Dynamical Feedbacks

A DYNAMICAL FEEDBACK is a relationship within a system in which the effects caused by one part of the system on another part eventually come back to affect the first part. The easiest such relationship to envision might be a tug of war, in which each side has to pull harder, causing the other side to pull harder, causing the first side to pull harder still. In the study of global warming and climate change, these feedbacks are especially critical.

In a more general sense, a feedback is a relationship found in most complex systems: the output ofthat system is returned to the input. Negative feedback reduces that output (cancels out some of the effect), while positive feedback increases it. In climate change, as in many ...