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Background: Healthcare waste contributes substantially to the world's carbon footprint. Our aims are to review the current knowledge of Interventional Radiology (IR) waste generation and ways of reducing waste in practice, to quantify the environmental and financial impact of waste generated and address green initiatives to improve IR waste management. Methods: A systematic literature search was conducted in July 2022 using the Medline and Embase literature databases. The scope of the search included the field of IR as well as operating theatre literature, where relevant to IR practice. Results: One-hundred articles were reviewed and 68 studies met the inclusion criteria. Greening initiatives include reducing, reusing and recycling waste, as well as strict waste segregation. Interventional radiologists can engage with suppliers to reformulate procedure packs to minimize unnecessary items and packaging. Opened but unused equipment can be prevented if there is better communication within the team and increased staff awareness of wasted equipment cost. Incentives to use soon-to-expire equipment can be offered. Power consumption can be reduced by powering down operating room lights and workstations when not in use, changing to Light Emitting Diode (LED) and motion sensor lightings. Surgical hand wash can be replaced with alcohol-based hand rubs to reduce water usage. Common barriers to improving waste management include the lack of leadership, misconceptions regarding infectious risk, lack of data, concerns about increased workload, negative staff attitudes and resistance to change. Education remains a top priority to engage all staff in sustainable healthcare practices. Conclusion: Interventional radiologists have a crucial role to play in improving healthcare sustainability. By implementing small, iterative changes to our practice, financial savings, greater efficiency and improved environmental sustainability can be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geoengineering is defined as the 'deliberate and large-scale intervention in the Earth's climatic system with the aim of reducing global warming'. The technological proposals for doing this are highly speculative. Research is at an early stage, but there is a strong consensus that technologies would, if realisable, have profound and surprising ramifications. Geoengineering would seem to be an archetype of technology as social experiment, blurring lines that separate research from deployment and scientific knowledge from technological artefacts. Looking into the experimental systems of geoengineering, we can see the negotiation of what is known and unknown. The paper argues that, in renegotiating such systems, we can approach a new mode of governance-collective experimentation. This has important ramifications not just for how we imagine future geoengineering technologies, but also for how we govern geoengineering experiments currently under discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates historical growth and climate records among the oak sites representing the northern edge of species range in northernmost Europe (Finland). This is to characterize plant-climate interactions for a multitude of sites where oak decline has recently been observed and understand this most recent decline in the context of the past decline studies elsewhere. Further, our paper demonstrates the procedures the tree-ring data can be used in isolating those factors significantly contributing to decline. Our findings point towards complex tree mortality dynamics. Compared to oaks that remain healthy, the declining and dead oaks represent the trees clearly having suffered from competition and edaphic position within their site. This was indicated by their reduced growth rates and more drastic growth disturbance, with indications of reduced resilience. Growth of these trees was also deteriorated by cold soil temperatures during the dormancy in addition to summer droughts. By contrast, the growth of healthy oaks has been notably ameliorated by springtime soil warming over the past decades. The results demonstrate the climatic determinants for observed decline in the northern oak sites, which may become increasingly vulnerable to higher background tree mortality rates and die-off in response to future warming and drought, although their habitats are not normally considered water-limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fact of a carbon budget given commitment to limiting global-mean temperature increase to below 2 °C warming relative to pre-industrial levels makes CO2 emissions a scarce resource. This fact has significant consequences for the ethics of climate change. The paper highlights some of these consequences with respect to (a) applying principles of distributive justice to the allocation of rights to emissions and the costs of mitigation and adaptation, (b) compensation for the harms and risks of climate change, (c) radical new ideas about a place for criminal justice in tackling climate change, and (d) catastrophe ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, it has been observed that the weather is changing constantly because of global warming. The government is urging everyone, including scientists and the general public, to help address the severe challenges caused by climate change. Addressing the pivotal issue of carbon emissions stemming from transportation, this manuscript delves into the development of an efficient and coordinated management system. The proposed solution involves a green solid transportation system employing a two-stage network to implement a carbon cap and trade policy. A mathematical model is introduced to underscore the significance of this approach. Because of market fluctuations, supply and demand constraints are not always the same. Therefore, a two-folded uncertainty is included in this article for a better realistic outcome. A ranking defuzzification approach is employed to convert this uncertainty into a deterministic measure. Two illustrative numerical case studies are presented to underscore the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed approaches. Then, three multi-objective techniques are employed to obtain Pareto-optimal solutions for the addressed problem. After that, a comparative study among these techniques is introduced and a sensitivity analysis is added to explore how the objective functions are influenced by potential changes in supply and demand. In conclusion, the paper offers important insights and identifies areas for future research in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reducing