BG2
Dynamics of the Coupled Carbon Climate Human System

Main Organiser
Robert Dickinson
Georgia Institute of Technology
robted@eas.gatech.edu

Brief Description
The WCRP and IGBP have worked toward the creation of comprehensive Earth system models to study the impacts of human activites. However, humans are not 'dumb farmers' that do adjust their functioning to their recognition of a changing environment. Rather, they actively seek to understand and adopt or mitigate the consequences. The comphensive climate models used by the IPCC to assess human impacts on climate have moved from regarding carbon as an external forcing to treating the natural system of carbon as an interactive component. The Global Carbon Project, a flagship of the new Earth System Science Partnership (http://www.ess-p.org/ ) of WCRP/IGBP/, IHDP, and DIVERSATAS is highlighting the need to develop the concept of humans as an interactive component of the global carbon system.. This session welcomes presentations that treats in terms of models the connections between climate, carbon, and humans, either with one or more exogenous or fully coupled as a dynamic system.