Systems, Feedbacks, and Equilibrium

Lecture 3, 02/2/2023
Jacquelyn Bracco
 Reminders
• In Class Activity due 2/7 (beginning of class)

2
 Outline
• Refresher on population growth
• Discussion of reading
• Systems: Closed, Open, Isolated
– Couplings
– Feedback Loops (positive vs. negative)
• Equilibrium States
• Forcing and Perturbations

3
Pop. Growth: a
major driver of
environmental
problems

But – growth
rate is dropping
significantly,
why?
What limits growth?

Access to resources
 Exponential Growth rates:
P = Po e
rt

Po = initial population; r = growth rate; t = time

If growth rate is 1.1%: r = 0.011

Time it takes for a pop. to double: ln(2)/r

63 years for 1.1% growth rate

 Logistic Growth:

When populations are low, growth rates are high

When populations are high, growth rates are low

Consequences of overshooting a habitat’s carrying
capacity:
Habitat damage (such as
from climate change!)
may affect the carrying
capacity.

What might be an
example of this?
Reading: Steffan et al., 2020

9
Systems

• Open: free exchange of energy and matter

• Closed: exchange of energy, no exchange of matter
• Isolated: no exchange with surroundings
10
Is the Earth an isolated, open, or
closed system?

11
04/07/2024 From: Thermodynamic
Class 14 Foundations of the Earth System. Kleidon, 201612
Steffan et al., 2020
 What’s an example of a system
that is open to it’s surroundings?

14
• Systems, without
external forcings,
want to approach
equilibrium
• Systems can persist
indefinitely in a
metastable state if
not disturbed

15
 How can we model systems?
Box Modeling
• Reservoirs: storage parts of models
• Flux: flows of energy and matter
Flux: evaporation
Reservoir: Reservoir:
Ocean Flux: Precipitation Atmosphere

16
 Couplings
• We use couplings to understand how individual
parts of a system are related
• Positive coupling: if one increases, the other
increases
• Negative coupling: if one increases, the other
decreases
• As human population increases, what happens to
forest land? What about agriculture land? 17
 Coupling and Feedback Loop Notation
• Your book uses:
positive

negative
• Other books use:
(+)
positive
(-)
negative
18
Perturbation: temporary disturbance (example: volcano)

Forcing: persistent disturbance (example: radiative

forcing)

19
Early Radiative Forcing Models
1995 2000

20
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM_final.pdf
IPCC, AR6 WG1
 Feedback Loops
• We can combine couples to create loops to
understand the effects of forcings and perturbations
– Overall loops can be positive or negative, negative
decreases initial change, positive increases
(-) Albedo (+)

Overall: (-)
Temperature Cloud Cover
(+)
23
What about this feedback loop
(Q1 of ICA2)?
(-) Albedo (+)

(-)
Temperature Sea Ice

Overall: (+)

https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/seaice/processes/albedo.html
24
 In Class Activity: Sea Ice
Due 2/17 at the beginning of class
 Next Class

Lecture on Global Energy Balance

Reading: Kump ch 3