ALBERT

Description: We assess uncertainties in projecting future changes in extreme storm surge height (SSH) based on typhoon data extracted from ensemble experiment results with four sea surface temperature (SST) conditions and three global warming scenarios using a single atmospheric global climate model. In particular, this study focus on typhoons passing around the Korean Peninsula (KP) defined as the region of 32 to 40° N and 122 to 132° E. It is predicted the number of the typhoons affecting the KP will decrease by 4~73% while their strength will increase by 0.8~1.4% under the given future conditions. The locations of genesis and lysis of the typhoons are expected to be shifted towards the northwest and northeast for all ensemble experiment conditions, respectively. However, the extent of their change varies depending on the future SST and global warming conditions. Storm surge simulations were carried out by using predicted typhoon data as an external force. It is found that future SST patterns and climate warming scenarios affect future typhoon characteristics, which influences values of extreme SSH and locations of the vulnerable area to storm surge under the future climate conditions. In particular, the values of extreme SSH and the locations of the vulnerable area to storm surge appear to be strongly influenced by both pathway and frequency of intense typhoons.

Description: Here, we investigate the seasonal variability in the dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) cycle in the Northwest Pacific using a high-resolution biogeochemical and carbon model coupled with an operational ocean model. Results show that the contribution to DIC from air–sea CO2 exchange is generally offset by vertical mixing at the surface at all latitudes, with some seasonal variation. Biological processes in subarctic regions are evident at the surface, whereas in the subtropical region these processes take place within the euphotic layer and then DIC consumption deepens southward with latitude. Such latitudinal differences in biological processes lead to marked horizontal and vertical contrasts in the distribution of DIC, with modulation by horizontal and vertical advection–diffusion processes.

Description: Previous observational and modeling studies indicate that the wintertime North Pacific Oscillation (NPO) could significantly impact the following winter El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) variability via the seasonal footprinting mechanism (SFM). This study explores climate projections of this winter NPO-ENSO relation in a warming climate based on a 50-member large ensemble of climate simulations conducted with the second-generation Canadian Earth System Model (CanESM2). The ensemble mean of the 50 members can well reproduce the observed winter NPO pattern, the NPO-ENSO relationship, and the SFM process over the historical period 1950–2003. These 50 members are then employed to examine climate projections of the NPO-ENSO connection over the anthropogenic forced period 2020–2073. Results indicate that there exists a large spread of projected NPO-ENSO connections across these 50 ensemble members due to internal climate variability. Internal climate variability brings uncertainties in the projection of the winter NPO-ENSO connection originally seen in projected changes of the subtropical center of the winter NPO. The spread of projections of winter NPO-associated atmospheric anomalies over the subtropical North Pacific further results in various responses in the projections of winter and spring precipitation anomalies over the tropical North Pacific, as well as spring zonal wind anomalies over the tropical western Pacific, which eventually lead to uncertainties in the projection of the sea surface temperature anomalies in the tropical central-eastern Pacific from the following summer to winter.

Description: The interdisciplinary exchange in climate engineering research offers a unique opportunity to make assumptions more explicit for such research projects. While making assumptions explicit is the standard in all disciplinary sciences, some assumptions in the context of societal challenges can only be usefully unveiled, discussed, and verified from the perspective of other research disciplines. Results from successful interdisciplinary collaborations are then more accessible and more generalizable to actors beyond the confines of the academic community. We aim to illustrate how interdisciplinary exchange helps to unveil assumptions in research endeavors and why this is important for successful interdisciplinary collaborations. We therefore follow different stages of the German Priority Program on Climate Engineering (SPP 1689), which we use as an example case of a successful interdisciplinary project. SPP 1689 focused on risks, challenges, and opportunities of Climate Engineering from the perspectives of numerous disciplines. Major results were that the initial assessments of technologies had to be sobered, the consideration of trade-offs is crucial for the potential assessment, and governance issues appeared larger than previously considered. From the reflections of SPP 1689, we conclude with three lessons learned: (1) The project profited from egalitarian organizational structures and communicative practices, preventing the predominance from single disciplines. (2) Within the project continuous efforts were undertaken to foster interdisciplinary understanding. In addition, the flexible project structure allowed for the accommodation of research needs arising as a result of these exchanges. (3) SPP 1689 offered early career researchers a platform for professional exchange on common challenges and best practices of being a part of an interdisciplinary research project.

Description: Climate change is threatening food security in many tropical countries, where a large proportion of food is produced by vulnerable smallholder farmers. Interventions are available to offset many of the negative impacts of climate change on agriculture, and they can be tailored to local conditions often through relative modest investments. However, little quantitative information is available to guide investment or policy choices at a time when countries and development agencies are under pressure to implement policies that can help achieve Sustainable Development Goals while coping with climate change. Among smallholder adaptation options, developing seeds resilient to current and future climate shocks expected locally is one of the most important actions available now. In this paper, we used national and local data to estimate the costs of climate change to smallholder farmers in Malawi and Tanzania. We found that the benefits from adopting resilient seeds ranged between 984 million and 2.1 billion USD during 2020–2050. Our analysis demonstrates the benefits of establishing and maintaining a flexible national seed sector with participation by communities in the breeding, delivery, and adoption cycle.

Description: It is firmly established in the hydrologic literature that flooding depends on both antecedent watershed wetness and precipitation. One could phrase this relationship as “heavy precipitation does not necessarily lead to high stream discharge”, but rarely do studies directly affirm this statement. We have observed several non-hydrologists mistake trends in heavy precipitation as a proxy for trends in riverine flooding. If the relationship between heavy precipitation and high discharge was more often explicitly presented, heavy precipitation may less often be misinterpreted as a proxy for discharge. In this paper, we undertake such an analysis for 390 watersheds across the contiguous U.S. We found that 99th percentile precipitation only results in 99th percentage discharge 36 % of the time. However, when conditioned on soil moisture from the Variable Infiltration Capacity model, 62 % of 99th percentile precipitation results in 99th percentile discharge during wet periods and only 13 % during dry periods. When relating trends in heavy precipitation to hydrologic response, precipitation data should, therefore, be segregated based on concurrent soil moisture. Taking this approach for climate predictions, we found that CMIP-5 atmosphere–ocean global circulation model (AOGCM) simulations for a RCP 6.0 forcing project increases in concurrence of greater than median soil wetness and extreme precipitation in the northern United States and a decrease in the south, suggesting northern regions could see an increase in very high discharges while southern regions could see decreases despite both regions having an increase in extreme precipitation. While the actual outcome is speculative given the uncertainties of the AOGCM’s, such an analysis provides a more sophisticated framework from which to evaluate the output as well as historic climate data.

Description: Probabilistic event attribution (PEA) is an important tool for assessing the contribution of climate change to extreme weather events. Here, PEA is applied to explore the climate attribution of recent extreme heat events in California’s Central Valley. Heat waves have become progressively more severe due to increasing relative humidity and nighttime temperatures, which increases the health risks of exposed communities, especially Latino farmworkers and other socioeconomically disadvantaged communities. Using a superensemble of simulations with the Hadley Centre Regional Model (HadRM3P), we find that (1) simulations of the hottest summer days during the 2000s were twice as likely to occur using observed levels of greenhouse gases than in a counterfactual world without major human activities, suggesting a strong relationship between heat extremes and the increase in human emissions of greenhouse gases, (2) detrimental impacts of heat on public health-relevant variables, such as the number of days above 40 °C, can be quantified and attributed to human activities using PEA, and (3) PEA can serve as a tool for addressing climate justice concerns of populations within developed nations who are disproportionately exposed to climate risks.

Description: Extreme weather events are a significant cause of loss of life and livelihoods, particularly in vulnerable countries and communities in Africa. Such events or their probability of occurring may be, or are, changing due to climate change with consequent changes in the associated risks. To adapt to, or to address loss and damage from, this changing risk we need to understand the effects of climate change on extreme weather events and their impacts. The emerging science of probabilistic event attribution can provide scientific evidence about the contribution of anthropogenic climate change to changes in risk of extreme events. This research has the potential to be useful for climate change adaptation, but there is a need to explore its application in vulnerable developing countries, particularly those in Africa, since the majority of existing event attribution studies have focused on mid-latitude events. Here we explain the methods of, and implications of, different approaches to attributing extreme weather events in an African context. The analysis demonstrates that different ways of framing attribution questions can lead to very different assessments of change in risk. Crucially, defining the most appropriate attribution question to ask is not a science decision but one that needs to be made in dialogue with those stakeholders who will use the answers. This is true of all attribution studies but may be particularly relevant in a tropical context, suggesting that collaboration between scientists and policy-makers is a priority for Africa.

Description: We develop a methodology with which to assess the effects of policy instruments on the long-term abatement and costs of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies for coal power plants. Using an expert elicitation, historical data on the determinants of technological change in energy, values from the engineering literature, and demand estimates from an integrated assessment model, we simulate ranges of outcomes between 2025 and 2095. We introduce probability distributions of all important parameters and propagate them through the model to generate probability distributions of electricity costs, abatement costs, and CO 2 avoided over time. Carbon pricing has larger effects than R&D and subsidies. But much of the range of outcomes is driven by uncertainty in other parameters, such as capital costs and returns to scale. Availability of other low carbon technologies, particularly bioenergy with CCS affects outcomes. Subsidies have the biggest impacts when they coincide with expanding manufacturing scale of CCS components. Our results point to 4 parameters for which better information is needed for future work informing technology policy to address climate change: capital costs, demonstration plants, growth constraints, and knowledge spillovers among technologies.

Description: Future bitumen production in the Athabasca Oil Sands, one of the largest remaining reserves of petroleum on the planet, is a key factor in global climate policy and politics. Climate warming in the Athabasca River Basin (ARB) has the potential to limit future streamflow availability for aquatic ecosystem needs, as well as for water withdrawals in oil sands mining operations. This study applies the land surface model IBIS and the hydrological routing algorithm THMB, with forced output from CMIP5 global climate models, to examine the response of streamflow in the ARB to climate change this century. In comparison to the small impact of water withdrawals on streamflow, climate change impacts are projected to be the primary driver of future low flow occurrences. Although winter flows are most sensitive to water withdrawals under the historical hydroclimatological regime, future climate change is projected to increase winter flows and decrease summer flows instead, with the frequency of summer low flows projected to rise by up to 85 % in the highest future emissions scenario by the end of the century. A decline in water availability due to more frequent low flows could interrupt oil sands water withdrawals and subsequent daily bitumen production for an additional 2–3 months each year by mid-century. Adaptation to climate warming in the ARB will need to recognize these changing seasonal patterns of flow in order to maintain available flows for ecological needs and water withdrawals.

