stocks and decline in marine mammal populations; decreased habitat for caribou/reindeer herds;
continual pressures of mineral exploration and its social consequences on native groups; and the
socio-economic impacts of climatic change. And these serve as only a few examples.

The bottom line in solving these problems relies on political will and will ultimately require
political decisions to attain environmental solutions. However, for these problems to reach the
political forum with the chance of achieving a successful outcome, we feel it will require a much
greater cooperation between the two scientific cultures. Only a comprehensive presentation along
with an increased lucidity and veracity of the causes and implications of these environmental
problems will serve to convince the public and the political decision makers of the serious
concerns that face society. This means a newfound understanding must be obtained of the
concepts and methodologies that each of our scientific disciplines have to offer.

As a climatologist, I shall address one area with which I am familiar; i. e., the problem of climate
change as an example of global change and how these notions fit it into the realm of the human
dimension. An aspect of 'global warming' will be used as the example to illustrate some of
concepts which have the potential for fostering intellectual and informational integration among
physical and social scientists.

The specific topics that we shall discuss:

1) a general definition of global change;

2) recent findings about climatic change in the northern latitudes;
3) dealing with the human dimensions; and 4) an example of some emerging tools for analyzing
global change.

Aspects of Global Change - definition and scope

There is a general lack of consensus in the scientific community concerning both a
comprehensive definition and the conceptual scope of global change. Global environmental
change is not a new idea. This concept has been a topic of academic and public interest for many
years. George Perkins Marsh writing in the mid-nineteenth century published the now classic
work entitled Man and Nature or The Earth as Modified by Human Action. Marsh in his works
emphasized the human impacts on the natural landscape (Marsh 1965).In the year 1864, he
challenged the notion of an inexhaustible earth. More recently with the publication of Man's
Role in Changing the Face of the Earth ( 1956) and with the environmental movement of the
60's and early 70's, there was a returned emphasis to the concept of global environmental change.

In the recent work entitled Global Environmental Change: Understanding the Human
Dimensions, published in 1992 by the U.S. National Research Council, global change is defined
as 'alterations in the natural (e.g., physical or biological) systems whose impacts are not and
cannot be localized' (Sternetal. 1992: p.25). Global change research initially focused almost
solely on the physical and biological sciences, but in the last eight to ten years, there has been
more recognition of the human dimensions and the essential role that social science must play in
resolving global environmental problems. As evidence, the three problems that have been given
greatest attention climate change, ozone depletion and loss of biodiversity - are all anthropogenic
in origin (Stem et al. 1992). There is an increasing realization that we need to have a much better
understanding of how human activities combine with natural events to produce global changes.
We must explore causes and consequences of how human, interacting within the social systems,
affect and are affected by global change (CIESIN 1992). The processes of global change tend to
be highly non-linear and are characterized by human responses that can have positive or negative
feedbacks. If solutions, or even just an increased comprehension to many of these environmental
problems, are to be obtained, a more integrated natural/social science approach must be adopted.

Global environmental change can have two types of meaning: 1) systemic and 2) cumulative
(Fig. 1). Global systemic changes need not be caused by global scale activity; only the physical
impact is experienced at the global scale (Turner, et al. 1990). The pollutants of suIfur dioxide
and the oxides of nitrogen are emitted on a local scale; but through the mechanism of long range
atmospheric transport their effects are evident on the global scale in the form of acid rain.
Whereas, the cumulative type of global change refers to the areal or substantive accumulation of
localized change which becomes global if it happens on a worldwide scale. In other words, small
effects accumulate and exceed some spatial or temporal threshold thus producing a global
problem. This is what has been called " the tragedy of small increments". Examples of problems
of this latter type are the loss of biodiversity and the gradual conversion of forest, grassland and
wetland.

Changes as mentioned in the previous paragraph, are produced by human actions and these
actions are considered as "driving forces". Four general categories of activities have been
identified as human driving forces: 1) population change, 2) wealth/poverty levels, 3) economic
structures and 4) technology (Meredith et al. 1994). How these human driving forces are
incorporated into a conceptual framework of global change will be discussed in a later section.

Climatic Change in the Northern Latitudes

It is difficult to summarize the vast literature even for the last 10 years that has been written on
climatic change (Houghton et al. 1992). In this section we shall highlight a few of the more
recent findings which have implications for northern environments.

