A phase space description of the Earth System in the Anthropocene

Abstract

Based on a dynamic systems approach to the Landau-Ginzburg model, a phase space description of the Earth System (ES) in the transition to the Anthropocene is presented. It is shown that, for a finite amount of human-driven change, there is a stable equilibrium state that is an attractor of trajectories in the system's phase space and corresponds to a Hothouse Earth scenario. Using the interaction between the components of the ES, it is argued that, through the action of the Technosphere, mitigation strategies might arise for which the deviation of the ES temperature from the Holocene average temperature is smaller.