The climate response to industrialisation and other anthropogenic activities is not limited to changes in the mean temperature. It is also characterised by changes in weather patterns, in precipitation, in extreme event frequencies and intensities, in natural cycles (such as El Niño and the North Atlantic Oscillation), in the hydrological cycle, etc. In addition, climate changes is expected to have a strong regional component.

Over the last decades, three-dimensional coupled global ocean-atmosphere models have been developed to assess the response of the global physical climate system to anthropogenic forcing. At the same time, chemical transport models describing the behaviour of chemical species in the atmosphere and their relations with the ocean and the continental biosphere have provided insights into the behaviour of the global biogeochemical cycles. In addition, a variety of tools, both dynamical and statistical in character, have been developed to interpret (downscale) global change on the regional scale and to assess implications of ecosystems and other regional climate-sensitive systems (e.g. storm surges).

Another very actual aspect of Earth System modelling is the integrated geophysical analysis of Earth data provided by new satellites like CHAMP and GRACE. For the first time geodetic, gravimetric and magnetic parameters of the rotating Earth will simultaneously be measured. The new data sets contain a superposition of signals from the solid Earth, the ocean and the atmosphere. Coupled models of these compartments are needed to interpret the data and to gain insight into Earth system dynamics.