Description: Recent trends in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events have raised the concern that climate change could increase flooding risks and property damage. However, a major challenge in attributing and projecting changes in disaster risk is that damage is influenced not only by the physical climate hazard, but also by non-climatic factors that shape exposure and vulnerability. Recent assessments of integrated disaster risk have been hampered by the paucity of literature analyzing local-scale interactions between hazard, exposure and vulnerability in the historical record. Here we develop an integrated empirical analysis of historical flood damage that emphasizes spatial and temporal heterogeneity in flood hazard, economic exposure and social vulnerability. Using the Midwestern United States as a testbed, we show that annual property damage from flooding is projected to increase by 13 to 17.4 % over the next two decades. At the state level, over half of the increase is driven by projected growth in housing units. However, at the county level, the dominant factor causing future damage varies, emphasizing the value of a fully integrated, spatially and temporally resolved approach to assessing flooding risk and control strategies.

Description: Religious beliefs, an important element of culture, influence adaptation to climate change. Less understood is how changing beliefs shape the adaptive capacity of communities responding to climate change. In the last century sub-Saharan Africa has experienced a transformation in beliefs. Since 1900 Christians have increased 70-fold while in rural areas Traditional Beliefs and associated Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) continue to influence the lived practices of vulnerable rural communities. Using two case studies of rural communities in Malawi (Bolero) and Zambia (Monze) we explore how Christianity and Traditional beliefs (and associated TEK) co-exist and assess if, and how, holding multiple belief systems affects climate-sensitive livelihood practices of food production. In Bolero we observed a lack of tensions between belief systems with Traditional leaders and elders noting the flexibility of adhering to both belief systems. In Monze however, basing livelihood decisions on the practice of rain-rituals resulted in strong tensions. In both communities elders noted their concern of how changing beliefs affect adherence to TEK management practices. We find that culture and beliefs play an important role in adaptive capacity but are not static. In the context of changing beliefs, adaptive capacity will be influenced by how different belief systems co-exist and how epistemological and intergenerational frictions are negotiated. As climate services become the focus of research and government interventions in vulnerable regions, avoiding culturally and economically expensive mal-adaptation will require giving attention to the complexity and dynamism of changing religious landscapes.

Description: Climate-related extreme weather events can result in the loss of drinking water access. We assessed the relative vulnerability of 3143 United States (U.S.) counties to loss of drinking water access due to droughts, floods, and cyclones. Five vulnerability assessment models from the literature were compared, each differing in the aggregation method used to combine the three determinants of vulnerability (V) – exposure (E), sensitivity (S), and adaptive capacity (AC). Exposure scores were calculated using historical occurrence data, sensitivity scores were determined from the intrinsic resilience of the drinking water technologies, and adaptive capacity scores were calculated from nine socioeconomic indicators. Our results showed that models V  =  E  +  S  +  AC and V  =  E  +  S – AC were the same, as were models V  =  E  ×  S  ×  AC and V  =  E  ×  S  ÷  AC . Between these two model forms (form 1: V  =  E  +  S  +  AC and V  =  E  +  S – AC ; form 2: V  =  E  ×  S  ×  AC and V  =  E  ×  S  ÷  AC ), scores from one model form could be used to predict scores from the second model form, with R-squared values ranging from 0.61 to 0.82 depending on the extreme weather event type. A fifth model, V  = ( E – AC ) ×  S was not found to correlate with any of the other four models. We used V  =  E  +  S  +  AC as our reference model as this resulted in a more uniform distribution of counties in each of the five intervals of vulnerability. Comparing the vulnerability scores identified the counties with greatest vulnerability to losing access to drinking water due to floods, droughts, and cyclones. Our results can be used to inform evidence-based decisions such as allocation of resources and implementation of adaptation strategies.

Description: Implementing an effective climate policy is one of the main challenges for the future. Curbing greenhouse gas emissions can prevent future irreversible impacts of climate change. Climate policy is therefore crucial for present and future generations. Nonetheless, one may wonder whether future economic and social development could be harmed by climate policy. This paper addresses this question by examining recent developments in international climate policy and considering different levels of cooperation that may arise in light of the outcomes of the Conference of the Parties held in Doha. The paper analyses how various climate policy scenarios would enhance sustainability and whether there is a trade-off between climate policy and economic development and social cohesion. This is done by using a new comprehensive indicator, the FEEM Sustainability Index (FEEM SI), which aggregates several economic, social, and environmental indicators. The FEEM SI is built into a recursive-dynamic computable general equilibrium model of the world economy, thus offering the possibility of projecting all indicators into the future and of delivering a perspective assessment of sustainability under different future climate policy scenarios. We find that the environmental component of sustainability improves at the regional and world level thanks to the implementation of climate policies. Overall sustainability increases in all scenarios since the economic and social components are affected negatively yet marginally. This analysis does not include explicitly climate change damages and this may lead to underestimating the benefits of policy actions. If the USA, Canada, Japan and Russia did not contribute to mitigating emissions, sustainability in these countries would decrease and the overall effectiveness of climate policy in enhancing global sustainability would be offset.

Description: This study provides the first attempt in quantifying the uncertainties in future urban climate projections due to regional climate models and metropolitan-scale urban planning scenarios. Targeted for the 2050s Augusts in Tokyo, Japan, dynamical downscaling simulations are conducted using two regional climate models, the WRF and NHRCM models, both downscaled from the global climate model MIROC5 under the RCP4.5 scenario. Both regional climate models are coupled with appropriate urban canopy models to accurately evaluate the urban climate. The projected 10-year mean temperature increases for the 2050s Augusts in the central Tokyo are roughly 2.4 °C and 2.2 °C, for the WRF and NHRCM models, respectively, with a roughly 0.2 °C difference between the two. Urban scenario experiments with the WRF model indicate that the compact city urban scenario can reduce the August mean temperature of surrounding residential areas by 0.4 °C, while the dispersed city scenario can increase the temperature by 0.1 °C. On the other hand, impact of urban scenarios on the temperature increase in central Tokyo is comparative or less than the surrounding areas. The impacts of urban scenario and regional climate model differences are larger in nighttime than in daytime, but are at most 0.6 °C. The results indicate that the uncertainties with the regional climate models and urban scenario are significantly less than those in emission scenarios or global climate model projections.

Description: While the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is continuously improving its communication, visualisation has taken a back seat to more pressing issues. The consequence is a set of IPCC imagery where our understanding of perception remains empirically unchallenged. The visual design (defined in this study as the method, technique, and style used to create a visual) directly affects perception and yet, we know very little about how people intuitively respond to visuals depicting climate science. This study examines the perception of four images from the IPCC summary report for policymakers and two open sourced infographics. Using a group-administered study we found the visual design to have a significant impact on a novice readers ability to associate relevant words with an image. While the visuals part of the summary for policymakers educed a sense of confidence, a well-designed infographic left readers feeling less confident. The veneer of legitimacy associated with IPCC visuals is because they look scientific, whereas infographic images were found to look less serious. We acknowledge the accessibility of an infographic but urge IPCC authors to use it with caution, as any negative impact on scientific credibility is an unwanted feature in IPCC communication.

Description: Freshwater ecosystems in many parts of the world have been severely affected by past management practices that have altered the volume, timing and quality of water flows and caused a decline in their ecological health. Some of these systems are also experiencing the negative impacts of climate change. Adaptation to climate change and the continual need to address existing ecological damage poses ongoing challenges for freshwater managers. In this paper we propose and discuss a Catchment Assessment Framework (CAF) that is used to evaluate existing and potential freshwater management actions, such as riparian revegetation and habitat connectivity, for their adaptation potential. The CAF was developed as a tool for prioritizing low risk climate change adaptation options in Australian catchment management. The CAF enables catchment managers and technical experts to assess management actions against seven inter-related criteria to provide a holistic assessment: relevance to the catchment; climate change adaptation potential, including potential for maladaptation and benefit under different climate scenarios; ecosystem service benefits; compatibility with other actions; implementation constraints; socio-economic consequences; and a risk assessment. It was developed and applied by assessing nine management options with stakeholders in three catchments within the Murray-Darling Basin in south-eastern Australia. We found that while management options are undertaken as a response to existing degradation, they can be used as building blocks for a climate change adaptation strategy that considers a range of different but complementary measures to better manage climate-related risk. The CAF enables practitioners to assess the advantages of a range of adaptation options and to subject them to their wider decision making and management planning.

Description: This paper compares projections over the twenty-first century of SO 2 , BC, and OC emissions from three technologically detailed, long-term integrated assessment models. The character of the projections and the response of emissions due to a comprehensive climate policy are discussed focusing on the sectoral level. In a continuation of historical experience, aerosol and precursor emissions are increasingly decoupled from carbon dioxide emissions over the twenty-first century due to a combination of emission controls and technology shifts over time. Implementation of a comprehensive climate policy further reduces emissions, although there is significant variation in this response by sector and by model: the response has many similarities between models for the energy transformation and transportation sectors, with more diversity in the response for the building and industrial sectors. Much of these differences can be traced to specific characteristics of reference case end-use and supply-side technology deployment and emissions control assumptions, which are detailed by sector.

Description: Household flood management measures can significantly reduce the risk from flooding. Understanding the factors that influence the uptake of measures has important implications for the design of measures to induce people to take charge of risk mitigation. We investigate the impact of flood action groups in communities in Scotland on the uptake of four measures: insurance, flood warnings, sandbags and floodgates applying regression analysis using a cross-sectional survey ( n  = 124). The groups were formed in response to the threat from flooding in those communities, and offer information and training on household flood management measures. We use the theoretical framework of Protection Motivation Theory, and compare uptake of the measures before and after the foundation of the flood action groups, as well as in the near future. The models show positive adoption effects for flood warnings, floodgates and to an extent for insurance, and a positive correlation with increased confidence of implementing and belief in the effectiveness of the measures. The effect is significant if specific information on the measures was provided, indicating the importance of tailored content. We conclude that appropriately designed flood action groups can be a cost-effective way of increasing the uptake of household flood management measures.

