Integrated Earth

The natural variability of the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans and land and ice surfaces has shaped the evolution of life in general and human systems in particular. The interplay of living organisms (biosphere) on the planet with the atmosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere and cryosphere is making the concept of an overarching, shared global earth monitoring and observing system popular, even though to date, the Earth System has been deemed to be far too complex and interdependent to be studied from one perspective.

Separation of different parts of the Earth System into atmosphere, hydrosphere etc has been necessary for developing an understanding of processes, but barriers for scientific information exchange can result, fracturing our understanding of the whole Earth System. In this webinar, our 3 speakers help guide us through some of the perspectives and challenges of developing an integrated earth system approach, highlighting opportunities for incorporating different knowledge systems and providing examples of the interconnectivity of the ‘spheres’ that makes the integrated Earth approach a necessity and our next big data and modelling challenge.