On December 10, 2016, Tsinghua University decided to establish the first earth system department among Chinese universities. The foundation of DESS, abbreviated for Department of Earth System Science, is another crucial measure for re-establishment of the discipline of geoscience with a high starting point and high level and for the construction of top-class university around the world.

Earth system refers to an integrated whole composed of atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, geosphere (core, mantle, and lithosphere) and biosphere (including human beings). Thus, earth system science studies the interactions, mechanism and overall behaviors between different spheres in the system, in order to set a scientific basis for global change and earth system management. After several hundred years of modern scientific development, disciplines of atmospheric science, marine science, geography, geology, geophysics, and ecology were gradually formed. Along with expanded perspectives of various observations and the progress of analytical calculation methods, especially in response to the severe challenge of global change, detailed branches of geoscience for describing phenomena are now reaching a turning point. At this phase, we attempt to replace the traditional single-sphere, qualitative studies, with a systematic, quantitative view with multiple variable interactions to understand this huge, complicated open system of earth, so as to set up the earth system science. This is a revolutionary change in the development of earth system science.

DESS, formerly known as CESS (Center for Earth System Science), was founded in March 2009. Based on a clear understanding of the frontiers of earth system science, DESS took the advantage of comprehensive advantages of Tsinghua University and gathered a group of talents from the areas of climate system, biogeochemistry, earth system observation and simulation technology, high performance computing, global change economics etc., and further established a distinctive and internationally influential department within a relatively short period.

In the past 7 years, DESS faculties and students have published over 500 SCI papers, among which over 10 papers are from internationally well-known top journals like Nature, Science, Lancet and PNAS. Beside this, DESS has taken part in the management and operation of National Supercomputer Center in Wuxi and won the highest award in supercomputing – ACM Gordon Bell Prize for the development of “10M-Core Scalable Fully-Implicit Solver for Nonhydrostatic Atmospheric Dynamics” based on “Sunway TaihuLight ” system this year. This is the very first time that a Chinese team won this top award, and faculty of DESS is one of the corresponding winners. DESS is also the first to provide the highest resolution (30 meters) of global land cover mapping and agricultural land database which is widely used and cited by scientific institutions all over the world. Cooperated with School of Environment, DESS has set up a dynamic evaluation and management platform for atmospheric pollution prevention. This platform utilizes the world’s first comprehensive source selection technology, optimized control plan technology as well as quantitative evaluation of emission reduction, and is supported by big data and cloud computing platform for real-time actions. As a result, the local capability of “precisely control the haze, scientifically control the pollution” has been greatly improved. In addition, teachers and students from DESS were the first to reveal that western pacific typhoon would increase in intensity but not in “size” in the background of global warming; they also discover a new water vapor pathway from the Indian Ocean to Tibetan Plateau. Many more scientific achievements have been made by DESS.

Tsinghua University has a long history of geoscience study. Department of Geography was officially founded in September 1928 and the first group of students entered in the next fall semester. The dean was Dr. Weng Wenhao, a famous geologist and one of the founders of modern Chinese geology. In 1933, Department of Geography was renamed as Department of Geoscience, consisting of three groups, namely, geography, geology, and meteorology. After the end of the war, Tsinghua University resumed in Beijing at the year of 1946 and the department was restored. In 1947, the former group of meteorology was separated to be an independent department. In 1950, the former group of geology was also separated to be a new department. In 1952, Department of Geoscience and Department of Meteorology were adjusted to Peking University, while Department of Geology was isolated to arrange the foundation of Beijing Institute of Geology. Until 1952, departments of geoscience, geology, and meteorology cultivated over 200 students, many of which became well-known scholars and professors. According to incomplete statistics, 41 graduate students from the discipline of geoscience in Tsinghua University were elected to be academicians of the Division of Earth Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences. One of the most outstanding representatives is meteorologist Dr. Ye Duzheng who won the top prize from World Meteorological Organization in 2003 and National Science and Technology Award in China in 2006.

The newly-established department in Tsinghua University this time, is a sign of a brand new stage for the development of construction of geoscience discipline. In the future, further research in related fields of earth system science and corresponding areas of physics, chemistry, life science, computing science, sociology, and economics will be under way for the sake of exploring more knowledge, fostering students and educating the public, leading to more contributions to the protection of biological environmental safety on earth and sustainability of human race. Recently, studies are going to aim at the following topics: earth system processes, focusing on laws of earth system variations, and the interactions between anthropogenic activities and global change; earth system modelling, using high-performance computer to simulate integrated variation mechanisms and future trends of earth system for promoting the development of quantitativeness of this discipline; earth system observations, offering a solid database and reliable technologies for earth system studies; global change economics, combining natural science with economics to put forward new concepts, new theories and new methods to dig into global change issues, providing evidence for decision-making of global change and earth system management.