Modelling the global changes of the environment

Abstract

Many scientists have tried to model the global carbon cycle (e.g., Nefedova, 1994; Nefedova and Tarko, 1993; Alexandrov and Oikawa, 2002; Kondratyev et al., 2002a,b; Krapivin and Vilkova, 1990; Nitu et al., 2000a,b; Svirezhev, 2002). Most of the models are based on the data for the pre-industrial period and predict the CO₂ concentration for this century. The number of factors taken into account in the models is constantly growing, with the models becoming more and more adequate. One of the first sufficiently complete models of the global CO₂ cycle was proposed by Bjorkstrom (1979), which took into account the dynamic interaction between the carbon reservoirs in the biosphere and its fluxes within them. For the first time, the unit of the World Ocean has been realistically represented, where the ocean is considered as a multilayer composition of the uniformly mixed reservoirs, with the CO₂ exchange between them being described by linear laws. The models of unit type have been analysed by many experts, who have promoted successful division of the Earth’s biogeosystem into heterogeneous compartments and derivation of respective box models (Pervaniuk, 2001). Using the ability of carbon to reside in the atmosphere for a long time, making it possible to describe the atmosphere with a point model, Bacastow (1981) derived a global 4-reservoir model which approximates the dynamics of the CO₂ exchange between the northern and southern hemispheres.