What is Earth Systems Modelling?
Earth Systems Modelling (ESM) is a new name for an old trick, the trick in question being replacing specified boundary conditions in a climate model with interactive representations of the part of the system previously represented by the imposed boundary conditions. The term is usually only applied to attempts to model the climate system with extra interactive components in addition to an atmosphere or coupled ocean-atmosphere model. Obvious examples of ESM would be to include interactive representations of the biosphere or the major ice sheets in climate simulations.