uncertainty in the response of the Amazon rainforest, a vital component of the Earth system, to future climate change is crucial for refining climate projections. Here we demonstrate an emergent constraint (EC) on the future response of the Amazon carbon cycle to climate change across CMIP6 Earth system models. Models that overestimate past global warming trends, tend to estimate hotter and drier future Amazon conditions, driven by northward shifts of the intertropical convergence zone over the Atlantic Ocean, causing greater Amazon carbon loss. The proposed EC changes the mean CMIP6 Amazon climate-induced carbon loss estimate (excluding CO2 fertilisation and land-use change impacts) from −0.27 (−0.59–0.05) to −0.16 (−0.42–0.10) GtC year−1 at 4.4 °C warming level, reducing the variance by 34%. This study implies that climate-induced carbon loss in the Amazon rainforest by 2100 is less than thought and that past global temperature trends can be used to refine regional carbon cycle projections. A study shows an emergent constraint on the Amazon carbon cycle response to climate change. The CMIP6 ESMs that overestimate past global temperature trends, tend to project hotter, drier conditions and greater climate-induced Amazon carbon source. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Case studies from global cities contribute to more focused analyses of global warming challenges and demonstrate the performance and effectiveness of mitigation and adaptation strategies to identify lessons about success at the city scale. The case studies were chosen to demonstrate aspects of the critical messages for action priorities in global warming mitigation and adaptation. This work focuses on best practices and initiatives for mitigation and adaptation approaches from developed and developing economies, including North American cities, European cities, Asian cities, and other global cities worldwide. The case studies were grouped to examine, identify, and emphasize important factors in various areas (e.g., local programs and alliances, governance, stakeholder engagement, community actions, and scientific research) that determined the success of adaptation strategies in various global cities. Many recent studies showcase mitigation approaches, particularly those relating to blue-green infrastructure and nature-based strategies. The case studies selected reflect vulnerable regions and demonstrate how increasing global warming significantly concerns individuals, societies, and their infrastructure. The selected studies include Amsterdam in Netherlands; Singapore, as a city in a garden; Boston in USA; Ahmedabad Heat Action Plan in India, aimed at implementing strategies with the objectives of climate adaptation planning; Copenhagen, as a coastal town, is more susceptible to flooding; Portland, the most progressive city in USA; Hamburg in Germany, one of the biggest harbours in Europe; and the 'Rain City Strategy', in Vancouver, Canada. Not all global cities respond the same way, but undertaking joint complex efforts helps mitigate the impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A primary driver of deep-ocean mixing is breaking of internal tides generated via interactions of barotropic tides with topography. It is important to understand how the energy conversion from barotropic to internal tides responds to global warming. Here we address this question by applying a linear model of internal tide generation to coupled global climate model simulations under a high carbon emission scenario. The energy conversion to high-mode internal tides is projected to rise by about 8% by the end of the 21st century, whereas the energy conversion to low-mode internal tides remains nearly unchanged. The intensified near-bottom stratification under global warming increases energy conversion into both low and high-mode internal tides. In contrast, the intensified depth-averaged stratification reduces the modal horizontal wavenumber of internal tides, leading to increased (decreased) energy conversion into high (low)- mode internal tides. Our findings imply stronger mixing over rough topography under global warming, which should be properly parameterized in climate models for more accurate projections of future climate changes. The authors use a linear model of internal tide generation and an ensemble of coupled global climate model simulations under a high emission scenario, and find a significant enhancement of energy conversion to high-mode internal tides by the end of the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Different geographical zones have regional heterogeneity in underlying earth surface structure and microclimate which result in different evolution trends and their response to climate change varies in extreme rainfalls in these zones. In the Guizhou province of China, there are complex landforms, which lead to spatial redistribution of rainfall, frequent extreme rainfall, and disasters high risk of geologic disasters. Research on extreme climate in Guizhou mostly paid attention to its spatio-temporal characteristics and modeling, but lack of analysis on its characteristics of extreme rainfall variability and response to temperature changes under different subsurface conditions. This study investigated the characteristics of the extreme rainfall spatiotemporal and recurrence periods in Guizhou province and discussed the relationship between the response of extreme rainfall to temperature change. Daily rainfall data from 1990 to 2020 and 2021–2100 at 31 meteorological observation stations throughout the province were collected to calculate extreme precipitation. This research had the following results. (1) Both historical and future periods show an upward trend in extreme rainfall in Guizhou province, with a spatial distribution pattern of "high in the south and low in the north, high in the east and low in the west" and "high in the southeast and low in the northwest", respectively; the spatial distribution of extreme rainfall under each recurrence period is consistent with the non-recurrence period. (2) Both historical and future periods show an upward trend in temperature in Guizhou province, with a spatial distribution consistent with that of the extreme rainfall in the corresponding period. (3) The change in extreme rainfall intensity with increasing temperature is almost always greater than the C–C rate for different periods and underlying earth surface structure; Extreme rainfall has a Hook response structure to temperature change, and the climate response structure shifts to the right with climate warming. The results of the