Observational evidence that a Gaia-type feedback control system with proportional-integral-derivative characteristics is operating on atmospheric surface temperature at global scale

TL;DR

This study provides statistically significant observational evidence supporting the Gaia hypothesis by demonstrating a global-scale feedback control system regulating atmospheric temperature, exhibiting PID characteristics similar to engineered control systems.

Contribution

It is the first to empirically identify a Gaia-type feedback control system with PID features operating on Earth's atmospheric temperature at a global scale.

Findings

Evidence of a global feedback control system regulating temperature.

The control system includes proportional, integral, and derivative feedback components.

The system operates coherently at the planetary scale.

Abstract

The Gaia hypothesis (Lovelock and Margulis, 1974) proposes that there is a control system operating at global level that regulates climate and chemistry at a habitable state for the biota. Here we provide statistically significant observational evidence that a feedback control system moderating atmospheric temperature is presently operating coherently at global scale, that is to say, observational evidence for Gaia. Further, this control system is of a sophisticated type, involving the corrective feedback not only of a linear error term but also its derivative and its integral. This makes it of the same type as the most commonly used control system developed by humans, the proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control system.