Many arguments and questions surround the area of climatic change, especially the topic of
global warming. Global temperature data sets generally confirm that surface warming between
0.3 and 0.6°C has occurred in the last 100 years (Karl 1993), and the ten warmest years of the
century have all been since 1979, and include 1993. However, regional studies fail to confirm
any worldwide trends and these studies tend to show a complex spatial and temporal pattern of
temperature trends. In the higher northern latitudes, atmospheric temperature trends are found to
be seasonally and spatially variable (Kahl e tal. 1993) especially for Arctic regions; and these
temperature changes are less significant than for tropical regions. Temperatures in the North
Atlantic Ocean (within the 300m to 600m depth) actually show a cooling trend (Antov 1993).
Other results indicate a strong positive correlation with NW Atlantic sea surface temperatures
and Arctic sea ice conditions.

If we use other climatic parameters to assess the climatic change in the north the situation is even
more hazy. Precipitation data sets tend to be more sparse and noisy than the temperature records
for Arctic and sub-Arctic regions and may be seriously affected by measurement errors.
Therefore, it is difficult to arrive at any firm conclusions about precipitation trends. For sea ice,
there is some evidence of decreased amounts in the Arctic regions over the last four decades with
the decrease especially significant for the summer seasons (Chapman and Walsh 1993).

When we turn our attention, briefly, to studies which focus on potential impacts as a result of
proposed temperature change, two recent studies concerning changes in northern ecosystems
have interest:
(1) An analysis using a modified Budyko model (a very simplified climate/biosphere model)
predicted that all boreal forest vegetation classes will shrink and will be replaced by taiga and
temperate forest classes moving northward (Morserud el al. 1993).
(2) As a contrast to the previous modeling study, results using paleoecological evidence suggest
how changes in vegetation may occur in the future for the boreal forest/tundra area.

Results indicate that for a warm period (4000 to 5000 years BP), the vegetation changed from
tundra to close canopy black spruce in a matter of 150 years (MacDonald et al. 1993). The tacit
inference here is that the past historical warm period had the same overall climate conditions as
those conditions producing the temperature changes presently predicted for the northern regions.
The effect these vegetation changes would have on the animal population and the people living
in these environments is unknown.

These two studies contrast how information is obtained on what may happen in the future - the
latter by developing future climatic scenarios based on historical situations and the former with
the use of physical process model to simulate future climate (Lewis 1989). By far, the process
mode approach has been the bulwark for assessing climate change and making predictions on
future climates. The success of these models in simulating the global climate system hinges on
the models' ability to represent the physical and chemical processes and how the important
feedbacks with in the system are described and parameterized (AES 1994). These general
circulation models (GCM) are areas of very active research within the climate community and
are continually improving in their description of the climate system on a global scale; however,
substantial concerns still exist about the reliability, representativeness and spatial resolution of
these models used in the analysis of climate change.

The U.S. Global Change Research Program recently published a report entitled Forum on
Climatic Modeling ( 1995) which provides the latest consensus conclusions on model prediction
for future climate conditions. The models' conclusions are placed into three categories: Very
Probable, Probable and Uncertain. In this paper we list only the ones that have direct
implications for the north. This is not to infer that other systemic types of global change, such as
volcanic eruptions or surface cover/land use changes, will not be important contributors to global
change in the future.

VERY PROBABLE

1) Global temperatures will increase between 0.5 - 2.0°C by 2050.

2) Northern Hemisphere sea ice will decrease; however some areas will have expansion .

3) Arctic land areas will show increased warming and reduced snow cover. (The caveat here is
how well the models describe the poleward transport of heat.)

4) Global sea level will rise at an increasing rate resulting in a higher sea level of 5 - 40 cm by
2050.

PROBABLE

1) High latitude precipitation will increase.

2) TheNorth Atlantic Ocean will experience warming at a slowerrate than the global average.

UNCERTAIN

1) Changes in climatic variability will occur.

2) Regional scale ( 100-2000 km) climate change will be different than the global average.

3) Details of climate change over the next 25 years are uncertain.

4) Biosphere-climate feedbacks are expected but whether these feedbacks will amplify or
moderate climate change is uncertain.