study can provide a basis for decision-making on regional disaster prevention and mitigation in the context of temperature change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Germination is a high-risk phase in a plant's life cycle and is directly regulated by temperature. Seeds germinate over a range of temperatures within which there is an optimum temperature, with thresholds above and below which no germination occurs. Rapid changes in temperature associated with global warming may cause a disconnect between temperatures a seed experiences and temperatures over which germination can occur. This paper explores the temperature dimension of the germination niche of eight herbaceous species from South West Western Australia as part of a broader assessment of endemic native species at risk of decline under global warming. The data obtained from germination studies on a temperature gradient plate were used to populate models to predict optimum germination responses (mean time to germination, germination timing and success) under current (1950–2000 averages) and future (2070 high greenhouse gas emission) temperature scenarios. The species exhibited a mix of germination responses, often with high tolerance to high diurnal temperatures. A number of species did not reach their full potential within the experimental period, indicating the presence of dormancy not overcome due to temperature alone. Modelling revealed that for some species the opportunity for germination may decline due to rising temperatures, but for others there would be little change, though a shift in germination timing may be expected. This approach to identifying extinction risk contributes tangibly to efforts to predict plant responses to environmental change and can help prioritize species for management actions, direct limited resources towards further investigations and supplement bioclimatic modelling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Impacts of global warming and local scale urbanization on precipitation are evident from observations; hence both must be considered in future projections of urban precipitation. Dynamic regional models at a fine spatial resolution can capture the signature of urbanization on precipitation, however simulations for multiple decades are computationally expensive. In contrast, statistical regional models are computationally inexpensive but incapable of assessing the impacts of urbanization due to the stationary relationship between predictors and predictand. This paper aims to develop a unique modelling framework with a demonstration for Mumbai, India, where future urbanization is projected using a Markov Chain Cellular Automata approach, long term projections with climate change impacts are performed using statistical downscaling and urban impacts are simulated with a dynamic regional model for limited number of years covering different precipitation characteristics. The evaluation of the statistical downscaling methodology over historical time period reveals large underestimation of the extreme rainfall, which is improved effectively by applying another regression model, for extreme days. The limited runs of dynamic downscaling models with different stages of urbanization for Mumbai, India, reveal spatially non uniform changes in precipitation, occurring primarily at the higher quantiles. The statistical and dynamical outputs are further integrated using quantile transformation for precipitation projection in Mumbai during 2050s. The projections show dominant impacts of urbanization compared to those from large scale changing patterns. The uniqueness of this computationally efficient framework lies in an integration of global and local factors for precipitation projections through a conjugal statistical–dynamical approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global warming is predicted to impact high-latitude and high-altitude forests severely, jeopardizing their overall functioning and carbon storage, both of which depend on the warming response of tree fine root systems. This paper investigates the effect of soil warming on the biomass, morphology and colonizing ectomycorrhizal community of spruce fine and absorptive fine roots. We compare the responses of spruce roots growing at a man-made long-term soil warming (+ 4°C) experiment to results obtained from a geothermal soil temperature gradient (+ 1 to + 14°C) extending to the forest die-off edge, to shed light on the generalizability of the warming response and reveal any thresholds in acclimation ability. Trees in warmer soils formed longer and less-branched absorptive roots with higher specific root length and area, and lower root tissue density in both spruce stands, irrespective of warming method and location. Soil warming at the experimental warming site also supported the occurrence of a more varied EcM community and an increase in the abundance of Tomentella spp., indicating a shift in nutrient foraging. Fine and absorptive fine root biomass decreased toward warmer soil, with a sharp reduction occurring between + 4 and + 6°C from the ambient and leading to the collapse of the fine root system at the geothermal gradient. At the experimental warming site, the applied + 4°C warming had no effect on fine and absorptive fine root biomass. The similar fine root responses at the two warming sites suggest that the observations possibly reflect general acclimation patterns in spruce forests to global warming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The traditional dynamical downscaling (TDD) method employs continuous integration of regional climate models (RCM) with the general circulation model (GCM) providing the initial and lateral boundary conditions. Dynamical downscaling simulations are constrained by physical principles and can generate a full set of climate information, providing one of the important approaches to projecting fine spatial-scale future climate information. However, the systematic biases of climate models often degrade the TDD simulations and hinder the application of dynamical downscaling in the climate-change related studies. New methods developed over past decades improve the performance of dynamical downscaling simulations. These methods can be divided into four groups: the TDD method, the pseudo global warming method, dynamical downscaling with GCM bias corrections, and dynamical downscaling with both GCM and RCM bias corrections. These dynamical downscaling methods are reviewed and compared in this paper. The merits and limitations of each dynamical downscaling method are also discussed. In addition, the challenges and potential directions