Integrated human-earth system modeling

Research on humans and the Earth system has occurred separately historically, with different teams and models devoted to each. Increasingly, however, these communities and models are becoming intricately linked. In this talk, we provide an overview of the literature on integrated human-Earth system models, including a quantification of the direction and strength of feedbacks in those models. We find that such feedbacks have the potential to alter both the human and Earth systems; however, there is significant uncertainty in these results, and the number of truly integrated studies remains small. More research, more models, and more studies are needed to robustly quantify the sign and magnitude of human-Earth system feedbacks.