The Social Process Diagram

With uncertainty the major feature of future climatic conditions, and the climate system is only
one component, how do we deal with the myriad of concepts and processes within the total scope
of global change? In recognition of this problem, the Consortium for International Earth Science
Information Network (ClESIN ) conmissioned a group of scientists to develop a framework
illustrating the key social/human dimensions that contribute to global change.

The result of this effort was the Social Process

Diagram (fig. 2) which serves as a dynamic tool for
both natural and social scientists in fostering an
increased understanding of global change. The form of
the diagram facilitates discussion and research
concerning the human dimensions of global change.

The diagram consists of three elements: the structure,

the connections, and the dynamics. 1) Structure - The
diagram consists of seven building blocks in which six
define the human social systems and one the natural
systems.

2) Connections - The connections provide the links amongthe building blocks and help createthe
process interrelationships. These links define the fundamental driving forces producing
environmental change.

3) Dynamics - The dynamics are implicit within the diagram but essential for the understanding
of mechanisms of global change.

Driving forces must be considered from both a spatial and temporal perspective. In other words,
human interactions occur within certain geographic locations and over certain geographic
periods which both contribute to how the diagram is used (CIESIN 1992:24).

A Social Process Diagram Scenario: Global Warming and

Sea Level Rise
An obvious question is how can we use the social process diagram to formulate a research
strategy and also point directions for providing all interdisciplinary approach to problem solving.
As was noted in the discussion on climatic change effects, sea level rise seems to be a possible
consequence of global warming and of particular interest to groups inhabiting northern coastal
regions. The social process diagram provides pathways for investigating the sea level rise
problem and can contribute to the initial understanding of the environmental/human inter-
relationship. The use of the diagram is not to oversimplify the problem but to act as a point of
departure from the natural factors to the human dimensions. In other words, it serves as a
signpost for research direction and a vehicle for the development and the testing of hypotheses.

In the context of this paper, we shall only describe a

few of the process interractions which emphasize
more of the physical-human pathways. This section
is essentially paraphrased from the case study
'Global Warming and Sea Level Rise' cited in Pathways of Understanding (CIESIN 1992: 36-
39). Using this as an example of environmental global change, the social process diagram (fig. 3)
displays the structural components for all eight interactions within the realm of human
dimensions.

Path A: Environmental Processes -> Economic Systems.

This pathway incorporates the rate of increase in sea level rise and the decrease in usable land.
For developed countries, the change can be anticipated and actions might be taken to modify or
change the economic activities impacted by the environmental global change. Sea level rise
would induce changes he land prices and activities, and in turn effect the pattern of consumption
and land development. A few of the major questions concerning global change raised by this
pathway are: what level of risk are we willing to accept before any anticipatory action is
initiated? How would the risk of land inundation be internalized in the market economy? Or
what are the anticipated rates of growth or decline which are caused by this environmental
change?

Path B-C-D. Environmental Processes -> Population & Social Structure -> Factors of
Technology -> Economic Systems.

A very complex pathway but, by far, this pathway depicts the most interrelated human processes
in association with environmental global change. Changes in sea level which decreasethe amount
of land available would produce several apparent effects. People occupying inundated areas
would have to relocate inland producing changes in population distribution. These changes
would then influence the resource base and land use through path C. Agriculture, fishing and
recreation/tourism are some of the activities impacted by these land use changes.

Path H. Environmental Processes -> Preferences & Expectations -> Political Systems.

This connection may be characterized as mainly superficial non-economic factors which

influence ecological distributions and brings into play how society perceptually and politically
responds to these changes. For instance, as sea level rise occurs more pressure from the public
may be felt to preserve coastal wetlands. Since many wetlands are preserved for wildlife
protection and public usage, social preference would exert direct pressure on the political system.
The land use changes would potentially instigate a political discussion over a whole range of
non-economic impacts and how society might respond. In addition, Conservation practices that
may be initiated would produce conflicts in other areas.

"Protection of economic assets may run counter to other objectives, and these
opposing forces should be quantified by physical impact: what ecological systems
are threatened doubly by sea level rise on the one hand and econom i cal Iy
motivated protection policies on the other?" (ClESIN 1992: 39).