Description: Research reveals that liberals and conservatives in the United States diverge about their beliefs regarding climate change. We show empirically that political affiliation also matters with respect to climate related risks such as flooding from hurricanes. Our study is based on a survey conducted 6 months after Superstorm Sandy in 2012 of over 1,000 residents in flood-prone areas in New York City. Democrats’ perception of their probability of suffering flood damage is significantly higher than Republicans’ and they are also more likely to invest in individual flood protection measures. However, 50% more Democrats than Republicans in our sample expect to receive federal disaster relief after a major flood. These results highlight the importance of taking into account value-based considerations in designing disaster risk management policies.

Description: A 2030 climate and energy policy framework was endorsed by the European Council in 2014. The main elements are a binding 40 % greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction target compared to 1990, a renewable energy share of 27 %, and an energy savings target of at least 27 % by 2030. In this paper, we assess the impact of these targets on the European land use, land use change, and forestry (LULUCF) sector using a Europe focused global land use model linked with a detailed forest management model. We show that implementing a 40 % GHG emission reduction target by 2030 may only have a small negative impact on the domestic LULUCF sink if the additional biomass demand for energy is mostly met through ligno-cellulosic energy crops rather than forest removals. However, if the increased biomass demand were met through higher rates of forest harvest removals, a more negative impact on the LULUCF sink could be expected.

Description: Transboundary river basins face significant threats from climate change, with the need for adaptation widely noted. In this paper we develop a theoretically-rooted indicator-based evaluation framework to identify transboundary river basins where the need for adaptation support is pronounced and prioritize where attention is best placed. The framework combines indicators which capture the broad level potential to adapt (adaptive capacity) and the actual preparedness for adaptation (adaptation readiness) at the level of transboundary institutions. Adaptive capacity and adaptation readiness have not previously been evaluated and compared within a single framework, and by combining them we gain a more comprehensive and nuanced basis for characterising and evaluating the adaptation landscape and diagnosing opportunities and constraints for adaptation. We apply the framework to 42 transboundary basins in Mediterranean Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, which account for 15 % of global transboundary river basins, are home to over 550 million people, and cover 8 % of Earth’s total land area. We find: 1) There is widespread need for improving national and transboundary institutional support for adaptation spanning basins of various economic, physical, and demographic characteristics; 2) Many transboundary basins in Africa have low adaptive capacity, but were found to have high readiness to begin adapting if resources were available; and 3) Improved coverage of River Basin Organisations and treaties with mandates to recognise and respond actively to climate change would underpin adaptation efforts across basins.

Description: By 15 December 2015, 187 countries had submitted their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) summarising their climate actions after 2020 in the context of the Paris Agreement. We used a unified framework to assess the mitigation components of INDCs covering 105 countries (representing approximately 91 % of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2012) with a special focus on the G20 economies. We estimated the required reduction effort by comparing the greenhouse gas emission targets implied by the INDCs with the projected levels resulting from current mitigation policies. The resulting projected global reduction effort amounts to approximately 4–6 GtCO 2 eq by 2030, of which the G20 economies are responsible for the largest share, in particular Brazil, China, the EU, and the United States. Despite these reductions, the global and G20 emission level is still projected to be higher in 2030 than it was in 2010. We compared the ambition levels of individual INDCs by analysing various indicators. Our analysis shows, for instance, that INDCs imply that greenhouse gas emissions of Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, and South Korea peak before 2025, and of China, India and South Africa by 2030 or later.

Description: Large-scale data from digital infrastructure, like mobile phone networks, provides rich information on the behavior of millions of people in areas affected by climate stress. Using anonymized data on mobility and calling behavior from 5.1 million Grameenphone users in Barisal Division and Chittagong District, Bangladesh, we investigate the effect of Cyclone Mahasen, which struck Barisal and Chittagong in May 2013. We characterize spatiotemporal patterns and anomalies in calling frequency, mobile recharges, and population movements before, during and after the cyclone. While it was originally anticipated that the analysis might detect mass evacuations and displacement from coastal areas in the weeks following the storm, no evidence was found to suggest any permanent changes in population distributions. We detect anomalous patterns of mobility both around the time of early warning messages and the storm’s landfall, showing where and when mobility occurred as well as its characteristics. We find that anomalous patterns of mobility and calling frequency correlate with rainfall intensity ( r  = .75, p  〈 0.05) and use calling frequency to construct a spatiotemporal distribution of cyclone impact as the storm moves across the affected region. Likewise, from mobile recharge purchases we show the spatiotemporal patterns in people’s preparation for the storm in vulnerable areas. In addition to demonstrating how anomaly detection can be useful for modeling human adaptation to climate extremes, we also identify several promising avenues for future improvement of disaster planning and response activities.

Description: This paper analyses the response of alcohol thermometers in relation to the departure from linearity and the choice of the calibration points. The result is that alcohol thermometers are affected by large departures that reach a maximum (i.e. −6 °C) at 50 °C ambient temperature. This may have caused a severe bias in early records, when alcohol thermometers were popular, especially during the Little Ice Age. Choosing a lower temperature for the upper point, calibration may substantially reduce this bias. Examples are given with thermometers in use in the 17th and 18th centuries. A careful correction of long series is necessary to avoid misleading climate interpretations.

Description: Drinking water in much of Asia, particularly in coastal and rural settings, is provided by a variety of sources, which are widely distributed and frequently managed at an individual or local community level. Coastal and near-inland drinking water sources in South and South East (SSE) Asia are vulnerable to contamination by seawater, most dramatically from tropical cyclone induced storm surges. This paper assesses spatial vulnerabilities to salinisation of drinking water sources due to meteorological variability and climate change along the (ca. 6000 km) coastline of SSE Asia. The risks of increasing climatic stresses are first considered, and then maps of relative vulnerability along the entire coastline are developed, using data from global scale land surface models, along with an overall vulnerability index. The results show that surface and near-surface drinking water in the coastal areas of the mega-deltas in Vietnam and Bangladesh-India are most vulnerable, putting more than 25 million people at risk of drinking ‘saline’ water. Climate change is likely to exacerbate this problem, with adverse consequences for health, such as prevalence of hypertension and cardiovascular diseases. There is a need for identifying locations that are most at risk of salinisation in order for policy makers and local officials to implement strategies for reducing these health impacts. To counter the risks associated with these vulnerabilities, possible adaptation measures are also outlined. We conclude that detailed and fine scale vulnerability assessments may become crucial for planning targeted adaptation programmes along these coasts.

Description: Changes in the seasonal timing of recurring biological events are considered to be a major component of the global “fingerprint” of climate change. One effect of these changes is that ecologically important seasonal species interactions could become desynchronised as a result of these shifts (i.e. phenological mismatching), leading to reductions in fitness for some or all of the organisms concerned. One important, but unresolved, issue is the extent to which variations in voltinism (the number of generations a population of a species produces per year) may serve to exacerbate, or confer resilience to, the effects of seasonal shifts. Univoltine organisms (those with one generation per year) will always suffer the deleterious consequences of phenological mismatch, whereas multivoltine species are likely to experience at least some relief from these negative effects in generations that occur later in the season. Conversely, univoltine species will experience continual selection to adapt to changing seasonality, whereas multivoltine species will experience reduced or no selection during those generations that occur later in the season. Here, we present a new theoretical model to explore the population consequences of scenarios of changing seasonality and varying voltinism in clonal species. We find that organisms that undergo multiple generations per year show greater resilience to phenological mismatching in the spring and adapt better to changing seasonality, because of the recovery of population size and genetic diversity after each spring mismatching event. These results have clear implications for management and conservation of populations that are threatened by the effects of mismatch.

Description: This paper examines the dynamics of energy investments and clean energy Research and Development (R&D) using a scenario-based modeling approach. Starting from the global scenarios proposed in the RoSE model ensemble experiment, we analyze the dynamics of investments under different assumptions regarding economic and population growth as well as availability of fossil fuel resources, in the absence of a climate policy. Our analysis indicates that economic growth and the speed of income convergence across countries matters for improvements in energy efficiency, both via dedicated R&D investments but mostly through capital-energy substitution. In contrast, fossil fuel prices, by changing the relative competitiveness of energy sources, create an economic opportunity for radical innovation in the energy sector. Indeed, our results suggest that fossil fuel availability is the key driver of investments in low carbon energy innovation. However, this innovation, by itself, is not sufficient to induce emission reductions compatible with climate stabilization objectives.

Description: A recent Climatic Change paper suggests a relationship between climatic change in the 7th century BCE and the fall of the Assyrian Empire. However, available archaeological and textual evidence does not support the hypothesis that Assyria was overpopulated during this time and for that reason susceptible to outbreaks of drought. Besides long-term climatic variation, inter-annual variability in crops has always been very high in the dry farming areas of Upper Mesopotamia. To cope with this uncertainty, the local population developed several strategies (e.g. storage of agricultural surpluses in granaries and artificial irrigation in river valleys). Finally, slave prices, known to have declined during times of famine, were relatively stable during the entire century suggesting absence of prolonged periods of food shortage.

Description: Floods are caused by a number of interacting factors, making it remarkably difficult to explain changes in flood hazard. This paper reviews the current understanding of historical trends and variability in flood hazard across Australia. Links between flood and rainfall trends cannot be made due to the influence of climate processes over a number of spatial and temporal scales as well as landscape changes that affect the catchment response. There are also still considerable uncertainties in future rainfall projections, particularly for sub-daily extreme rainfall events. This is in addition to the inherent uncertainty in hydrological modelling such as antecedent conditions and feedback mechanisms. Research questions are posed based on the current state of knowledge. These include a need for high-resolution climate modelling studies and efforts in compiling and analysing databases of sub-daily rainfall and flood records. Finally there is a need to develop modelling frameworks that can deal with the interaction between climate processes at different spatio-temporal scales, so that historical flood trends can be better explained and future flood behaviour understood.

