1. Interaction mechanism of human activities and global change

Human activities impact global change through changing atmospheric and water composition, land use, resources and funding and space-time distribution of species, improve human well-being but as well cause negative impacts such as environmental pollution, shortage of resources, climate change, biological invasion, the degradation of ecosystem services as well as the outbreak of infectious diseases. These impacts have counter effect on the production, life and health of human beings. The interactive relationship between human activities and global change is complex. The past research in this area focused on single factor, single subject and regional research, restricted our understanding of the interactive mechanism between human activities and global change on a global scale. Comprehensive and systematic quantitative research on the interaction between human activities and global change is a very weak link in the scientific community, has many uncertainties, it is a difficulty in global change research and at the same time the bottleneck to include human activity factors in the Earth system model.

The key development areas of this research direction include:
(1) Relations between human activities and global warming;
(2) Global environment and regional environment evolution process and the dynamics.
(3) Carbon cycle process and its uncertainties.
(4) Impact of atmospheric aerosols on global change.
(5) Material and energy exchange between ocean and land.

2. The Earth system model

The development of Earth system model aims to start from the perspective of interaction between circles of the Earth system, develop the Earth system model with Chinese characteristics and international influence, research global change mechanisms and reasons, forecast future change trends and provide scientific references for the formulation of response measures, long-term planning and international cooperation. The near-term goal is to research the physical process, biogeochemical process and ecological dynamics process suitable for the climate and environment characteristics in East Asia, improve the simulation ability of physical climate system model in East Asia, therefore, the focus of near-term goal is on adaptation to climate in East Asia to improve the physical climate system model. The medium-term goal is to achieve coupling of biogeochemical and ecological (dynamic) dynamics process and the physical climate system model, namely to build up the Earth climate system model. The long-term goal is 10 to 15 years from now, on the basis of the Earth climate system model, consider the interaction between solid Earth and space weather, thus establish the Earth system model and provide new means for quantitative research on the Earth system process and human-earth relations. At present, Britain, the United States and Japan are taking the lead. Various countries are in the initial stage, we need to make great efforts.

The key development areas of this research direction include:
(1) Improve and update the physical climate system model.
(2) Develop the Earth climate system model.
(3) Develop the Earth system model.
(4) High-performance scientific computing theory and methods in the Earth system model.
(5) Super computer support software system research and development used for the Earth system model.

3. Earth observation data assimilation and application in global change research

Global change research is based on integrated Earth observation technology. It can be said that without comprehensive earth observation data, there will be no global change research. China's Earth observation has made more progress, but has the following problems of four aspects in the context of global change research: ① most observation research and data accumulation in the current time are limited to domestic scope; ② The main purpose of domestic Earth observation is just to solve the application needs of various departments and sectors; ③ The time and space scales of remote sensing products are inconsistent with that of the Earth system model; ④ Lack of relevant capacity building, including the building of Earth observation data and model assimilation platform and data sharing platform.

The key development areas of this research direction include:
(1) Earth observation data information extraction and assimilation specific to global change.
(2) Earth system observation and simulation data sharing platform building.
(3) Application of Earth observation data in the global change research.

4. Global change economics

Global change economics researches global change issues with new concepts, new theories and new methods of combined physical science and economics and provides technical and economic references for global change decision-making with multi-disciplinary cross thinking and comprehensive evaluation approach.

Global change has significant, various and profound impact on human economy and society, while different development modes of economy and society also have direct impact on global change. Decision-making in response to global change needs to be based on systematic technical and economic evaluation on this interaction. It can be said that without systematic global change economics research, there may be no scientific global change decision-making.

The key development areas of this research direction include:
(1) Economic and social impact of global change and assessment of adaptation.
(2) Technical and economic evaluation on impacts of different economic development modes on global change.
(3) The impact of economic globalization on global change, consequences and responsive measures.
(4) Economic, social and environmental assessment of international emission reduction agreement.