Can marginal seas account for the missing CO2 and is the marginal sea sink affected by human activities on land?

Current estimate of CO2 uptake by the oceans by and large ignored marginal seas and continental shelves. Preliminary investigations indicate that these areas are a larger sink of CO2 than open oceans on the per area basis. If proven, this sink may be as large as 25% of the oceanic sink. Human activities on land are affecting this sink via construction of dams, increasing nutrient discharge into the continental shelves, etc. Global synthesis, however, is nonexistent because of insufficient data.

How can we utilize existing biodiversity data to create a computer-based system to reflect pressures on the environment on an ongoing basis?

We all know that the environment is under pressure and there are many people working towards regulating or relieving these pressures, but how are we doing? This proposed system would create a dashboard of sorts that can be updated on a weekly / monthly basis to show how we are doing in various critical areas of biodiversity. The system would most likely be a website offering graphs and interactive maps (GIS) to show biodiversity pressures and programmes. This would highlight areas that have lots of support (programmes) and areas that are largely overlooked.

What is the cost-effectiveness of different strategies for strengthening biodiversity science and acquiring baseline data for monitoring biodiversity in data poor areas of the world?

Biodiversity rich areas of the world, typically located in the tropics, have a marked deficit of trained personnel and adequate funding for monitoring, planning and prioritizing the conservation of its significant species and ecosystems. These pressing resource imbalances must be tackled through the combination of immediate remedies and long-term strategies for effective biodiversity protection, management, and capacity building.

A central problem is that the majority of tropical organisms remain unknown. Even among the better-known taxonomic groups (e.g. birds and mammals) new species continue to be described every year. For species that have already been described, there may be only limited knowledge on their distributions, no information on their relative abundances, and fewer data on their dynamics. Available data, such as those generated from specimens and deposited in natural history museums, are of limited use: sampling of tropical locations tends to be patchy, thus not adequately reflecting true patterns in the distributions of organisms.

Identifying and implementing cost-effective strategies to close these biodiversity-knowledge-scientific capacity gaps will be key for national reporting of progress towards the CBD 2010 Biodiversity Target and the Millennium Development Goals, ultimately seeking to halt and reverse biodiversity loss.

Do we have a policy for ensuring good sharing of future advances in computer modelling of complex systems – across all different areas including outside the climate change community?

There has been an explosion in data processing since the computer – is someone keeping track of it all, so any advances made in – for example financial modelling of an economy – are known by climate researchers ASAP

What are the heat content and net thermal flux of the ocean basins, and how are they changing over time?

The answers are necessary for accurate climate modeling. The difficulty will be the expense of placing and monitoring the large number of sensors required (at least tens of thousands, perhaps many more).

How can we better monitor, model, and predict the interdependent impacts of alternative strategies for managing the global environment in support of future decision making?

Significant changes are already under way in the Earth’s environment at local, regional, and global scales. Increasing attention is being given to proposals for mitigating or modifying human drivers of environmental change, as well as to alternative strategies for adaptation and environmental management. These policy alternatives could themselves have important impacts on the environment and on human activities and welfare, and may also have unexpected or synergistic interactions, e.g., mitigation strategies that increase or shift vulnerabilities to climate change. The Earth systems research community will be increasingly called upon to assess the potential benefits and risks of specific options and of alternative strategies (e.g., geoengineering vs. adaptation). A particular concern is the potential for conflicting approaches to be adopted by different nations, groups of nations, or other stakeholders. It is essential to start now to develop the data, models, tools, and strategies needed to support better and more rapid decision making with regard to management of the global environment, even in the face of continuing scientific uncertainties and incomplete information.

How do we connect every brain with every datum in near-real-time, so as to enable complete clarity about true costs of every product, service, and action? In other words, how do we create EarthGame as World Brain such that corruption, fraud, waste, and abuse are illuminated and then eliminated, while we educate the five billion poor one cell call at a time, creating infinite stabilizing wealth?

Buckminster Fuller had it right. The only thing we need is integrity. It is information asymmetries and information pathologies that are killing the Earth. Obstacles: the few who benefit now at the expense of the many.

What are the missing observations to model the Earth system as an open system?

One of the main difficulties for modeling the Earth system (or sub-systems) is to idenfy and characterize all source and loss terms. As an approximation one often assumes that the system is closed or enclosed in a closed system. According to the domain which is considered, such an approximation may be wrong. More accurate observations are still needed.

Model experiments, intercomparisons and data evaluation are needed to quantify and help with management decisions and, ultimately, to provide scientific knowledge to improve the sustainability of the living Earth. Which interactive physical, chemical and biological processes – including the role of human activities from global to regional and at short and long timescales – are fundamental to study in order to gain a deeper understanding of the Earth System and priority areas such as vulnerability, impacts and adaptation?

The International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (www.igbp.net) is embarking on a series of scientific syntheses to be completed by 2014. the initial synthesis topics, try to bring together some of the issues raised in the above question and include

• Global limits to growth
• Geoengineering
• The role of changing nutrient loads in coastal zones and the open ocean in an increased CO2 world
• Global nitrogen assessment and a future outlook
• Earth-system resilience: Earth-system prediction
• Earth-system impacts from changes in the cryosphere
• Megacities and coastal zones
• Global environmental change and sustainable development: the needs of least developed countries
• The role of land cover and land use in modulating climate
• Aerosols
• Additional themes forthcoming (e.g. freshwater cycle; global to regional predictions on shorter timescales)

The scientific effort, much along the lines of what the recent review of ICSU advised for IGBP, is open to the global change community and partner programmes and will
- be guided by scientific excellence;
- Identify knowledge gaps, focus future efforts, and set priorities at IGBP core project level and beyond;
- Complement and draw from IGBP’s core projects and other global change research;
- Frame the Earth as an integrated system strongly affected by humans;
- Integrate the multiple stressors on the Earth system, its limits and its resilience;
- Develop a suite of products for a range of audiences, primarily the research community to identify future priorities and policymaker to formulate policy;
- Provide policy-relevant information and solutions on mitigation, adaptation, key uncertainties, tipping elements, integrated effects and responses in critical regions;
- Engage with a wide range of stakeholders to assist us develop a consistent set of guidelines for the syntheses and identify key science- and policy‐relevant themes. Stakeholders include IGBP scientists and core projects, other policy‐oriented scientists, policymakers, national committees, international ICSU unions, key leaders involved in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and other large international activities.