Earth System Critical Thresholds – EarthCriSys
The Earth System is highly dynamic, with continuous material fluxes between different reservoirs, both in the deep and surface environments. Such fluxes control the functioning of our planet, from the current and future climate, including Earth surface and biological responses to changing climates, as well as natural processes that can affect both climates and society (alongside anthropogenic activity), such as volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. There are two critical factors in the behaviour of these fluxes: 1) they are not constant, but vary as a response to other factors in the surrounding environments; 2) their response to a given stimulus is generally not linear, and may be abrupt and irreversible once a certain critical threshold is reached. Such thresholds are fundamental parts of how the Earth works, but are extremely difficult to quantify, model and thus predict. Understanding these thresholds requires a multidisciplinary approach, given that causes and responses are often parts of different research fields and operate over different timescales and length scales, impacting the environment and society through global teleconnections; for example, increased rainfall due to warming and/or intense agriculture leads to a sudden geomorphological response (landslides), which will also trigger a geochemical process like greater chemical weathering, which will draw down atmospheric CO2. Similar causal chains exist in other parts of the climate system, as well as in deeper parts of the Earth that affect both climate (e.g., triggering mechanisms of volcanic eruptions) and/or human habitation and society (e.g., earthquakes along suddenly triggered faults).
EarthCriSyS will address the critical interactions in the Earth System that underlie these sudden thresholds and try to quantify the causes and consequences. For this, it will combine the world-leading expertise of different institutes within JGU Mainz, as well as those of the Universities of Frankfurt and Heidelberg, plus the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and two Leibniz Institutions, Senckenberg and the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, Mainz. Over the past decade, a team with an extremely high research potential in the relevant fields has grown at these institutions and made progress towards quantifying critical thresholds in the Earth system. However, largely due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but also due to research groups working in isolation, much of this potential has yet to be fully realised. The operative goal is therefore to instigate significant project collaborations within this large interdisciplinary research team, to drive forward the building momentum.
Our research program is divided in three themes: