Complexity Heliophysics: A lived and living history of systems and complexity science in Heliophysics

TL;DR

This review explores the evolution and significance of complexity science within Heliophysics, emphasizing its paradigm-shifting role across multiple scales and domains, and proposing a risk science framework to unify fundamental and applied research.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive history and analysis of complexity science in Heliophysics, highlighting five key dimensions and suggesting new directions for integrating fundamental and applied sciences.

Findings

Identifies five dimensions of complexity science in Heliophysics.

Highlights the pivotal year 1996 as a paradigm shift.

Proposes a risk science framework for future research.

Abstract

This review examines complexity science in Heliophysics, describing it not as a discipline, but as a paradigm. In the context of Heliophysics, complexity science is the study of a star, interplanetary environment, magnetosphere, upper and terrestrial atmospheres, and planetary surface as interacting subsystems. Complexity science studies entities in a system (e.g., electrons in an atom, planets in a solar system, individuals in a society) and their interactions, and is the nature of what emerges from these interactions. It is a paradigm that employs systems approaches and is inherently multi- and cross-scale. Heliophysics processes span at least 15 orders of magnitude in space and another 15 in time, and its reaches go well beyond our own solar system and Earth's space environment to touch planetary, exoplanetary, and astrophysical domains. It is an uncommon domain within which to explore complexity science. This review article excavates the lived and living history of complexity science in Heliophysics. It identifies five dimensions of complexity science. It then proceeds in three epochal parts: 1) A pivotal year in the Complexity Heliophysics paradigm: 1996; 2) The transitional years that established foundations of the paradigm (1996-2010); and 3) The emergent literature largely beyond 2010. The history reveals a grand challenge that confronts most physical sciences to understand the research intersection between fundamental science (e.g., complexity science) and applied science (e.g., artificial intelligence and machine learning). A risk science framework is suggested as a way of formulating the challenges in a way that the two converge. The intention is to provide inspiration and guide future research. It will be instructive to Heliophysics researchers, but also to any reader interested in or hoping to advance the frontier of systems and complexity science.