Description: This paper analyzes public discourse on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) as it is portrayed in the media and examines how this influences effective and equitable outcomes of REDD+ in Nepal. It draws on analysis of articles in three national newspapers and interviews with radio and newspaper journalists, governmental and non-governmental stakeholders, and technical experts. Findings show that REDD+ coverage has been limited in the Nepalese print media and overall reporting on REDD+ has declined over time. The discourse is currently dominated by a small number of experts and development project implementers who portray REDD+ optimistically as an opportunity to benefit from carbon markets, while contributing to sustainable forest management. There was limited representation of the interests and concerns of marginalized groups and local communities in the public debate, thus underplaying the complexities and challenges of REDD+ development and implementation in Nepal. While the absence of debate on potential negative impacts can be explained partly by the dominance of optimistic voices in the media, it was also attributed to journalists’ limited access to independent knowledge and understanding of the issue. The resulting lack of balanced information in the public domain could undermine both the effectiveness of REDD+ implementation and its equitable outcome.

Description: Traditional definitions of seasonality are insufficient to reflect changes associated with a swiftly changing climate. Regional changes in season onset and length using surface based metrics are well documented, but hemispheric assessments using tropospheric metrics has received little attention. The long-term average of six-hourly analyses of temperature on isobaric surfaces, provided by the Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project, is separated here into quartiles to determine climatologic seasonal end dates. Annual season end dates are defined as the date when the 5-day moving average rose above (winter and spring) or fell below (summer and fall) the long term mean. Climatic season end dates fall between meteorological and astronomical season end dates. The length of summer has increased by an average of 13 days and the length of winter has decreased by an average of 20 days, which are more substantial seasonal changes than previous studies. These changes in season length have occurred largely within the past 36 years, corresponding to most aggressive anthropogenic climate change. Results show that the planetary boundary layer is warming at nearly twice the rate of the free troposphere. The spatial distribution of warming suggests that topographically induced weather systems are collocated with maxima or minima in free tropospheric and boundary layer temperature slope. Furthermore, regions of greatest ensemble spread are not collocated with relative maxima or minima in free troposphere or boundary layer temperature slope. This improved assessment of seasonal transitions is useful to climatologists, agricultural land managers, and scientists interested in seasonally driven biology, hydrology and biogeochemical processes.

Description: Large-scale infrastructure networks are vulnerable to climate change. Their operation involves public and private actors under complex legislative and market regulations. We analyze climate adaptation of railway infrastructure, based on an in-depth case study of the German railway system. The case includes a unique set of qualitative interviews with key players of operating and regulative organizations, as well as a document study. Our analysis crucially extends previous technology-oriented research on the railway sector by applying core insights and categories from the actor-centered institutionalism. We trace observed obstacles for a climate resilient railway system and adaptation decisions back to deeper causes, in particular political priorities and values. Moreover, diverging perceptions and the competition among different actors hamper adaptation. On the other hand, single actors who display a great willingness to act are able to make use of unclear responsibilities to integrate adaptation concerns into existing institutions. Our research suggests that changes in technical standards and in economic regulation support adaptation of infrastructure systems.

Description: In this study the possible impact of climate change on the occurrence of the Cercospora leaf spot disease (CLS) in sugar beet, triggered by the fungus Cercospora beticola sacc. , and its regional differentiation in Southwest Germany was analyzed by means of the forecasting model CERCBET1. The model projects the day of the year (DOY) when 1 %, 50 % and 100 % of the fields in the region are potentially infested by C ercospora L eaf S pot disease (CLS1, CLS50 and CLS100). To run the disease model the data of the RE gional climate MO del REMO were used. The possible impact of climate change on the occurrence was studied comparing three time windows: baseline period ‘ B ′ (1971–2000), medium-term period ‘ K ‘ (2021–2050), long-term period ‘ L ‘ (2071–2100). In addition the ontogenesis of the young sugar beet plants was simulated using a leaf-growth model. The results of CERCBET1 and the leaf-growth model were compared to draw conclusions whether CLS potentially would occur in a different leaf stage. The dates of completion of the 20- and 40-leaf stage (B20 and B40) therefore were examined. The simulation results indicate an earlier CLS occurrence as well as an accelerated leaf growth due to the projected climate change. The disease might occur in earlier growth stages of the sugar beet plants. A possible consequence of the earlier CLS occurrence could be an increasing number of necessary fungicide applications also regarding the prolonged growing season. For period L, especially, projections are difficult to make due to the uncertainties of the archived breeding progress, particularly regarding the breeding for resistance, the development of fungicides and the future socio-economic development.

Description: A changing climate and more frequent extreme weather events pose challenges to the oil and gas sector. Identifying how these changes will affect oil and gas extraction, transportation, processing, and delivery, and how these industries can adapt to or mitigate any adverse impacts will be vital to this sector’s supply security. This work presents an overview of the sector’s vulnerability to a changing climate. It addresses the potential for Natech hazards and proposes risk reduction measures, including mitigation and adaptation options. Assessment frameworks to ensure the safety of people, the environment, and investments in the oil and gas sector in the face of climate change are presented and their limitations discussed. It is argued that a comprehensive and systemic analysis framework for risk assessment is needed. The paper concludes that climate change and extreme weather events represent a real physical threat to the oil and gas sector, particularly in low-lying coastal areas and areas exposed to extreme weather events. The sector needs to take climate change seriously, assess its own vulnerability, and take appropriate measures to prevent or mitigate any potentially negative effects.

Description: As the impacts from anthropogenic climate change are increasing globally, people are experiencing dramatic shifts in weather, temperature, wildlife and vegetation patterns, and water and food quality and availability. These changes impact human health and well-being, and resultantly, climate change has been identified as the biggest global health threat of the 21st Century. Recently, research is beginning to indicate that changes in climate, and the subsequent disruption to the social, economic, and environmental determinants of health, may cause increased incidences and prevalence of mental health issues, emotional responses, and large-scale sociopsychological changes. Through a multi-year, community-led, exploratory case study conducted in Rigolet, Nunatsiavut, Labrador, Canada, this research qualitatively explores the impacts of climate change on mental health and well-being in an Inuit context. Drawing from 67 in-depth interviews conducted between January 2010 and October 2010 with community members and local and regional health professionals, participants reported that changes in weather, snow and ice stability and extent, and wildlife and vegetation patterns attributed to climate change were negatively impacting mental health and well-being due to disruptions in land-based activities and a loss of place-based solace and cultural identity. Participants reported that changes in climate and environment increased family stress, enhanced the possibility of increased drug and alcohol usage, amplified previous traumas and mental health stressors, and were implicated in increased potential for suicide ideation. While a preliminary case study, these exploratory findings indicate that climate change is becoming an additional mental health stressor for resource-dependent communities and provide a baseline for further research.

Description: Climate change related impacts, such as increased frequency and intensity of wildfires, higher temperatures, extreme changes to ecosystem processes, forest conversion and habitat degradation are threatening tribal access to valued resources. Climate change is and will affect the quantity and quality of resources tribes depend upon to perpetuate their cultures and livelihoods. Climate impacts on forests are expected to directly affect culturally important fungi, plant and animal species, in turn affecting tribal sovereignty, culture, and economy. This article examines the climate impacts on forests and the resulting effects on tribal cultures and resources. To understand potential adaptive strategies to climate change, the article also explores traditional ecological knowledge and historical tribal adaptive approaches in resource management, and contemporary examples of research and tribal practices related to forestry, invasive species, traditional use of fire and tribal-federal coordination on resource management projects. The article concludes by summarizing tribal adaptive strategies to climate change and considerations for strengthening the federal-tribal relationship to address climate change impacts to forests and tribal valued resources.

Description: Traditional knowledge is increasingly recognized as valuable for adaptation to climate change, bringing scientists and indigenous peoples together to collaborate and exchange knowledge. These partnerships can benefit both researchers and indigenous peoples through mutual learning and mutual knowledge generation. Despite these benefits, most descriptions focus on the social contexts of exchange. The implications of the multiple cultural, legal, risk-benefit and governance contexts of knowledge exchange have been less recognized. The failure to consider these contexts of knowledge exchange can result in the promotion of benefits while failing to adequately address adverse consequences. The purpose of this article is to promote awareness of these issues to encourage their wider incorporation into research, policy, measures to implement free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) and the development of equitable adaptation partnerships between indigenous peoples and researchers.

Description: We employ a single-country dynamically-recursive Computable General Equilibrium model to make health-focussed macroeconomic assessments of three contingent UK Greenhouse Gas (GHG) mitigation strategies, designed to achieve 2030 emission targets as suggested by the UK Committee on Climate Change. In contrast to previous assessment studies, our main focus is on health co-benefits additional to those from reduced local air pollution. We employ a conservative cost-effectiveness methodology with a zero net cost threshold. Our urban transport strategy (with cleaner vehicles and increased active travel) brings important health co-benefits and is likely to be strongly cost-effective; our food and agriculture strategy (based on abatement technologies and reduction in livestock production) brings worthwhile health co-benefits, but is unlikely to eliminate net costs unless new technological measures are included; our household energy efficiency strategy is likely to breakeven only over the long term after the investment programme has ceased (beyond our 20 year time horizon). We conclude that UK policy makers will, most likely, have to adopt elements which involve initial net societal costs in order to achieve future emission targets and longer-term benefits from GHG reduction. Cost-effectiveness of GHG strategies is likely to require technological mitigation interventions and/or demand-constraining interventions with important health co-benefits and other efficiency-enhancing policies that promote internalization of externalities. Health co-benefits can play a crucial role in bringing down net costs, but our results also suggest the need for adopting holistic assessment methodologies which give proper consideration to welfare-improving health co-benefits with potentially negative economic repercussions (such as increased longevity).

Description: Sensitivity to climate change and anthropogenic disturbance is a typical feature of Mediterranean forests, which grow under dynamic and manipulated environmental conditions. In this study, we examine stone pine ( Pinus pinea L.) along the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy to analyse the tree-growth variability on a temporal scale and to evaluate the radial growth response to climate trends over the last century. The analysis of tree ring widths at the decadal and multidecadal scale, which were standardised to remove the age trend, showed primarily significant downward trends and time periods with lower growth rates. Characterised by a clear decline in tree ring widths, the two periods of 20 years from the mid-1920s and the early 1970s appeared to be the least favourables for tree growth. Precipitation was the main factor driving growth, and the effect was cumulative over consecutive years because of the increase in soil water content. Including the current year of ring formation, correlations between decline in precipitation and tree growth were greatest with 3-year precipitation sums. The shifting influence of winter rainfall on tree ring growth toward not significant values during the last decades, together with the lack of significant correlation between the current year’s precipitation and growth decline from the 1970s, might suggest an increasingly dependence on long periods of water supply to utilise the water content stored due to the previous rainy years. The negative effect on tree-growth decline of summer and early-fall temperatures appeared as a forcing influence related to long-term changes in climate rather than high-frequency climate fluctuations.