in progressing dynamical downscaling methods are stated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pledge-and-review architecture of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change has been praised as a new model of global environmental governance. Instead of internationally agreed-upon emission reduction targets, the agreement relies on countries' repeated, voluntary pledges and actions. A key mechanism for monitoring progress toward shared global goals, putting pressure on countries to live up to their promises, and increasing ambition over time is the global stocktake. The stocktake's twin-purposes to act simultaneously as a review and ambition mechanism render it a global governance innovation. Absent a clear institutional precedent, the global stocktake presents a design challenge for the climate negotiation community. This paper develops a number of lessons for designing the stocktaking process based on a review of relevant scholarship and an analysis of the 2013-2015 Periodic Review as a limited precedent within the climate regime. While we cannot predict what will make the stocktake successful, these design principles could increase the chances for its effectiveness. These lessons offer potential guidance for decision-makers with implications for the future effectiveness of the Paris Agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A host of environmental consequences will result from global warming, but arguably, the effect on water resources is one of the most consequential. This paper synthesizes results of published modeling studies that examined the groundwater system and hydrologic cycle under the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 scenario (CO2 at 936-ppm level at year 2100). Natural replenishment of groundwater occurs predominantly from infiltration of precipitation and surface impoundments. Therefore, the first stage of the study was to review a changed hydrologic cycle under RCP 8.5 in terms of influence from (1) precipitation, evapotranspiration, and soil moisture; (2) surface water and its interaction with groundwater; (3) extreme hydrologic events, and (4) teleconnection patterns. The general pattern of climate impact on groundwater resources follows the precipitation pattern with depletion in tropical and/or subtropical regions and with increase in the high-latitude regions of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. However, regional variability also corresponds to the heterogenous impact of climate changes on regional distribution of precipitation and evapotranspiration, localized interaction between surface water and groundwater, and distances from the oceans with rising sea level. The decline of the water table in many areas may seriously reduce irrigated crop production and adversely impact groundwater-dependent ecosystems. Relatively fewer studies have been conducted on climate-change impacts on groundwater resources compared to surface-water systems, and the uncertainties on the recharge estimates are large. There appears to be an urgent need for including groundwater systems in climate impact assessment and in climate mitigation strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to gain empirical footing on the mechanisms that drive and mitigate global warming, which is a topic of growing significance to themes of social justice. Using components of the ecological footprint, we construct a measure of each nation's relative contributions to carbon dioxide emissions after accounting for the amount sequestered by domestic forestlands. We refer to this measure as the 'climate footprint,' and construct a structural equation model to test key theorizations in the environmental sociology literature. We add to this body of work by incorporating and empirically testing ecofeminist positions that the status of women is a cause and an effect of environmental conditions. Results suggest women and the environment are interconnected dimensions of exploitation, as ecological losses weaken women's status in nations. We also find that nations with greater female representation in governing bodies have lower climate footprints, controlling for domestic (urbanization, production) and global (world-system integration) drivers. Conclusions point to the potential for gender equality and improving the status of women worldwide to curtail climate change. Other theoretical and empirical implications are treated, including the benefits of bringing women into theories of the environment and the utility of structural equation techniques for testing hypotheses that specify direct and indirect connections among relevant predictors and the outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sugarcane is an economically important crop in Fiji as it has considerable impact on the gross domestic product and around 22% (200,000) of the population is directly or indirectly dependent on the sugarcane industry. Considering the importance of this crop, a life cycle assessment (LCA) was performed in order to understand environmental impacts. In this paper, Fijian sugarcane production was assessed to produce a set of LCA results for defined impacts. The results can be used in subsequent assessments of sugarcane-related products and provide significant insights into the current impacts. Life cycle impact assessment results were generated using CML, ReCiPe and Impact 2002 + models running in Open LCA software using the Ecoinvent database. This connected the system flows and process flow to the product systems in order to calculate the life cycle impact assessment results to be based on local data for comparable and accurate evaluation. Previous analysis revealed that sugarcane production has a considerable impact on global warming potential because of the significant use of fossil fuels in farm machineries and transportation, and the production and use of agrochemicals. Results from this study show that sugarcane production has least impact on ozone layer depletion. Fertilizer production and usage was found to be one of the key issues affecting various impact categories. These results will assist further assessments on the sugarcane products and systems. However, in order to further develop the LCA tool for Fijian agricultural systems, development and testing of life cycle impact assessment models is necessary for Fijian conditions. This will ensure further accuracy of model outputs and supply more realistic and real-time results on emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines farm household-level impacts of climate change by examining the relationship between climatic variables and Vietnamese