For native communities which may only peripherally participate in the global market
economy, what impacts are addressed on the social process diagram? One outcome
is coastal flooding which could have profound ecological effects on habitat loss or its
redistribution. These changes would impact wildlife areas and changethe
land/aquatic animal relationship which in turn, could generate repercussions for
native activities and their livelihoods. These human dimension problems could
assume the form of population redistribution and/or dysfunction he the social
structure due to village relocation .

An Example of an Emerging Technique

Decision theory is not a new methodology but the integration of it into a spatial framework is.
The merging of GIS with resource allocation decision making in order to provide a decision
support tool is an excitingand challenging means for analyzing global change problems. Topics
within this broad field range from dealing with the uncertainty and errors in the spatial domain
including the use of fuzzy logic and Bayesian probability mapping to multi-objective / multi-
criteria decision modeling. (See Carver 1991 as an example of the latter technique). The IDRISl
group at Clark University has been one of the leaders in this area both in the realm of education
for UNITAR and research development.

For this paper we shall provide a simple but illustrative example of incorporating uncertainty,
risk assessment and Bayesian probability into a global chalige problem . We have already
discussed the consequences of sea level rise within the context of the Social Process Diagram.
In this section of the paper, we shall continue with this example, not as a sign of its high priority
or overwhelming global importance as an environmental problem, but for pedagogic reasons.

A digital elevation model (DEM) of an area west of Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope of Alaska
was obtained from the USGS. The data set, which encompasses 3 arc seconds (1:250000), is for
the Beechey Point quadrangle. The original area was reduced by one-half and resampled to a
consistent 30m grid (fig. 4) . Given the existing topography , what effect will sea level rise have
on this region? If we chose a prediction estimate of sea level rise from one the GCM's results, we
can then map the area inundated by this rise. As mentioned previously, there is much
discrepancy in the model predictions so we have chosen a value on the high side of 1 .9m rise by
the year 2100 for representative purposes.

In a standard analysis, the assumption is that the data is error free. Using this assumption then
any land less than 1 .9m will be flooded. (We are not including the effects of or changes in sea
ice within the problem matrix.) However, errors exist in the DEM database and there are, as
already noted, uncertainty in the predicted value of sea level rise. A RMS value can be calculated
for the elevation data but the uncertainty in the GCM model value is more problematic. As best
determined from the literature, the uncertainty for the sea level rise of 1.9m is +/- Im. Instead of
a hard decision rule with a specified boundary (threshold), there now exists a soft one. Also, a
probability for each data point can be calculated which portrays a degree of uncertainty in the
decision rule.

Both types of data uncertainty then can be utilized to evaluate the probability that the elevations
are exceeded by the sea level rise of I .9m. The resulting map is one of probabilities ranging from
0 to 1 with (e.g.) a data value of .40 indicating that a location has 40% chalice (probability) of
remaining above water or conversely, a 60% chance of being flooded. This type of map (fig. 5)
presents a much different picture than a map based on a hard decision rule which includes no
errors.

It seems somewhat unreasonable that the ocean grid cells are included in the analysis he the same
manner as the land areas. Clearly, advance knowledge indicates that the chance of the present
ocean area being submerged as a result of higher sea level has to be 100%. Having this prior
knowledge would seem to provide some additional advantage in the testing of our hypotheses
using this probability approach. The previous probability map serves as initial evidence and then
along with the prior probability that the ocean area will have a 100% probability, the two sources
of information (prior knowledge and new evidence) are merged into a final estimate of
probability known as Bayesian Probability (Aspinall 1992). Figure 6 displays the map
generated using the Bayesian method. The resulting map perhaps is an overly simplistic
implementation but it does demonstrate how prior information can effectively be incorporated
into the analysis (Eastman, J.R. et al. 1993).

Finally, our decisions can incorporate the element of risk where risk is the likelihood of an
inappropriate choice being made. These decisions can be based on some presubscribed level of
risk tllat we are willing to assume. What risk are we willing to accept - 10%, 50% or 90% ?
Obviously, this level of risk will vary from one person or group to others. From a previous
example (Fig. 5) we can create a new map of area subject to flooding at say a 50% risk. This map
could be cross classified with the present land area to obtain the area inundated with ourpredicted
sea level rise as a result of assuming a 50% level of risk (Fig. 7). We could, also, develop a map
of different levels of risk to ascertain how these different levels affect decisions on anticipatory
action, for instance, the sea rise and coastal flooding for the North Slope region of Alaska.