Description: Climate change impact research needs regional climate scenarios of multiple meteorological variables. Those variables are available from regional climate models (RCMs), but affected by considerable biases. We evaluate the application of an empirical-statistical error correction method, quantile mapping (QM), for a small ensemble of RCMs and six meteorological variables. Annual and monthly biases are reduced to close to zero by QM for all variables in most cases. Exceptions are found, if non-stationarity of the model’s error characteristics occur. Even in the worst cases of non-stationarity, QM clearly improves the biases of raw RCMs. In addition, QM successfully adjusts the distributions of the analysed variables. To approach the question whether time series and inter-variable relationships are still plausible after correction, we evaluate the root-mean-square error (RMSE), autocorrelation and inter-variable correlation. We found improvement or no clear effect in RMSE and autocorrelation, and no clear effect on the correlation between meteorological variables. These results demonstrate that QM retains the quality of the temporal structure in time series and the inter-variable dependencies of RCMs. It has to be emphasised that this cannot be interpreted as an improvement and that deficiencies of the RCMs in those features are retained as well. Our results give some indication for the performance of QM applied to future scenarios, since our evaluation relies on independent calibration and evaluation periods, which are affected by climate variability and change. The effect of non-stationarity, however, can be expected to be larger in far future. We demonstrate the retainment of the RCM’s temporal structure and inter-variable dependencies, and large improvements in biases. This qualifies QM as a valuable, though not perfect, method in the interface between climate models and climate change impact research. Nonetheless, in case of no correlation between re-analysis driven RCM and observation, one should consider that QM does not correct this correlation.

Description: When is it time to adopt different technologies, management strategies, and resource use practices as underlying climate change occurs? We apply risk and decision analysis to test hypotheses about the timing and pace of adaption in response to different profiles of climate change and extremes expressed as yield and income variation for a simulated dryland wheat farm in the United States Great Plains. Climate scenarios include gradual change with typical or increased noise (standard deviation), rapid and large change, and gradual change with extreme events stepped through the simulation. We test decision strategies that might logically be utilized by farmers facing a climate trend that worsens crop enterprise outcomes. Adaptation quickens with the rate of change, especially for decision strategies based on performance thresholds, but is delayed by larger climate variability, especially for decision strategies based on recognizing growing differential between adaptive and non-adaptive performance. Extreme events evoke adaptation sooner than gradual change alone, and in some scenarios extremes evoke premature, inefficient, adaptation.

Description: Climate change is likely to increase the frequency and intensity of water-related hazards on human populations. This has generated security concerns and calls for urgent policy action. However, the simplified narrative that links climate change to security via water and violent conflict is wanting. First, it is not confirmed by empirical evidence. Second, it ignores the varied character and implications of hydro-climatic hazards, the multi-faceted nature of conflict and adaptive action, and crucial intricacies of security. Integrating for the first time research and findings from diverse disciplines, we provide a more nuanced picture of the climate-water-security nexus. We consider findings from the transboundary waters, armed conflict, vulnerability, and political ecology literatures and specify the implications and priorities for policy relevant research. Although the social effects of future hydro-climatic change cannot be safely predicted, there is a good understanding of the factors that aggravate risks to social wellbeing. To reduce vulnerability, pertinent democratic and social/civil security institutions should be strengthened where they exist, and promoted where they are still absent.

Description: Most discussions of impacts of Climate Change have focused on species from temperate or polar regions. Impacts to species inhabiting warm climates are often believed to be small relative to those of species living in cooler climates. However, it is evident that some tropical/sub-tropical species, including some marine megafauna may face potentially serious consequences from a changing climate. For example, larger, warmer oceans may appear to benefit marine wildlife species like cold-sensitive Florida manatees; however, findings regarding the impact of global climate change (GCC) on estuaries and nearshore areas of Florida indicate that predicted impacts of climate change may be detrimental to endangered manatees. An examination of how projected impacts of climate change will affect threats to manatees and their habitat indicates that threats may be exacerbated. The most significant threats to the Florida manatee population, such as cold-stress, watercraft collisions, and harmful algal blooms likely will increase. Habitat is likely to be degraded under future climate scenarios. Alterations to Florida’s marine environment are ongoing, yet current manatee management plans do not consider the impacts of climate change. The ability of manatees to adapt to change will be influenced by the speed of change and the degree to which human activity impedes or alters it. To minimize impacts to species we must recognize the influence GCC may have on populations, and begin to identify and implement ways to slow or reverse negative impacts arising from it.

Description: Due to complexities of creating sea-level rise scenarios, impacts of climate-induced sea-level rise are often produced from a limited number of models assuming a global uniform rise in sea level. A greater number of models, including those with a pattern reflecting regional variations would help to assure reliability and a range of projections, indicating where models agree and disagree. This paper determines how nine new patterned-scaled sea-level rise scenarios (plus the uniform and patterned ensemble mean rises) influence global and regional coastal impacts (wetland loss, dry land loss due to erosion and the expected number of people flooded per year by extreme sea levels). The DIVA coastal impacts model was used under an A1B scenario, and assumed defences were not upgraded as conditions evolved. For seven out of nine climate models, impacts occurred at a proportional rate to global sea-level rise. For the remaining two models, higher than average rise in sea level was projected in northern latitudes or around populated coasts thus skewing global impact projections compared with the ensemble global mean. Regional variability in impacts were compared using the ensemble mean uniform and patterned scenarios: The largest relative difference in impacts occurred around the Mediterranean coast, and the largest absolute differences around low-lying populated coasts, such as south, south-east and east Asia. Uniform projections of sea-level rise impacts remain a useful method to determine global impacts, but improved regional scale models of sea-level rise, particularly around semi-enclosed seas and densely populated low-lying coasts will provide improved regional impact projections and a characterisation of their uncertainties.

Description: Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) describe alternative outcomes for socioeconomic development. Papers describing the conceptual framework for SSPs refer to challenges to mitigation and to adaptation as fundamental concepts. Identifying which socioeconomic factors are the most important determinants of these challenges, and how to combine them in an internally consistent manner, is critical to scenario design. Here we demonstrate a systematic and traceable approach for identifying and prioritizing scenario elements. In this study, we identify 13 determinants of mitigation and adaptation challenges at a globally aggregated scale based on a survey of 25 experts. In addition, we use 19 expert elicitations and a cross-impact balance analysis to create approximately 1.5 million combinations of trends for these determinants and rank them in terms of internal consistency. Using the 1,000 most consistent combinations, we construct composite metrics for challenges to mitigation and adaptation to uncover distinguishable characteristics for five types of SSPs: those with Low, Medium, and High challenges to both mitigation and adaptation (consistent with SSPs 1–3), and those in which adaptation challenges or mitigation challenges dominate (consistent with SSPs 4–5). We find a distinguishing characteristic for mixed typology SSP4 (low mitigation challenges, high adaptation challenges): High trends for innovation capacity could lower challenges to mitigation but not necessarily challenges to adaptation. We also find that a low trend for quality of governance consistently corresponds to higher challenges to adaptation. These findings are suggestive for future research on the SSPs in particular, while our analytical approach is instructive for scenario development in general.

Description: Politicians who proclaim both their skepticism about global warming and their conservative religious credentials leave the impression that conservative Protestants may be more skeptical about scientists’ claims regarding global warming than others. The history of the relationship between conservative Protestantism and science on issues such as evolution also suggests that there may be increased skepticism. Analyzing the 2006 and 2010 General Social Survey, we find no evidence that conservative Protestantism leads respondents to have less belief in the conclusiveness of climate scientists’ claims. However, a second type of skepticism of climate scientists is an unwillingness to follow scientists’ public policy recommendations. We find that conservative Protestantism does lead to being less likely to want environmental scientists to influence the public policy debate about what to do about climate change. Existing sociological research on the relationship between religion and science suggests that this stance is due to a long-standing social/moral competition between conservative Protestantism and science.

Description: This paper describes the scenario matrix architecture that underlies a framework for developing new scenarios for climate change research. The matrix architecture facilitates addressing key questions related to current climate research and policy-making: identifying the effectiveness of different adaptation and mitigation strategies (in terms of their costs, risks and other consequences) and the possible trade-offs and synergies. The two main axes of the matrix are: 1) the level of radiative forcing of the climate system (as characterised by the representative concentration pathways) and 2) a set of alternative plausible trajectories of future global development (described as shared socio-economic pathways). The matrix can be used to guide scenario development at different scales. It can also be used as a heuristic tool for classifying new and existing scenarios for assessment. Key elements of the architecture, in particular the shared socio-economic pathways and shared policy assumptions (devices for incorporating explicit mitigation and adaptation policies), are elaborated in other papers in this special issue.

Description: American Indian and Alaska Native tribes are uniquely affected by climate change. Indigenous peoples have depended on a wide variety of native fungi, plant and animal species for food, medicine, ceremonies, community and economic health for countless generations. Climate change stands to impact the species and ecosystems that constitute tribal traditional foods that are vital to tribal culture, economy and traditional ways of life. This paper examines the impacts of climate change on tribal traditional foods by providing cultural context for the importance of traditional foods to tribal culture, recognizing that tribal access to traditional food resources is strongly influenced by the legal and regulatory relationship with the federal government, and examining the multi-faceted relationship that tribes have with places, ecological processes and species. Tribal participation in local, regional and national climate change adaption strategies, with a focus on food-based resources, can inform and strengthen the ability of both tribes and other governmental resource managers to address and adapt to climate change impacts.

