Abstract
Abstract. Analysis of Earth system dynamics in the Anthropocene requires explicitly taking into account the increasing magnitude of processes operating in human societies, their cultures, economies and technosphere and their growing feedback entanglement with those in the physical, chemical and biological systems of the planet. However, current state-of-the-art Earth system models do not represent dynamic human societies and their feedback interactions with the biogeophysical Earth system and macroeconomic integrated assessment models typically do so only with limited scope. This paper (i) proposes design principles for constructing world–Earth models (WEMs) for Earth system analysis of the Anthropocene, i.e., models of social (world)–ecological (Earth) coevolution on up to planetary scales, and (ii) presents the copan:CORE open simulation modeling framework for developing, composing and analyzing such WEMs based on the proposed principles. The framework provides a modular structure to flexibly construct and study WEMs. These can contain biophysical (e.g., carbon cycle dynamics), socio-metabolic or economic (e.g., economic growth or energy system changes), and sociocultural processes (e.g., voting on climate policies or changing social norms) and their feedback interactions, and they are based on elementary entity types, e.g., grid cells and social systems. Thereby, copan:CORE enables the epistemic flexibility needed for contributions towards Earth system analysis of the Anthropocene given the large diversity of competing theories and methodologies used for describing socio-metabolic or economic and sociocultural processes in the Earth system by various fields and schools of thought. To illustrate the capabilities of the framework, we present an exemplary and highly stylized WEM implemented in copan:CORE that illustrates how endogenizing sociocultural processes and feedbacks such as voting on climate policies based on socially learned environmental awareness could fundamentally change macroscopic model outcomes.
Highlights
In the Anthropocene, Earth system dynamics are governed by two kinds of internal processes: those operating in the physical, chemical and biological systems of the planet and those occurring in its human societies, their cultures and economies (Schellnhuber, 1998, 1999; Crutzen, 2002; Lucht and Pachauri, 2004; Steffen et al, 2018)
Thereby, copan:CORE enables the epistemic flexibility needed for contributions towards Earth system analysis of the Anthropocene given the large diversity of competing theories and methodologies used for describing socio-metabolic or economic and sociocultural processes in the Earth system by various fields and schools of thought
To illustrate the capabilities of the framework, we present an exemplary and highly stylized world–Earth models (WEMs) implemented in copan:CORE that illustrates how endogenizing sociocultural processes and feedbacks such as voting on climate policies based on socially learned environmental awareness could fundamentally change macroscopic model outcomes
Summary
In the Anthropocene, Earth system dynamics are governed by two kinds of internal processes: those operating in the physical, chemical and biological systems of the planet and those occurring in its human societies, their cultures and economies (Schellnhuber, 1998, 1999; Crutzen, 2002; Lucht and Pachauri, 2004; Steffen et al, 2018). Such models need to capture the coevolving dynamics of the social (the world of human societies) and natural (the biogeophysical Earth) spheres of the Earth system on up to global scales and are referred to as world– Earth models (WEMs) in this article In pursuing this interdisciplinary integration effort, world–Earth modeling can benefit from and build upon the work done in fields such as social–ecological systems (Berkes et al, 2000; Folke, 2006) and coupled human and natural systems (Liu et al, 2007) research or large-scale behavioral land-use (Arneth et al, 2014; Rounsevell et al, 2014) and socio-hydrological modeling (Di Baldassarre et al, 2017). It emphasizes more the study of planetary-scale interactions between human societies and parts of the Earth’s climate system such as atmosphere, ocean and the biosphere, instead of more local and regional-scale interactions with natural resources that these fields have typically focused on in the past (Donges et al, 2018)
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