Some Additional Thoughts

Another necessary ingredient for success in global change research is the development of new
ways of collecting data and new databases established by long term environmental monitoring
effort that is not solely relegated to the natural sciences.

"Research that relies on new data that are not well understood, or simply on a
slender database, is prone to err. Conclusions that are based on a small amount of
data, for short period of time or for a sampled area, may seriously misrepresent
what is actually occurring." (Meyer and Turner 1994: 11).

There, also, appears to be a substantial increase in new environmentally related databases;

however, many of these new databases are just old ones cloaked in a new digital jacket. These
databases are just more readily available now but they still have the same problems and errors as
the old ones. Discretion in their use should still be the byword.

Global change research by its very nature needs an interdisciplinary approach. If this research is
restricted to the viewpoint of a single discipline, either natural or social science, key factors are
more likely to be overlooked which occur peripheral to the generally tunneled vision of that
discipline (Kowalok 1993). And once the human component enters the equation, it becomes
essential that social and natural scientist work together. This means the continual development of
new paradigms and analytical tools that merge methodologies from the two scientific cultures is
of paramount importance.

Careful attention must be made to scientific quality control in our research programs. The checks
and balances in this type of research that are usually part of the more organized academic
disciplines is often lacking.

To end we would like to quote Meyer and Turner (1994: 9).

"Bad numbers, bad analysis, and bad predictions take years to get out of print once
gotten in" and appended tothis quote is "and the credibility of the research effort
(field) is severely damaged too". (Lewis and Wood 1995).

Interdisciplinary research and the increased cooperation between natural and social scientists is
required if success in dealing with global change problems is to be achieved.

References
AES. 1994. CO2/Climate Report, Canadian Climate Centre, Issue 94-1, Downsview, Ontario

Antonov, J.l . (1993. Linear Trends of Temperature at lntermediate and Deep Layers of the North
Atlantic and NorthPacifc Oceans: 1957-1981, Journal of Climate, (6), pp 19281942.

Aspinall, R. 1992. An Inductive Modelling Procedure Based on Bayes' Theorem for Analysis of
Patterns of Spatial Data, International Jour. of Geographical Information Systems, (6), pp 105-
121.

Blaikie, P. 1985. The Political Economy of Soil Erosion in Developing Countries, Longman
Scientific, NY.

Carver, S. J. 1991. Integrating Multi-Criteria Evaluation with Geographical Information

Systems, Int. J. Geographical Information Systems, (5) pp 321-339.

Chapman, W.L. & J.E. Walsh. 1993. Recent Variation of Sea Ice and Air Temperature in High
Latitudes, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, (74), pp 33-47.

CIESIN. 1992 Pathways of Understanding: The Interactions of Humanity and Global

Environmental Change, Consortium for International Earth Science Information Network.

Eastman, J. R. et al. 1993. GIS and Decision Making, vol. 4, UNITAR, Geneva.

Houghton, J. T. et al. (eds). Climate Change 1992: The Supplementary Report to the IPCC
Scientific Assessment, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK

Kahl, J.D. et al. 1993. Tropospheric Temperature Trends in the Arctic: 1958- 1986, Jour of
Geophysical Res., (98), pp 12,825-12,838.
Karl, T. 1993. Missing Pieces of the Puzzle, Research and Exploration, (9), pp 234-249.

Kowalok, M.E. 1993. Common Threads: Research Lessons from Acid Rains, Ozone Depletion,
and Global Warming, Environment, (36), pp 12-20.

Kuhn, T. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Lewis, J.E.1989. Climate Change and Its Effects on Water Resources for Canada. A Review,
Canadian Water Resources Journal, (14), pp 34-55.

MacDonald, G. et al. 1993. Rapid Response of Treeline Vegetation and Lakes to Past Climate
Warming, Nature, (361), pp 243-246.

Marsh, G.P. 1965. Man and Nature; Or, The Earth As Modified by Human Action, (orig. 1864)
Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA.

Meredith, T.C. et al. 1994. Canadian Critical Environmental Zones: Concepts, Goals and
Resources, Report 94-1, Canadian Global Change Program Technical Report, Ottawa.

