EESI Centers
Earth System Science Center
Director, Michael Mann
Founded within the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences in 1986, the Earth System Science Center (ESSC) maintains a mission to describe, model, and understand the Earth's climate system. The climate can be viewed as a complex interacting set of components including the oceans, atmosphere, cryosphere, and biosphere. Within the ESSC, we are engaged in studies that aim to understand both these individual components, and the interactions between them.
Our approach involves:
- Employing a hierarchy of theoretical climate system models to perform long-term, high resolution climate model integration experiments aimed at understanding internal and forced changes in the climate system, including modern human or "anthropogenic" impacts on climate.
- Emphasis on "process" to bridge problems on multiple timescales: Examining the interactions in the North Atlantic coupled ocean-atmosphere-cryosphere system, the dynamics of the tropical Pacific coupled system, the role of the hydrologic cycle and freshwater in climate change, the relationship between climate variability and synoptic-scale dynamics, and the relationship between ocean biogeochemistry and climate change.
- A combination of modeling, empirical analysis, and exploration of fundamental processes to investigate the behavior of the climate system. This includes coupled ocean-atmosphere climate modeling, reconstruction of past climate using paleoclimate data, the comparison of models and observations, and the study of fundamental processes in the earth system. and
- Development of new educational tools including interactive climate modeling tools tools to service both Penn State and the broader community.
For more information about ESSC, please contact:
Michael Mann
503 Walker Building
Department of Meteorology
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA 16802
Phone: 814.865.4177
FAX: 814.865.3663
Email: mann@psu.edu
Web site: http://www.essc.psu.edu/