agricultural output. The Ricardian technique is applied with panel data which accounts for both adaptation strategies and household characteristics. This study proposes a two-stage Hsiao model to correct for collinearity between climatic variables and individual effects. The results show that in the dry season, increases in temperatures are beneficial to all farms in the warmer southern regions, while increases in precipitation will damage only irrigated farms in the Central and South regions. The impact of higher temperature in the wet season is similar, except that it will negatively affect net revenue of irrigated farms in the long run. More rainfall in the wet season will increase net revenue in the North region only. Finally, this study combines the estimated results with future climate scenarios to predict how future changes in climate will affect farmers on aggregate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a brief critique of anthropocentrism and introduces the papers of the special theme issue on 'non-anthropocentric conceptions of nature.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite an exponential growth in the volume of adaptation research over the last decade, there is still a research gap in regard to the provision of suitable information to adequately inform climate change adaptation policy makers. Contributing to this gap is a paucity of research reporting on the effectiveness of implemented adaptation strategies. This paper reports on the success, failures and future risks of the responses taken by the South East Queensland (SEQ) water sector during the Millennium Drought. The adaptation strategy employed a portfolio approach mixing 'hard' and 'soft' adaptations. Strategies included the following: large-scale water manufacturing facilities and distribution networks; the exploitation of local water resources; regulatory instruments; institutional reforms; support for research and training and a range of demand management programmes. The strategies employed were innovative and in many cases required rigorous scientific evidence for their development, implementation and follow-up assessments. However, we show that there has been considerable disparity between anticipated and actual policy outcomes, which points to maladaptive consequences. By revisiting the effectiveness of implemented adaptation strategies in the SEQ water sector, our paper provides evidence for the need for integrative studies with genuine policy integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, climate and environment changes since the Little Ice Age have become a focus in modern research. The paper selected the sediment (77 cm) of Sihu Lake, which was located in Guilin, southern China, as the research object and analyzed the karst wetland environmental changes within nearly 450 years. According to the vertical profile of indicators and geochemical elements in sediment core, the regional environmental evolution was divided into four stages. The former two stages were mainly influenced by Little Ice Age (1562–1895). The third stage climate has changed slowly. The fourth stage was mainly affected by human activities and global warming. The factor analysis of geochemical elements indicated that karst wetland regional environmental change was affected by four major factors. In the 53–77 cm stage (1562–1703), F1 (erosion factor), F2 (watershed runoff and diagenesis factor) and F3 (regional background factor) were reduced, indicating that it was in cold and dry stage of Little Ice Age. In the 20–53 cm stage (1703–1895), F1 and F2 increased, indicating that it was in cold and wet stage of Little Ice Age. In the 4–20 cm stage (1895–1987), F1, F2 and F4 (human activity factor) increased slowly, indicating that the climate was affected by global warming and more precipitation. In the 0–4 cm stage (1987–2007), F1 and F2 reduced and F4 increased, indicating the reduced precipitation, rising temperature and more impact of human activities. In addition, it was proposed that the Little Ice Age in Guilin District in southern China started in the 1560s and lasted until the 1895s or so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one by Professor Gerald North on current condition of climate change science and another on the truth state of learning on global warming.

As an important cause of global warming, CO2 concentrations and their changes have aroused worldwide concern. Establishing explicit understanding of the spatial and temporal distributions of CO2 concentrations at regional scale is a crucial technical problem for climate change research. High accuracy surface modeling (HASM) is employed in this paper using the output of the CO2 concentrations from weather research and forecasting-chemistry (WRF-CHEM) as the driving fields, and the greenhouse gases observing satellite (GOSAT) retrieval XCO2 data as the accuracy control conditions to obtain high accuracy XCO2 fields. WRF-CHEM is an atmospheric chemical transport model designed for regional studies of CO2 concentrations. Verified by ground- and space-based observations, WRF-CHEM has a limited ability to simulate the conditions of CO2 concentrations. After conducting HASM, we obtain a higher accuracy distribution of the CO2 in North China than those calculated using the classical Kriging and inverse distance weighted (IDW) interpolation methods, which were often used in past studies. The cross-validation also shows that the averaging mean absolute error (MAE) of the results from HASM is 1.12 ppmv, and the averaging root mean square error (RMSE) is 1.41 ppmv, both of which are lower than those of the Kriging and IDW methods. This study also analyses the space-time distributions and variations of the XCO2 from the HASM results. This analysis shows that in February and March, there was the high value zone in the southern region of study area relating to heating in the winter and the dense population. The XCO2 concentration decreased by the end of the heating period and during the growing period of April and May, and only some relatively high value zones continued to exist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summer precipitation anomalies over eastern China are characterized spatially by meridionally banded structures fluctuating on interannual and interdecadal timescales, leading to regional droughts and floods. In addition to long-term trends, how these patterns may change under global warming has important implications for agricultural planning and water resources over this densely populated area. Using the latest Hadley Centre climate model, HadGEM3-GC2, this paper investigates the potential response of summer precipitation patterns over this region, by comparing the leading modes between a 4×CO2 simulation and the model’s pre-industrial control simulation. Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) analyses show that the first two leading modes account for about 20% of summer rainfall variability. EOF1 is a monopole mode associated with the developing phase of ENSO events and EOF2 is a dipole mode associated with the decaying phase of ENSO. Under 4×CO2 forcing, the dipole mode with a south-north orientation becomes dominant because of a strengthened influence from excessive warming of the Indian Ocean. On interdecadal time scales, the first EOF looks very different from the control simulation, showing a dipole mode of east-west contrast with enhanced influence from high latitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on changes in the dates of the beginning, end, and duration of the stable cold and warm seasons in Russia in the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. For 2001-2015, the duration of the cold period was significantly reduced by 30 days almost throughout the country. In the eastern European part of Russia, Southern Urals, these changes were caused by a later beginning of the winter; on the remaining territory, this happened because of the date shifting for both the beginning and the end of the stable cold season. The duration of the warm period increases everywhere due to the earlier end of the spring, except for south of the European part of Russia, Southern Yakutia, and the northern part of Western Siberia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Floods have changed in a complex manner, triggered by the changing environment (i.e., intensified human activities and global warming). Hence, for better flood control and mitigation in the future, bivariate frequency analysis of flood and extreme precipitation events is of great necessity to be performed within the context of changing environment. Given this, in this paper, the Pettitt test and wavelet coherence transform analysis are used in combination to identify the period with transformed flood-generating mechanism. Subsequently, the primary and secondary return periods of annual maximum flood (AMF) discharge and extreme precipitation (Pr) during the identified period are derived based on the copula. Meanwhile, the conditional probability of occurring different flood discharge magnitudes under various extreme precipitation scenarios are estimated using the joint dependence structure between AMF and Pr. Moreover, Monte Carlo-based algorithm is performed to evaluate the uncertainties of the above copula-based analyses robustly. Two catchments located on the Loess plateau are selected as study regions, which are Weihe River Basin (WRB) and Jinghe River Basin (JRB). Results indicate that: (1) the 1994-2014 and 1981-2014 are identified as periods with transformed flood-generating mechanism in the WRB and JRB, respectively; (2) the primary and secondary return periods for AMF and Pr are examined. Furthermore, chance of occurring different AMF under varying Pr scenarios also be elucidated according to the joint distribution of AMF and Pr. Despite these, one thing to notice is that the associate uncertainties are considerable, thus greatly challenges measures of future flood mitigation. Results of this study offer technical reference for copula-based frequency analysis under changing environment at regional and global scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As climate change continues to alter local weather patterns, it is important to understand how people are experiencing such changes because personal experience may affect mitigation and adaptation policy preferences and behaviors. Local weather conditions are also an easily accessible source of information that, aggregated over time, may enable people to detect long-term climate trends and update their beliefs about global warming. However, motivated reasoning—the tendency to fit information to conclusions that correspond with a preexisting belief—may limit the accuracy of local weather perceptions. This paper focuses on perceptions of seasonal weather in Norway and examines evidence for motivated reasoning consistent with pre-existing beliefs about climate change, using a national panel survey combined with high-resolution seasonal climate observations. Respondents’ perceptions are sensitive to observed differences in both temperature and precipitation, but respondents are more likely to accurately perceive local precipitation than local temperature. Controlling for observed conditions, beliefs about global climate change had a large effect on perceptions of seasonal temperature, and smaller effects on perceptions of seasonal precipitation. These findings provide evidence that individual perceptions of seasonal weather are related to local conditions, but they are also likely to be motivated by beliefs about global climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As vectors, mosquitoes transmit numerous mosquito-borne diseases. Among the many factors affecting the distribution and density of mosquitoes, climate change and warming have been increasingly recognized as major ones. In this paper, we make use of three diffusive logistic models with free boundary in one space dimension to explore the impact of climate warming on the movement of mosquito range. First, a general model incorporating temperature change with location and time is introduced. In order to gain insights of the model, a simplified version of the model with the change of temperature depending only on location is analyzed theoretically, for which the dynamical behavior is completely determined and presented. The general model can be modified into a more realistic one of seasonal succession type, to take into account of the seasonal changes of mosquito movements during each year, where the general model applies only for the time period of the warm seasons of the year, and during the cold season, the mosquito range is fixed and the population is assumed to be in a hibernating status. For both the general model and the seasonal succession model, our numerical simulations indicate that the long-time dynamical behavior is qualitatively similar to the simplified model, and the effect of climate warming on the movement of mosquitoes can be easily captured. Moreover, our analysis reveals that hibernating enhances the chances of survival and successful spreading of the mosquitoes, but it slows down the spreading speed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tropical glaciers are extremely