Meyer, W.B. & B.L. Turner II. 1994. Cry Wolf, Human Dimensions Quarterly, (1), pp 912.

Monserud, R.A. et al. 1993. Global Vegetation Change Predicted by the Modif ed Budyko
Model, Climatic Change, (25), pp 59-83.

Phillips, B. 1971. Social Research: Strategy and Tactics, The Macmillan Co., NY.

Stern, P. et al. 1992. Global Environmental Change: Understanding the Human Dimensions,
National Academy Press, Washington, DC.

Thomas, W.L. Jr.1956.Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, University of Chicago
Press, Chicago.

Turner, B.L. II et al. 1990. Two Types of Global Environmental Change, Environment, (1), pp
14-22.

USGCRP.1995. Forum on Global Modeling, U.S. Global Change Research Program Report 95-
01, Washington, DC.

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Global change
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For global climate change during Earth's history, see Climate change.
The Great Acceleration
Planetary response

Global change refers to planetary-scale changes in the Earth system. The system consists of the
land, oceans, atmosphere, poles, life, the planet’s natural cycles and deep Earth processes. These
constituent parts influence one another. The Earth system now includes human society, so global
change also refers to large-scale changes in society.[1]
More completely, the term “global change” encompasses: population, climate, the economy,
resource use, energy development, transport, communication, land use and land cover,
urbanization, globalization, atmospheric circulation, ocean circulation, the carbon cycle, the
nitrogen cycle, the water cycle and other cycles, sea ice loss, sea-level rise, food webs, biological
diversity, pollution, health, over fishing, and more. [2]

Contents
[hide]

• 1 History of global-change
research
• 2 Causes of global change
• 3 Physical evidence for global
change
• 4 Global change and society
• 5 Planetary management
• 6 See also
• 7 External links

• 8 References

[edit] History of global-change research

In 1980, a group of scientists led by Swedish meteorologist Bert Bolin set up an international
programme, the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) to determine whether the climate
was changing, whether climate could be predicted and whether humans were in some way
responsible for the change. The programme was sponsored by the World Meteorological
Organization and the International Council for Science (ICSU). As time went on, there was a
growing realisation that climate change was one part of a larger phenomenon, global change. In
1987, a team of researchers led, again, by Bert Bolin, James McCarthy, Paul Crutzen,
H.Oeschger and others, successfully argued for an international research programme to
investigate global change. This programme, sponsored by ICSU, is the International Geosphere-
Biosphere Programme (IGBP). The programme has eight projects investigating different parts of
the Earth system and links between them.

IGBP, WCRP and a third programme, the International Human Dimensions Programme (IHDP,
founded in 1996), spearheaded a landmark science conference held in Amsterdam in 2001. The
conference, Challenges of a Changing Earth: Global Change Open Science Conference, led to
the Amsterdam Declaration which stated, “In addition to the threat of significant climate change,
there is growing concern over the ever-increasing human modification of other aspects of the
global environment and the consequent implications for human well-being. Basic goods and
services supplied by the planetary life support system, such as food, water, clean air and an
environment conducive to human health, are being affected increasingly by global change.”[3]
The declaration goes on to say, “The international global change programmes urge governments,
public and private institutions and people of the world to agree that an ethical framework for
global stewardship and strategies for Earth System management are urgently needed.”[3]

Many nations now have their own global change programmes and institutes, for example the US
Global Change Research Program and the UK’s Quantifying and Understanding the Earth
System (QUEST) programme. And since the Amsterdam conference another international
programme focusing on biodiversity has been set up, DIVERSITAS. These programmes form
the Earth System Science Partnership.

In 2012, these international programmes plan another major science conference in London,
Planet Under Pressure: new knowledge towards solutions.

[edit] Causes of global change

In the past, the main drivers of global change have been solar output, plate tectonics, volcanism,
proliferation and abatement of life, meteorite impact, resource depletion, changes in Earth’s orbit
around the sun and changes in the tilt of Earth on its axis. There is overwhelming evidence that
now the main driver of planetary-scale change, or global change, is the growing human
population’s demand for energy, food, goods, services and information, and its disposal of its
waste products. In the last 250 years, global change has caused climate change, widespread
species extinctions, fish-stock collapse, desertification, ocean acidification, ozone depletion,
pollution, and other large-scale shifts.