Description: Despite a keen awareness of climate change, northern Indigenous Peoples have had limited participation in climate-change science due to limited access, power imbalances, and differences in worldview. A western science emphasis on facts and an indigenous emphasis on relationships to spiritual and biophysical components indicate important but distinct contributions that each knowledge system can make. Indigenous communities are experiencing widespread thawing of permafrost and coastal erosion exacerbated by loss of protective sea ice. These climate-induced changes threaten village infrastructure, water supplies, health, and safety. Climate-induced habitat changes associated with loss of sea ice and with landscape drying and extensive wildfires interact with northern development to bring both economic opportunities and environmental impacts. A multi-pronged approach to broadening indigenous participation in climate-change research should: 1) engage communities in designing climate-change solutions; 2) create an environment of mutual respect for multiple ways of knowing; 3) directly assist communities in achieving their adaptation goals; 4) promote partnerships that foster effective climate solutions from both western and indigenous perspectives; and 5) foster regional and international networking to share climate solutions.

Description: A reliable public electricity supply depends in part on a reliable electricity grid system to transmit and distribute electrical power from generating stations to consumers. The grid system comprises many components that are exposed to the weather and can experience faults as a result of weather events. As climate change is expected to alter the number and severity of weather events, then the reliability of the grid and hence the reliability of electricity supplies can be affected. This paper reviews the effects of weather events on grid systems, illustrated by reference to experience on the grid systems in Europe and North America. It is shown that the effects on the high voltage transmission networks are different from the effects on lower voltage distribution networks and that generally the most significant extreme weather is high winds. Some remedial measures that can mitigate the effects of weather events are also described.

Description: Extreme weather events and changed climate parameters have impacts on power plants and their connected infrastructures. Therefore, adaptation, especially in the context of a changing climate and a resulting shift in the intensity and frequency of extreme events, is necessary. Thermal power plants are subject to a diversity of extreme weather impacts, making them vulnerable if not adapted. In this paper, the impacts of extreme weather events on thermal power plants are first identified and structured. Then selected adaptation options for thermal power plants are presented. Three major types of adaptation option are identified: adaptation of cooling, infrastructure, and sites. The Supplementary Material introduces a GIS-based (Geographic Information System) decision-support tool for power plant adaptation and planning.

Description: American Indians have unique vulnerabilities to the impacts of climate change because of the links among ecosystems, cultural practices, and public health, but also as a result of limited resources available to address infrastructure needs. On the Crow Reservation in south-central Montana, a Northern Plains American Indian Reservation, there are community concerns about the consequences of climate change impacts for community health and local ecosystems. Observations made by Tribal Elders about decreasing annual snowfall and milder winter temperatures over the 20th century initiated an investigation of local climate and hydrologic data by the Tribal College. The resulting analysis of meteorological data confirmed the decline in annual snowfall and an increase in frost free days. In addition, the data show a shift in precipitation from winter to early spring. The number of days exceeding 90 ˚F (32 ˚C) has doubled in the past century. Streamflow data show a long-term trend of declining discharge. Elders noted that the changes are affecting fish distribution within local streams and plant species which provide subsistence foods. Concerns about warmer summer temperatures also include heat exposure during outdoor ceremonies that involve days of fasting without food or water. Additional community concerns about the effects of climate change include increasing flood frequency and fire severity, as well as declining water quality. The authors call for local research to understand and document current effects and project future impacts as a basis for planning adaptive strategies.

Description: Brown planthopper (BPH), Nilaparvata lugens (Stal.) development studied at six constant temperatures, 19, 22, 25, 28, 31 and 33 ±1 °C on rice plants revealed that developmental period from egg hatching to adult longevity decreased from 46.8 to 18.4 days as temperature increased from 19 to 31 °C. Through regression of development rate on temperature, thermal constant of small nymph (1st-2nd instar), large nymph (3rd–5th instar) and adult were determined to be 126.6, 140.8 and 161.3 degree days (DD), respectively with corresponding development threshold being 8.8, 9.5 and 9.6 °C. A thermal constant-based mechanistic-hemimetabolous-population model was adapted for BPH and linked with InfoCrop, a crop simulation model to simulate climate change impact on both the pest population and crop-pest interactions. The model was validated with field data at New Delhi and Aduthurai (Tamil Nadu, India), ( R 2  = 0.96, RMSE = 1.87 %). Climate-change-impact assessment through coupled BPH-InfoCrop model, in the light of the projected climate-change scenario for Indian subcontinent, showed a decline of 3.5 and 9.3–14 % in the BPH population by 2020 and 2050, respectively, during the rainy season at New Delhi, while the pest population exhibited only a small decline of 2.1–3.5 % during the winter at Aduthurai by 2050. BPH population decline is attributed to reduction in fecundity and survival by simulation model, which otherwise was not possible to account for with an empirical model. Concomitant to its population decline, BPH-induced yield loss also indicated a declining trend with temperature rise. However, the study considered the effect of only CO 2 and temperature rise on the BPH population and crop yield, and not that of probable changes in feeding rate and adaptive capacity of the pest.

Description: Energy efficiency is one of the main options for mitigating climate change. An accurate representation of various mechanisms of energy efficiency is vital for the assessment of its realistic potential. Results of a questionnaire show that the EMF27 models collectively represent known channels of energy efficiency reasonably well, addressing issues of energy efficiency barriers and rebound effects. The majority of models, including general equilibrium models, have an explicit end-use representation for the transportation sector. All participating partial equilibrium models have some capability of reflecting the actual market behavior of consumers and firms. The EMF27 results show that energy intensity declines faster under climate policy than under a baseline scenario. With a climate policy roughly consistent with a global warming of two degrees, the median annual improvement rate of energy intensity for 2010–2030 reaches 2.3 % per year [with a full model range of 1.3–2.9 %/yr], much faster than the historical rate of 1.3 % per year. The improvement rate increases further if technology is constrained. The results suggest that the target of the United Nations’ “Sustainable Energy for All” initiative is consistent with the 2-degree climate change target, as long as there are no technology constraints. The rate of energy intensity decline varies significantly across models, with larger variations at the regional and sectoral levels. Decomposition of the transportation sector down to a service level for a subset of models reveals that to achieve energy efficiency, a general equilibrium model tends to reduce service demands while partial equilibrium models favor technical substitution.

Description: This paper provides an overview of climate change impacts on tribal water resources and the subsequent cascading effects on the livelihoods and cultures of American Indians and Alaska Natives living on tribal lands in the U.S. A hazards and vulnerability framework for understanding these impacts is first presented followed by context on the framework components, including climate, hydrologic, and ecosystem changes (i.e. hazards) and tribe-specific vulnerability factors (socioeconomic, political, infrastructural, environmental, spiritual and cultural), which when combined with hazards lead to impacts. Next regional summaries of impacts around the U.S. are discussed. Although each tribal community experiences unique sets of impacts because of their individual history, culture, and geographic setting, many of the observed impacts are common among different groups and can be categorized as impacts on—1) water supply and management (including water sources and infrastructure), 2) aquatic species important for culture and subsistence, 3) ranching and agriculture particularly from climate extremes (e.g., droughts, floods), 4) tribal sovereignty and rights associated with water resources, fishing, hunting, and gathering, and 5) soil quality (e.g., from coastal and riverine erosion prompting tribal relocation or from drought-related land degradation). The paper finishes by highlighting potentially relevant research questions based on the five impact categories.

Description: The scientific community is now developing a new set of scenarios, referred to as Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs) that will be contrasted along two axes: challenges to mitigation, and challenges to adaptation. This paper proposes a methodology to develop SSPs with a “backwards” approach based on (i) an a priori identification of potential drivers of mitigation and adaptation challenges; (ii) a modelling exercise to transform these drivers into a large set of scenarios; (iii) an a posteriori selection of a few SSPs among these scenarios using statistical cluster-finding algorithms. This backwards approach could help inform the development of SSPs to ensure the storylines focus on the driving forces most relevant to distinguishing between the SSPs. In this illustrative analysis, we find that energy sobriety, equity and convergence prove most important towards explaining future difference in challenges to adaptation and mitigation. The results also demonstrate the difficulty in finding explanatory drivers for a middle scenario (SSP2). We argue that methodologies such as that used here are useful for broad questions such as the definition of SSPs, and could also be applied to any specific decisions faced by decision-makers in the field of climate change.

Description: This study developed an approach to assess the vulnerability to climate change and variability using various group multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods and identified the sources of uncertainty in assessments. MCDM methods include the weighted sum method, one of the most common MCDM methods, the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS), fuzzy-based TOPSIS, TOPSIS in a group-decision environment, and TOPSIS combined with the voting methods (Borda count and Copeland’s methods). The approach was applied to a water-resource system in South Korea, and the assessment was performed at the province level by categorizing water resources into water supply and conservation, flood control and water-quality sectors according to their management objectives. Key indicators for each category were profiled with the Delphi surveys, a series of questionnaires interspersed with controlled opinion feedback. The sectoral vulnerability scores were further aggregated into one composite score for water-resource vulnerability. Rankings among different MCDM methods varied in different degrees, but noticeable differences in the rankings from the fuzzy- and non-fuzzy-based methods suggested that the uncertainty with crisp data, rather widely used, should be acknowledged in vulnerability assessment. Also rankings from the voting-based methods did not differ much from those from non-voting-based (i.e., average-based) methods. Vulnerability rankings varied significantly among the different sectors of the water-resource systems, highlighting the need to assess the vulnerability of water-resource systems according to objectives, even though one composite index is often used for simplicity.

Description: Dramatic climatic change in the Arctic elevates the importance of determining the risk of exposure for people living in vulnerable areas and developing effective adaptation programs. Climate change assessment reports are valuable, and often definitive, sources of information for decision makers when constructing adaptation plans, yet the scope of these reports is too coarse to identify site-specific exposure to the impacts of climate change and adaptation needs. Subsistence hunters and gatherers in the Arctic are valuable knowledge holders of climate-related change in their area. Incorporating both their traditional ecological knowledge and information found in climate science assessment reports can offer adaption planners a deeper understanding of exposure to climate change and local adaptation needs. In this study, we compare information found in assessment reports of climate change in the Arctic with what we have learned from the Alaskans Sharing Indigenous Knowledge project from 2009 to 2012, a research project documenting traditional ecological knowledge in two Native villages in Alaska, Savoonga and Shaktoolik. Content analysis of the interviews with hunters and gatherers reveal the site-specific impacts of climate change affecting these two villages. We find that their traditional ecological knowledge is complimentary and largely corroborates the climate science found in assessment reports. Traditional ecological knowledge, however, is more current to the social and local conditions of the villages, and presents a more unified social and biophysical portrayal of the impacts of climate change. If taken together, these two forms of knowledge can focus adaptation planning on the pertinent needs of the communities in question.

