Feedback Dynamics
Abstract"The Feedback Crisis in Climate Change" highlighted the all-too-real possibility of runaway climate change, driven by the naturally occurring positive feedback loops of the biosphere. It raised issues of the most fundamental and urgent nature for the world community and called in question the effectiveness of current strategic responses to global warming. The analysis indicates that there may exist a tipping point in the complex behaviour of the global climate system viewed as a whole which is of a different order to the tipping points of sub-system behaviour. It must be noted, however, that the elements of the feedback system have not yet been quantified, nor has it yet been possible to specify the time-frame within which the dynamics operate. A major programme of further research is therefore now urgently required. "The Feedback Dynamics in Climate Change" Project of the Meridian Programme is therefore convened, with the utmost urgency, in order to establish a global analysis and modelling capacity, to test the conceptual climate feedback model, to quantify the complex feedback system and to determine the time-frame of its behaviour. 
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