Abstract
Ecology and the climate provide two perspectives of the same biogeophysical system at all spatiotemporal scales More effectively embracing this congruence is an opportunity to improve scientific understanding and predictions as well as for a more effective policy that integrates both the bottom-up community, business-driven framework, and the popular, top-down impact assessment framework. The objective of this paper is, therefore, to more closely integrate the diverse spectrum of scientists, engineers and policymakers into finding optimal solutions to reduce the risk to environmental and social threats by considering the ecology and climate as an integrated system. Assessments such as performed towards the 2030 Plan for Sustainable Development, with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals and its Goal 13 in particular, can achieve more progress by accounting for the intimate connection of all aspects of the Earth’s biogeophysical system.
Highlights
Definitions of the Earth’s Climate and Ecology by Discipline, Professional OrganizationsClear and consistent definitions of scientific terminology are important, when these definitions affect how information is communicated to the public, decisionmakers, and the scientific community
Effective communication for public outreach, to advance scientific understanding, and to develop policy and make decisions have been hampered when it is assumed either that climate is an external forcing function outside ecological systems (Figure 1) or that climate refers to a coupled geophysical Earth system without explicit consideration of the biota (Figure 2)
These examples illustrate that ecologists and climate scientists are studying the same biogeophysical Earth system
Summary
This continues with the latest 2021 report [4] which is titled “Climate Change 2021 The Physical Science Basis”. The climate system is defined as a complex set of interactions and responses to external forces that include the atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, cryosphere, and biosphere (definition of climate from The American Meteorological Society; ref [11]) This definition of the climate system, where the natural and human-caused variability is inherent in some components (e.g., the biosphere), needs to be included to focus on details of the physical and chemical components. The similarity in the perspectives of climate and ecology scientists with respect to the Earth indicates that they are examining the same Earth system but from two different perspectives with the physical science community (climate) dominating the development of global policy
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