Statistical physics approaches to the complex Earth system

Jingfang Fan, Jun Meng, Josef Ludescher, Xiaosong Chen, Yosef Ashkenazy, Jürgen Kurths, Shlomo Havlin, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

111 Scopus citations

Abstract

Global warming, extreme climate events, earthquakes and their accompanying socioeconomic disasters pose significant risks to humanity. Yet due to the nonlinear feedbacks, multiple interactions and complex structures of the Earth system, the understanding and, in particular, the prediction of such disruptive events represent formidable challenges to both scientific and policy communities. During the past years, the emergence and evolution of Earth system science has attracted much attention and produced new concepts and frameworks. Especially, novel statistical physics and complex networks-based techniques have been developed and implemented to substantially advance our knowledge of the Earth system, including climate extreme events, earthquakes and geological relief features, leading to substantially improved predictive performances. We present here a comprehensive review on the recent scientific progress in the development and application of how combined statistical physics and complex systems science approaches such as critical phenomena, network theory, percolation, tipping points analysis, and entropy can be applied to complex Earth systems. Notably, these integrating tools and approaches provide new insights and perspectives for understanding the dynamics of the Earth systems. The overall aim of this review is to offer readers the knowledge on how statistical physics concepts and theories can be useful in the field of Earth system science.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1-84
Number of pages84
JournalPhysics Reports
Volume896
DOIs
StatePublished - 18 Feb 2021

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Author(s)

Funding

This work was partly supported by the ‘East Africa Peru India Climate Capacities — EPICC’ project, which is part of the International Climate Initiative (IKI), Germany . The Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU), Germany supports this initiative on the basis of a decision adopted by the German Bundestag. The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Germany is leading the execution of the project together with its project partners The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and the Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD). S.H. thanks the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation jointly with the Israel Ministry of Science, Technology, and Space (MOST) ; the Israel Science Foundation , and the EU H2020 project RISE, Europe for financial support. J.K. was supported by the Russian Ministry of Science and Education Agreement No. 075-15-2020-808 . We would like to acknowledge gratefully all colleagues with whom we maintained interactions and discussions on the topic in our report. In particular, we would like to thank A. Agarwala, N. Boers, A. Bunde, D. Chen, R. Cohen, H. A. Dijkstra, G. Falcone, L. Da, N. B. George, G. Dong, J. F. Donges, Z. Fu, J. Gao, A. Gozolchiani, H. Hof, R. Hofstetter, H. Inoue, V. Livina, T. M. Lenton, Y. Liu, W. Lucht, N. Marwan, W. Marzocchi, M. McPhaden, J. Nagler, P. Nooteboom, A. A. Saberi, L. M. Shekhtman, H. E. Stanley, V. Stolbova, Y. Sun, E. Surovyatkina, K. Yamasaki, N. Yuan, Y. Zhang, D. Zhou. This work was partly supported by the ‘East Africa Peru India Climate Capacities — EPICC’ project, which is part of the International Climate Initiative (IKI), Germany. The Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU), Germany supports this initiative on the basis of a decision adopted by the German Bundestag. The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Germany is leading the execution of the project together with its project partners The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and the Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD). S.H. thanks the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation jointly with the Israel Ministry of Science, Technology, and Space (MOST); the Israel Science Foundation, and the EU H2020 project RISE, Europe for financial support. J.K. was supported by the Russian Ministry of Science and Education Agreement No. 075-15-2020-808.

FundersFunder number
Deutscher Wetterdienst
EPICC
EU H2020
East Africa Peru India Climate Capacities
Energy and Resources Institute
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
TERI
Horizon 2020 Framework Programme821115
Ministry of Science, Technology and Space
Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation075-15-2020-808
Israel Science Foundation
Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan
Bundesministerium für Umwelt, Naturschutz und Reaktorsicherheit
Ministero degli Affari Esteri e della Cooperazione Internazionale
Bundesministerium für Umwelt, Naturschutz, nukleare Sicherheit und Verbraucherschutz

    Keywords

    • Climate change
    • Complex Earth systems
    • Complex network
    • Earthquake
    • Statistical physics

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