Scientists working on the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme have said that Earth is
now operating in a “no analogue” state.[4] Measurements of Earth system processes, past and
present, have led to the conclusion that the planet has moved well outside the range of natural
variability in the last half million years at least. Homo sapiens have been around for about
200,000 years.

What this means for the planet and society remains unclear. But, in the last 20 years there has
been an enormous international research effort to understand global change and the Earth system.
An aim of this research is to work out if there are planetary boundaries and are we approaching
them. Scientists, international governmental organizations and lobbying organizations like World
Wide Fund for Nature argue that current consumption levels, particularly in developed countries,
are not sustainable because there is a very real danger they will push the planet into a new state.
What this new state might look like is still being debated, but sea levels are likely to rise several
meters, the pH of the oceans, a measure of its acidity, is likely to drop farther than it has in 20
million years, and global atmospheric and ocean circulations may shift markedly. The major
cycles – carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus, water – and other important parameters would
alter, bringing drought to some places, floods to others. Governments will no longer be able to
take for granted the relative environmental stability that has allowed human society to flourish
and led to rapid globalization. Most of the population of the planet will be affected. The re-
insurance industry is already taking measures to protect its interests and maximize profits as
turbulent times approach.
[edit] Physical evidence for global change
Humans have always altered their environment. The advent of agriculture around 10000 years
ago led to a radical change in land use that still continues. But, the relatively small human
population had little impact on a global scale until the start of the industrial revolution in 1750.
This event, followed by the invention of the Haber-Bosch process in 1909, which allowed large-
scale manufacture of fertilizers, led directly to rapid changes to many of the planet’s most
important physical, chemical and biological processes.

The 1950s marked a shift in gear: global change began accelerating. Between 1950 and 2010, the
population more than doubled. In that time, rapid expansion of international trade coupled with
upsurges in capital flows and new technologies, particularly information and communication
technologies, led to national economies becoming more fully integrated. There was a tenfold
increase in economic activity and the world’s human population became more tightly connected
than ever before. The period saw sixfold increases in water use and river damming. About 70
percent of the world’s freshwater resource is now used for agriculture. This rises to 90 percent in
India and China. Half of the Earth’s land surface had now been domesticated. By 2010, urban
population, for the first time, exceeded rural population. And there has been a fivefold increase
in fertilzser use. Indeed, manufactured reactive nitrogen from fertilizer production and industry
now exceeds global terrestrial production of reactive nitrogen. Without artificial fertilizers there
would not be enough food to sustain a population of six billion people.

These changes to the human sub-system have a direct influence on all components of the Earth
system. The chemical composition of the atmosphere has changed significantly. Concentrations
of important greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are rising fast. Over
Antarctica a large hole in the ozone layer appeared. Fisheries collapsed: most of the world’s
fisheries are now fully or over-exploited. Thirty percent of tropical rainforests disappeared.

In 2000, Nobel prize-winning scientist Paul Crutzen announced the scale of change is so great
that in just 250 years, human society has pushed the planet into a new geological era: the
Anthropocene. This name has stuck and there are calls for the Anthropocene to be adopted
officially. If it is, it may be the shortest of all geological eras. Evidence suggests that if human
activities continue to change components of the Earth system, which are all interlinked, this
could heave the Earth system out of a one state and into a new state.

[edit] Global change and society

Global change in a societal context encompasses social, cultural, technological, political,
economic and legal change. Terms closely related to global change and society are globalization
and global integration. Globalization began with long-distance trade and urbanism. The first
record of long distance trading routes is in the third millennium BC. Sumarians in Mesopotamia
traded with settlers in the Indus Valley, in modern-day India.

Since 1750, but more significantly, since the 1950s, global integration has accelerated. This era
has witnessed incredible global changes in communications, transportation, and computer
technology. Ideas, cultures, people, goods, services and money move around the planet with
ease. This new global interconnectedness and free flow of information has radically altered
notions of other cultures, conflicts, religions and taboos. Now, social movements can and do
form at a planetary scale.

Evidence, if more were needed, of the link between social and environmental global change
came with the 2008-2009 global financial crisis. The crisis pushed the planet’s main economic
powerhouses, the US, Europe and much of Asia into recession. According to the Global Carbon
Project, global atmospheric emissions of carbon dioxide fell from an annual growth rate of
around 3.4% between 2000 and 2008, to a growth rate of about 2% in 2008.[5]

[edit] Planetary management

Humans are altering the planet’s biogeochemical cycles in a largely unregulated way with
limited knowledge of the consequences.[4] Without steps to effectively manage the Earth system
– the planet’s physical, chemical, biological and social components – it is likely there will be
severe impacts on people and ecosystems. Perhaps the largest concern is that a component of the
Earth system, for example, an ocean circulation, the Amazon rainforest, or Arctic sea ice, will
reach a tipping point and flip from its current state to another state: flowing to not flowing,
rainforest to savanna, or ice to no ice. A domino effect could ensue with other components of the
Earth system changing state rapidly.

Intensive research over the last 20 years has shown that tipping points do exist in the Earth
system, and wide-scale change can be rapid – a matter of decades. Potential tipping points have
been identified and attempts have been made to quantify thresholds. But to date, the best efforts
can only identify loosely defined “planetary boundaries” beyond which tipping points exist but
their precise locations remain elusive.

There have been calls for a better way to manage the environment on a planetary scale,
sometimes referred to as managing “Earth’s life support system”. The United Nations was
formed to stop wars and provide a platform for dialogue between countries. It was not created to
avoid major environmental catastrophe on regional or global scales. But several international
environmental conventions exist under the UN: the UN Framework Convention on Climate
Change, the Montreal Protocol, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, and the UN
Convention on Biological Diversity. Additionally, the UN has two bodies charged with
coordinating environmental and development activities, the United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

In 2004, the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme published “Global Change and the
Earth System, a planet under pressure.”[4] The publication’s executive summary concluded: “An
overall, comprehensive, internally consistent strategy for stewardship of the Earth system is
required”. It stated that a research goal is to define and maintain a stable equilibrium in the
global environment.

In 2007, France called for UNEP to be replaced by a new and more powerful organization, the
“United Nations Environment Organization”. The rationale was that UNEP’s status as a
“programme”, rather than an “organization” in the tradition of the World Health Organization or
the World Meteorological Organization, weakened it to the extent that it was no longer fit for
purpose given current knowledge of the state of the planet. The call was backed by 46 countries.
Notably, the top five emitters of greenhouse gases failed to support the call.

[edit] See also

• Earth
• Population
• International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme
• Planetary management
• Planetary boundaries
• Sustainability
• United Nations
• Climate change
• Anthropocene
• Earth science
• Gaia hypothesis
• Globalization
• Geoengineering
• Ozone depletion
• Carbon cycle
• United Nations Environment Programme
• Biogeochemistry

[edit] External links

• International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme
• Earth System Science Partnership
• Earth System Governance Project (International Human Dimensions Project)
• Earth System Visioning (International Council for Science)
• Analysis, Integration and Modeling of the Earth System
• Global Carbon Project
• Global Water System Project
• Global Land Project
• International Global Atmospheric Composition
• Integrated Land Ecosystem–Atmosphere Processes Study
• Surface Ocean Lower Atmosphere Study
• Integrated Marine Biogeochemistry and Ecosystem Research
• Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics
• Past Global Changes
• United States Global Change Research Program
• The MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change
• Inter-America Institute for Global Change Research
• Pacific Institute – global change
• Aspen Global Change Institute
• Global Change Institute, The University of Queensland
[edit] References
1. ^ "International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme the Earth as a System".
http://www.igbp.net/page.php?pid=101. Retrieved 2010-03-25.
2. ^ "The Achilles Heel of the Earth System".
http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/TNT/WEB/Publications/Abrupt_Changes/Abrup
t_Changes.pdf. Retrieved 2010-03-25.
3. ^ a b "The Amsterdam Declaration". http://www.essp.org/index.php?id=41.
Retrieved 2010-03-25.
4. ^ a b c "Global Change and the Earth System". http://www.igbp.net/page.php?
pid=230. Retrieved 2010-03-25.
5. ^ "2008 Global Carbon Budget".
http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/08/hl-full.htm. Retrieved
2010-03-25.

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