Earth System Science and Climate Change Group


The past two decades have brought a fundamental change in the world view of the sciences of the Earth. We have become aware that global change cuts across all components of the Earth System: solid earth, biosphere, atmosphere and oceans.

The Group ESS CC: Earth System Science and Climate Change from Wageningen UR, has its mission to advance our understanding of the Earth and Climate System as a complex system, with specific inclusion of the anthropogenic and human components. Properties and processes of the components of the Earth System, such as carbon or water cycles in the terrestrial and atmospheric compartments, are investigated as integral parts of the system, focusing on their interactions and feedbacks.

The Team Earth System Science (ESS) and Climate Change (CC) is a functional merger of the chair group Earth System Sciences in the department of Environmental Sciences of Wageningen University and the team Land Atmosphere Interactions of Alterra in 2006. As such we invest in education at BSc, MSc and PhD levels, but also in competitive contract research on both fundamental and more policy oriented questions.

The team addresses the sciences of the Earth from a holistic perspective. Properties and processes of components of the Earth system, such as carbon or water cycles in the land and atmospheric compartments, are under investigation as integral parts of a system, focusing on their interactions and feedbacks. Obviously, in the era of Global Change, humanity is also a part of the Earth System. Therefore we also host social scientific research.

ESS CC develops innovative methods and tools (both observational and modeling ones), with a common aim to advance scientific understanding, as well as to support policies and strategic decision making processes in the field of climate, water and the environment. Watch a video on Youtube with the Airborne facility for Monitoring GHG Emissions.

ESS CC has a leading role in EU funded research projects, such as Combine, HighNoon and WATCH (ended in 2011), and coordinates scientifically in two major national climate research programs Climate changes Spatial Planning (ended in 2011) and Knowledge for Climate. Other important programs, which ESS CC contributes to are the Wadden Academy and Delta Alliance


The 200 m tower in Cabauw and the BRSN (Baseline Surface Radiation Network) site.

  
Print this page