Description: We present projections of winter storm-induced insured losses in the German residential building sector for the 21st century. With this aim, two structurally most independent downscaling methods and one hybrid downscaling method are applied to a 3-member ensemble of ECHAM5/MPI-OM1 A1B scenario simulations. One method uses dynamical downscaling of intense winter storm events in the global model, and a transfer function to relate regional wind speeds to losses. The second method is based on a reshuffling of present day weather situations and sequences taking into account the change of their frequencies according to the linear temperature trends of the global runs. The third method uses statistical-dynamical downscaling, considering frequency changes of the occurrence of storm-prone weather patterns, and translation into loss by using empirical statistical distributions. The A1B scenario ensemble was downscaled by all three methods until 2070, and by the (statistical-) dynamical methods until 2100. Furthermore, all methods assume a constant statistical relationship between meteorology and insured losses and no developments other than climate change, such as in constructions or claims management. The study utilizes data provided by the German Insurance Association encompassing 24 years and with district-scale resolution. Compared to 1971–2000, the downscaling methods indicate an increase of 10-year return values (i.e. loss ratios per return period) of 6–35 % for 2011–2040, of 20–30 % for 2041–2070, and of 40–55 % for 2071–2100, respectively. Convolving various sources of uncertainty in one confidence statement (data-, loss model-, storm realization-, and Pareto fit-uncertainty), the return-level confidence interval for a return period of 15 years expands by more than a factor of two. Finally, we suggest how practitioners can deal with alternative scenarios or possible natural excursions of observed losses.

Description: Liquid fuels will remain valued energy carriers well into any upcoming period when CO 2 reductions are sought. Biofuels are the presumed replacement for the petroleum-based transportation fuels that dominate liquid fuel use. Lifecycle analysis embeds a closed-loop model of biofuel-related carbon flows, making net CO 2 uptake an assumption to be refuted. However, evaluating net CO 2 uptake through dynamic industrial and agriforestry supply chains at real-world commercial scales is extremely difficult. All such estimates carry a great deal of doubt and cannot be verified empirically. A different perspective follows by anchoring analysis in the certainty that end-use CO 2 emissions from biofuels are essentially the same as those of the petroleum fuels they replace. A first-order model of the globally coupled bio- and fossil-fuel system reveals conditions for biofuel use to provide an atmospheric benefit. No benefit occurs in the energy sectors where biofuels are used, but rather must be found elsewhere in locations of carbon absorption or retention. The implication is that climate mitigation efforts should focus on such locations and include any mechanisms through which net uptake (an enhanced sink or verifiable offset) can be achieved by biological, chemical, geological or other means. Although biofuels can play a mitigation role when certain conditions are met, deemphasizing biofuel production in favor of terrestrial carbon management may offer more immediate and effective ways to counterbalance the CO 2 emitted when using carbon-based liquid fuels of any origin. Climate policies for transportation fuels should be reconsidered accordingly.

Description: ENSO teleconnections imply anomalous weather conditions, causing yield shortages, price fluctuations, and civil unrest. We estimate ENSO’s effect on U.S. county-level corn yield distributions and find that temperature and precipitation alone are not sufficient to summarize the effect of global climate on agriculture. We find that acreage-weighted aggregate impacts mask considerable spatial heterogeneity at the county-level for the mean, variance, and downside risk of corn yields. Impacts for mean yields range from − 24 to 33 % for El Niño and − 25 to 36 % for La Niña, with the geographical center of losses shifting from the Eastern to Western corn belt. ENSO’s effect on the variance of crop yields is highly localized and is not representative of a variance-preserving shift. We also find that downside risk impacts are large and spatially correlated across counties.

Description: It is generally agreed that the risk of catastrophic climate change can only be reduced if agents cooperate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the course of the 21st Century. Previous economic experiments have suggested that sufficient cooperation can often be achieved providing individuals are adequately and convincingly informed of the consequences of their actions and the stakes involved. However, this previous work, has not allowed for the fact that in the real world agents vary in both: (1) their resources to mitigate climate change, and (2) the consequences that they face from climate change. We develop and expand the protocol of previous economic experiments to investigate the introduction of such combined asymmetries. We find that when inequality in resources is combined with a greater relative risk for poorer members, cooperation collapses, with tragic consequences. This is because the rich invest proportionally less into preventing climate change when they are less at risk. We also find, through the use of a post-game questionnaire, that those individuals who were more skeptical about climate change in the real world cooperated less in our games. Insofar as such experiments can be trusted as a guide to either people’s everyday behaviour or the interactions of nation states, these results suggest that voluntary cooperation to avoid climate catastrophe in the real world is likely to be hard to achieve.

Description: There is growing concern that the higher temperatures expected with climate change will exacerbate drought extent, duration and severity by enhancing evaporative demand. Temperature-based estimates of potential evapotranspiration (PET) are popular for many eminently practical reasons and have served well in many research and management settings. However, a number of recent publications have questioned whether it is appropriate to use temperature-based PET estimates for long-term evaporative demand and drought projections, demonstrating that PET does not always track temperature. Where precipitation changes are modest, methodologically driven differences in the magnitude or direction of PET trends could lead to contrasting drought projections. Here I calculate PET by three methods (Hamon, Priestley-Taylor and Penman) and evaluate whether different techniques introduce disparities in the sign of PET change, the degree of model agreement, or the magnitude of those changes. Changes in temperature-based Hamon PET were more significantly and consistently positive than trends in PET estimated by other methods, and where methods agreed that summer PET would increase, trends in temperature-based PET were often larger in magnitude. The discrepancies in PET trends appear to derive from regional changes in incoming shortwave radiation, wind speed and humidity -- phenomena simpler equations cannot capture. Because multiple variables can influence trends in PET, it may be more justifiable to use data-intensive methods, where the source(s) of uncertainty can be identified, rather than using simpler methods that could mask important trends.

Description: Cities are increasingly aware of the need to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to changes in weather patterns leading to the production of urban climate change plans. The few existing systematic studies of these plans have focused on either adaptation or mitigation issues, and are typically based on surveys completed by city officials rather than analysis of documented evidence. To gain insight into the status of adaptation and mitigation action across the UK, climate change documents from 30 urban areas (representing ~28 % of the UK’s population) were analysed. An Urban Climate Change Preparedness Score, which could be applied to other urban areas outside the UK, has been devised for comparative analysis. This analysis characterizes progress against (i) Assessment, (ii) Planning, (iii) Action, and (iv) Monitoring, for both adaptation and mitigation. The Preparedness Score allows a quantitative comparison of climate change strategies across the urban areas analysed. This methodology can be transferred to other countries and makes an international comparison of urban areas and their climate change adaptation and mitigation plans possible. We found that all areas acknowledge climate change being a threat and that adaptation and mitigation planning and action is required. However, two urban areas did not have official adaptation or mitigation plans. Typically, mitigation activities across all cities were more advanced than adaptation plans. Emissions reduction targets ranged from 10 %–80 % with differing baselines, timeframes and scopes, for defining and meeting these targets. Similar variability was observed across adaptation plans. Several reasons for these differences are considered, but particularly notable is that a combination of incentives and regulation seem to stimulate more comprehensive strategies and action in many urban areas.

Description: In this paper, we assessed the technological feasibility and economic viability of the mid-term (until 2050) GHG emission reduction target required for stabilization of radiative forcing at 2.6 W/m2. Given the apparent uncertainty surrounding the future deployment of nuclear and CCS technologies, we intensively investigated emission reduction scenarios without nuclear and CCS. The analysis using AIM/Enduse[Global] shows the emission reduction target is technologically feasible, but the cost for achieving the target becomes very high if nuclear and CCS options are limited. The main reason for the cost rise is that additional investment for expensive technologies is required in order to compensate for emission increases in the steel, cement and power generation sectors in the absence of CCS. On the other hand, if material efficiency improvement measures, such as material substitution, efficient use of materials and recycling, are taken, the cost of achieving the emission reduction target is significantly reduced. The result indicates the potentially important role of material efficiency improvement in curbing the cost of significant GHG emission reductions without depending on nuclear and CCS.

Description: The RoSE (Roadmaps to Sustainable Energy Futures) project provides a coordinated, model-based analysis to manage the transition from carbon intensive to low carbon economies using several global integrated assessment models to explore different GHG stabilization scenarios. China TIMES provides a detailed description of the Chinese energy system that can be used to check the realism of transition scenarios for China against global models. A reference scenario with China’s target of lowering its carbon intensity by 40–45 % by 2020 compared to the 2005 level is considered, and 12 carbon constraint scenarios with different levels of carbon intensity reduction beyond 2020 are simulated by China TIMES. The results of carbon emissions pathways and energy system transitions in different scenarios are analyzed. The results from China TIMES are compared to those for both the reference and carbon policy scenarios (550 ppm CO2eq and 450 ppm CO2eq stabilization targets) for four global models, GCAM, IPAC, REMIND, and WITCH. The differences in decarbonizaton pathways across models are mainly attributed to different model structures and modeling approaches, different reference scenario definitions, different policy targets, differences in model assumptions concerning technology availability and techno-economic characteristics of the technologies, and differences in the estimation of the energy demand response to climate policy. The path towards low carbon development for China includes challenges and opportunities. Substantial efforts may be required to transform the economic development mode, to speed up innovation, R&D, and deployment of advanced low carbon technologies, to strengthen institutions, to advocate low carbon lifestyles, and to enhance international cooperation.

