Planetary Boundaries Science (PBScience)

While Planetary Boundary science has advanced tremendously over the past decades, we still lack a deep understanding of the intricate, yet pivotal connections between many biological and physical functions of the Earth system. In late 2023, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and its partners launched a major scientific effort to improve both our ability to model how the Earth system evolves under the pressure of human activity, as well as our ability to measure the state of the Earth system at a high temporal resolution: Planetary Boundaries Science (PBScience).

The state of the planet concerns every citizen on Earth. We are partnering closely with the Planetary Guardians - a collective of activists, business leaders, and former heads of state - who have united to lift the science to a global audience. All of them are committed to leverage their respective platforms to bring Planetary Boundary science, with its whole-Earth view on sustainability and strong appeals for action, to their audiences.

A key output of PBScience is the annual Planetary Boundary Health Check, conceived and reviewed by a diverse international scientific and stakeholder community, and employing cutting-edge Earth-system and tipping-point modelling, ambitious whole-Earth monitoring, and exploring artificial-intelligence-based big-data analytics. In September 2024, the PBScience team launched the first-ever edition of the annual Planetary Health Check report.

The report may be cited as:

L. Caesar*, B. Sakschewski*, L. S. Andersen, T. Beringer, J. Braun, D. Dennis,
D. Gerten, A. Heilemann, J. Kaiser, N.H. Kitzmann, S. Loriani, W. Lucht, J. Ludescher, M. Martin,
S. Mathesius, A. Paolucci, S. te Wierik, J. Rockström, 2024, Planetary Health Check Report 2024.
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany.

(*equal contributors to this work and designated as co-first authors)

Moreover, the PBScience team has put forth an open call for submissions targeting scientists interested in contributing to advancing the representation of the ocean in the Planetary Boundary Framework.  Submission deadline is 30th November 2024.