Description: This study investigates the use of bioenergy for achieving stringent climate stabilization targets and it analyzes the economic drivers behind the choice of bioenergy technologies. We apply the integrated assessment framework REMIND-MAgPIE to show that bioenergy, particularly if combined with carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a crucial mitigation option with high deployment levels and high technology value. If CCS is available, bioenergy is exclusively used with CCS. We find that the ability of bioenergy to provide negative emissions gives rise to a strong nexus between biomass prices and carbon prices. Ambitious climate policy could result in bioenergy prices of 70 $/GJ (or even 430 $/GJ if bioenergy potential is limited to 100 EJ/year), which indicates a strong demand for bioenergy. For low stabilization scenarios with BECCS availability, we find that the carbon value of biomass tends to exceed its pure energy value. Therefore, the driving factor behind investments into bioenergy conversion capacities for electricity and hydrogen production are the revenues generated from negative emissions, rather than from energy production. However, in REMIND modern bioenergy is predominantly used to produce low-carbon fuels, since the transport sector has significantly fewer low-carbon alternatives to biofuels than the power sector. Since negative emissions increase the amount of permissible emissions from fossil fuels, given a climate target, bioenergy acts as a complement to fossils rather than a substitute. This makes the short-term and long-term deployment of fossil fuels dependent on the long-term availability of BECCS.

Description: The sustainability of social-ecological systems depends on river flows being maintained within a range to which those systems are adapted. In order to determine the extent of this natural range of variation, we assess ecological flow thresholds and the occurrence of potentially damaging flood events to society in the context of the Lower Brahmaputra river basin. The ecological flow threshold was calculated using twenty-two ‘Range of Variability (RVA)’ parameters, considering the range between ± 1 standard deviation from the mean of the natural flow. Damaging flood events were calculated using flood frequency analysis of Annual Maxima series and using the flood classification of Bangladesh. The climate change impacts on future river flow were calculated by using a weighted ensemble analysis of twelve global circulation models (GCMs) outputs driving a large-scale hydrologic model. The simulated climate change induced altered flow regime of the Lower Brahmaputra River Basin was then investigated and compared with the calculated threshold flows. The results demonstrate that various parameters including the monthly mean of low flow (January, February and March) and high flow (June, July and August) periods, the 7-day average minimum flow, and the yearly maximum flow will exceed the threshold conditions by 1956–1995 under the business-as-usual A1B and A2 future scenarios. The results have a number of policy level implications for government agencies of the Lower Brahmaputra River Basin, specifically for Bangladesh. The calculated thresholds may be used as a good basis for negotiations with other riparian countries of the basin. The methodological approach presented in this study can be applied to other river basins and provide a useful basis for transboundary water resources management.

Description: We present new tree-ring width, δ 13 C, and δ 18 O chronologies from the Koksu site (49°N, 86° E, 2,200 m asl), situated in the Russian Altai. A strong temperature signal is recorded in the tree-ring width (June-July) and stable isotope (July-August) chronologies, a July precipitation signal captured by the stable isotope data. To investigate the nature of common climatic patterns, our new chronologies are compared with previously published tree-ring and stable isotope data from other sites in the Altai region. The temperature signal preserved in the conifer trees is strongly expressed at local and regional scales for all studied sites, resulting in even stronger temperature and precipitation signals in combined average chronologies compared to separate chronologies. This enables the reconstruction of June-July and July-August temperatures for the last 200 years using tree-ring and stable carbon isotopes. A July precipitation reconstruction based on oxygen isotopic variability recorded in tree-rings can potentially improve the understanding of hydrological changes and the occurrence of extreme events in the Russian Altai.

Description: The US climate movement has failed to create the political support needed to pass significant climate policy. It is time to reassess climate advocacy. To develop a strategy for philanthropy to strengthen climate engagement, I interviewed over 40 climate advocates,more than a dozen representatives from the foundation community, and a dozen academics. My assessment led me to conclude that climate advocates have focused too narrowly on specific policy goals and insufficiently on influencing the larger political landscape. I suggest four ways to improve climate advocacy: 1) Increase focus on medium and longer-term goals; 2) Start with people and not carbon; 3) Focus more on values and less on science; and 4) Evaluate what works and share what we learn. To accomplish these strategies, social scientists and advocates must work together to build a culture of learning. Meanwhile, philanthropy must empower experimentation and incentivize knowledge sharing.

Description: We study the possible effects of urbanization on the rise of air temperature in Saudi Arabia for the period 1981–2010. The effects of variations in elevation and marine temperature on the air temperature trend are also investigated. Surface air temperature data are analyzed for 24 sites which are mostly located at the airports across the country. The population data for the current (2010) and earlier (2004 and 1992) censuses are used for the nearest cities where the observation sites are located. A national average is calculated using two different approaches (simple averaging and weighted according to area for 1985–2010 when all stations are available) which gives trends of 0.60 and 0.51 °C/decade respectively, both significant at the 99 % level. We find no link between the temperature increase and population increase nor with elevation at the 24 sites which are mostly located in the urban effected area but not at the city centers. This suggests that the rise in air temperature is not likely due to urbanization changes resulting from the population increases.

Description: The case of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe exemplifies tribal vulnerabilities as a result of climate change. Preliminary socio-economic data and analysis reveal that the tribe’s vulnerability to climate change is related to cultural and economic dependence on Pyramid Lake, while external socio-economic vulnerability factors influence adaptive capacity and amplify potential impacts. Reduced water supplies as a consequence of climate change would result in a compounded reduction of inflows to Pyramid Lake, thus potentially impacting the spawning and sustenance of a cultural livelihood, the endangered cui-ui fish ( Chasmistes cujus ). Meanwhile, limited economic opportunities and dwindling federal support constrain tribal adaptive capacity. Factors that contribute to tribal adaptive capacity include: sustainability-based values, technical capacity for natural resource management, proactive initiatives for the control of invasive-species, strong external scientific networks, and remarkable tribal awareness of climate change.

Description: To prevent the loss of biodiversity in northern Central America, which is one of 34 global biodiversity hotspots, the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, a network of protected parks and reserves has been proposed. While on-going deforestation to croplands and pastures outside the protected regions is likely to effect the dry season precipitation over the regenerated and extant forests in the proposed protected regions, global climate change driven precipitation changes may also be a significant factor, at least at some locations. This study compares the effects of land cover change to the effects of elevated greenhouse gas concentrations on precipitation in the proposed areas of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor network. Using 5 consecutive dry season simulations of the effects of land cover change that included dry, wet and normal years, and using statistically downscaled global climate model (GCM) precipitation from the fourth assessment report (AR4), a larger expanse of the proposed protected regions was found more sensitive to precipitation decreases due to land cover changes. Two specific protected regions however stand out: the Maya Highlands and some areas of the Maya lowlands that were more sensitive to global climate change driven precipitation decreases. In these protected regions it is likely that irrespective of local policies the climate change signal would dominate.

Description: Tribal communities in the United States, particularly in coastal areas, are being forced to relocate due to accelerated rates of sea level rise, land erosion, and/or permafrost thaw brought on by climate change. Forced relocation and inadequate governance mechanisms and budgets to address climate change and support adaptation strategies may cause loss of community and culture, health impacts, and economic decline, further exacerbating tribal impoverishment and injustice. Sovereign tribal communities around the US, however, are using creative strategies to counter these losses. Taking a human rights approach, this article looks at communities’ advocacy efforts and strategies in dealing with climate change, displacement, and relocation. Case studies of Coastal Alaska and Louisiana are included to consider how communities are shaping their own relocation efforts in line with their cultural practices and values. The article concludes with recommendations on steps for moving forward toward community-led and government-supported resettlement programs.

Description: The Nooksack Indian Tribe (Tribe) inhabits the area around Deming, Washington, in the northwest corner of the state. The Tribe is dependent on various species of Pacific salmonids that inhabit the Nooksack River for ceremonial, commercial, and subsistence purposes. Of particular importance to the Tribe are spring Chinook salmon. Since European arrival, the numbers of fish that return to spawn have greatly diminished because of substantial loss of habitat primarily due to human-caused alteration of the watershed. Although direct counts are not available, it is estimated that native salmonid runs are less than 8 % of the runs in the late 1800’s. In addition, climate change has caused and will continue to cause an increase in winter flows, earlier snowmelt, decrease in summer baseflows, and an increase in water temperatures that exceed the tolerance levels, and in some cases lethal levels, of several Pacific salmonid species. The headwaters of the Nooksack River originate from glaciers on Mount Baker that have experienced significant changes over the last century due to climate change. Melt from the glaciers is a major source of runoff during the low-flow critical summer season, and climate change will have a direct effect on the magnitude and timing of stream flow in the Nooksack River. Understanding these changes is necessary to protect the Pacific salmonid species from the harmful effects of climate change. All nine salmonid species that inhabit the Nooksack River will be adversely affected by reduced summer flows and increased temperatures. The most important task ahead is the planning for, and implementation of, habitat restoration prior to climate change becoming more threatening to the survival of these important fish species. The Tribe has been collaboratively working with government agencies and scientists on the effects of climate change on the hydrology of the Nooksack River. The extinction of salmonids from the Nooksack River is unacceptable to the Tribe since it is dependent on these species and the Tribe is place-based and cannot relocate to areas where salmon will survive.

Description: Understanding vulnerability to the impacts of global environmental change and identifying adaptation measures to cope with these impacts require localized investigations that can help find actual and exact answers to the questions about who and what are vulnerable, to what are they vulnerable, how vulnerable are they, what are the causes of their vulnerability, and what responses can lessen their vulnerability. People living in forests are highly dependent on forest goods and services, and are vulnerable to forest changes both socially and economically. In the Congo basin, climate change effects on forest ecosystems are predicted to amplify the existing pressure on food security urging expansion of current agricultural lands at the expense of forest, biodiversity loss and socioeconomic stresses. The paper aimed at exploring vulnerability and adaptation needs to climate change of local communities in the humid forest zone of Cameroon. Field work was conducted in two forest communities in Lekié and in Yokadouma in the Center and Eastern Regions of Cameroon respectively. The assessment was done using a series of approaches including a preparatory phase, fieldwork proper, and validation of the results. Results show that: (a) the adverse effects of climate conditions to which these communities are exposed are already being felt and exerting considerable stress on most of their livelihoods resources; (b) drought, changing seasons, erratic rain patterns, heavy rainfall and strong winds are among the main climate-related disturbances perceived by populations in the project sites; (c) important social, ecological and economic processes over the past decades seemed to have shaped current vulnerability in the sites; (d) Some coping and adaptive strategies used so far are outdated; and specific adaptation needs are identified and suggestions for facilitating their long-term implementations provided.