sensitive to a warming climate. In this paper, the evolution of the remaining tropical glaciers in Australasia (Irian Jaya, Indonesia) during the period 1988-2015 was quantified. Landsat series images, a digital elevation model from SRTM, and previously published data were used. Estimated total glacier area in 1988, 1993, 1997 and 2004 was 3.85 km2±0.13 km2, 3.01 km2±0.08 km2, 2.49 km2±0.07 km2 and 1.725 km2 ±0.042 km2, respectively. Only 0.58 km2±0.016 km2 glacierized area remained in 2015 in Puncak Jaya, which is about 84.9% loss in just 27 years. If this rate continued, the remaining tropical glaciers in Australasia would disappear in the 2020s. Timeseries analysis of climate variables showed significant positive trends in air temperature (0.009°C per year) and relative humidity (0.43% per year) but no considerable tendency was observed for precipitation. Warming climate together with mining activities would accelerate loss of glacier coverage in this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analysis of initialised decadal hindcasts of the North Atlantic subpolar gyre (SPG) using the HiGEM model, which has a nominal grid-spacing of 90 km in the atmosphere, and 1/3∘ in the ocean. HiGEM decadal predictions (HiGEM-DP) exhibit significant skill at capturing 0–500 m ocean heat content in the SPG, and outperform historically forced transient integrations and persistence for up to a decade ahead. An analysis of case-studies of North Atlantic decadal change, including the 1960s cooling, the mid-1990s warming, and the post-2005 cooling, show that changes in ocean circulation and heat transport dominate the predictions of the SPG. However, different processes are found to dominate heat content changes in different regions of the SPG. Specifically, ocean advection dominates in the east, but surface fluxes dominate in the west. Furthermore, compared to previous studies, we find a smaller role for ocean heat transport changes due to ocean circulation anomalies at the latitudes of the SPG, and, for the 1960s cooling, a greater role for surface fluxes. Finally, HiGEM-DP predicts the observed positive state of the North Atlantic Oscillation in the early 1990s. These results support an important role for the ocean in driving past changes in the North Atlantic region, and suggest that these changes were predictable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper combines available assessments on the impacts of climate change with climate projections from an earth system model to estimate the economic consequences for 15 sectors in 11 world regions. If the standard way of thinking about how economies work, the theory of market equilibrium, applies. The aim is to identify potential sources of conflicts between economic interests if the world succeeds in reducing emissions from a pathway with high emissions, where temperatures increase at around +6 °C in 2100 to a lower emission path, where the temperatures increase by +3 °C. Both pathways are recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as standard descriptions of anthropogenic drivers for climate modelling. It is difficult to identify conflicts between developed and developing regions, but conflicts between sector interests are apparent. Fossil fuel extracting industries lose by mitigation in all regions. Nearly all other sectors gain in all regions. The results also reveal potential conflicts between socioeconomic groups. The main challenges relate to conflicts of interest between generations. The present generation can commence on a transformation to low-carbon economies without notable economic consequences, but the next generation stands to lose, while generations beyond will clearly gain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sea-level rise, as a result of global warming, may lead to more natural disasters in coastal regions where there are substantial aggregations of population and property. Thus, this paper focuses on the impact of sea-level rise on the recurrence periods of extreme water levels fitted using the Pearson type III (P-III) model. Current extreme water levels are calculated using observational data, including astronomical high tides and storm surges, while future extreme water levels are determined by superposing scenario data of sea-level rise onto current extreme water levels. On the basis of a case study using data from Shandong Province, China, results indicated that sea-level rise would significantly shorten the recurrence periods of extreme water levels, especially under higher representative concentration pathway (RCP) scenarios. Results showed that by the middle of the century, 100-year current extreme water levels for all stations would translate into once in 15-30 years under RCP 2.6, and once in ten to 25 years under RCP 8.5. Most seriously, the currently low probability event of a 1000-year recurrence would become common, occurring nearly every 10 years by 2100, based on projections under RCP 8.5. Therefore, according to this study, corresponding risk to coastlines could well be increase in future, as the recurrence periods of extreme water levels would be shortened with climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many environmental externalities occur with time lags that can range from a few days to several centuries in length, and many of these externalities are also subject to uncertainty. In this paper, we examine the key features of an optimal policy to manage environmental externalities that are both lagged and stochastic. We develop a two-period, two-polluter model and obtain closed-form solutions for optimal emissions levels under different combinations of damage functions and stochastic processes. These solutions show that it is not obvious whether greater control should be exerted on polluters that generate externalities with longer lags or on polluters that generate externalities with shorter lags. We find that the optimal ranking of polluters with respect to the length of the time lag associated with their externality will depend on (a) the discount rate, (b) conditional expectations of future states of the polluted resource, (c) persistence of the pollutant, and (d) initial conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, climate change as a consequence of global warming, has garnered significant attention. Therefore, serious measures must be considered in the development planning process to adapt to and reduce effects of climate change. This research evaluates six development plans in Isfahan, Iran in the face of climate change effects using a framework consisting of three components of the analytical Awareness-Analysis-Action (A-A-A) approach and using quantitative and qualitative content analysis methods. In fact, the evaluation of the level of attention of the development plans from the perspective of the level of reflection and attention to raising awareness about the issues of climate change, the ability to analyze the available climate information in a useful way to support planning decisions and the level of special actions to deal with these changes. Finally, out of the three elements of the approach, the highest amount of attention in the plans is related to the element of action with 67/70% and the lowest is related to the element of awareness with 39/10%. The overall evaluation of the development plans shows that their role in integrating climate change issues into urban planning in Iran is still limited and insufficient. On the other hand, air pollution and climate change are closely related, as chemicals that cause air quality deterioration often enter together with greenhouse gases. Therefore, it can be said that although indicators of the transportation dimension (A3-J) with 80.66%, resource management have been given special attention under the action component, but carbon sequestration dimension (A2-F) with 14.63%, under the analysis component that seeks to evaluate the amount of air pollutants, classification of the type and sources of emission of pollutants could not reflect more than half of the total percentage in all development plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Understanding the effects of climate change on agro-ecosystems is fundamental in order to select the optimum management practices to mitigate environmental pressures. There is a need to forecast greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) emissions of grassland systems under climate change scenarios whilst also accounting for SOC sequestration. The objective of this study is to assess the net GHG emissions over > 405,000 hectares (ha) of moist temperate Northern Spanish grasslands utilised for dairy production, under climate change conditions (i.e., RCP 4.5, and RCP 8.5), compared to a reference baseline scenario. It is hypothesised that net GHG will increase under climate change conditions and that implementing specific manure management practices (namely the anaerobic digestion (AD)) may mitigate the global warming effect. Methods: We used an integrated modelling framework comprising: (i) geographic information systems (GIS); (ii) a modified RothC version to simulate SOC changes in managed grasslands under moist temperate conditions; and (iii) Tier 2 recent IPCC methods to estimate GHG emissions. Results: Average net GHG emissions contributed to global warming potential with average emissions of 5.8 and 6.2 Mg CO2-e ha−1 year−1, under RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5, respectively. Anaerobic digestion allowed net GHG under both climate change scenarios to equal net GHG under the baseline reference scenario. Conclusion: Under climate change conditions, implementing specific manure management practices, namely AD, will likely reduce the net GHG emissions of the grassland systems associated with dairy production in Northern Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the fundamental questions in population dynamics concerns the criterion for the persistence or extinction of a biological species subjected to their habitat changes. In this communication, to understand more clearly the impact of climate change on the global dynamics of mosquitoes proposed in Bao (JMB 76:841-875, 2018), we consider a reaction-diffusion free boundary model with conditional dispersal in a heterogeneous environment. Our main interest is to study long-time dynamics of solutions assuming that the environment is globally unfavorable determined by a spectral condition at infinity. The mathematical models to describe the dynamics of a population facing climate change have arisen many challenges in science and application and our result makes a theoretically substantial contribution besides the previous works (Bao in JMB 76:841-875, 2018; Monobe in JDE 261:6144-6177, 2016; Shen in JMB 84:30-42, 2022; Shen in JDE 269:6236-6268, 2020; Vo in JDE 259:4947-4988, 2015) for the study of the impact of the climate change with the conditional dispersal and free boundary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Faced with global climate change, local elites are confronted with the main dilemma of a developing country: development requires economic growth, but this effort also requires consideration of environmental factors and sustainable patterns of production and consumption. Based on empirical evidence from qualitative research on businesses and political elites in Chile-a paradigmatic South American middle-income country-this paper explores the extent to which local elites are aware of the severity of challenges posed by global climate change and identify main climate change concerns in their discourse. The degree to which domestic elites are aware of the paradigm shift they must assume toward clean industrial production is a key issue of environmental governance that involves private non-governmental actors. This paper gives clues to a better understanding of what is happening with strategic actors in developing nations and their understanding of their decision-making capacity concerning environmental policy and investments for facing global climate change. The main conclusion of the research is that awareness of climate change in local elites' discourse is relative. It is not accompanied by a full acceptance of their agency and is not leading to a paradigm shift toward a clean model of development because of domestic elites' position within globalization processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent winter seasons have evidenced that global warming does not exclude the occurrence of exceptionally cold and/or snowy episodes in the Northern mid-latitudes. The expected rarefaction of such events is likely to exacerbate both their societal and environmental impacts. This paper therefore aims to evaluate model uncertainties underlying the fate of wintertime cold extremes over Europe. Understanding why climate models (1) still show deficiencies in simulating present-day features and (2) differ in their responses under future scenarios for the twentyfirst century indeed constitutes a crucial challenge. Here we propose a weather-regime approach in order to separate the contributions of large-scale circulation and non-dynamical processes to biases or changes in the simulated mean and extreme temperatures. We illustrate our methodology from the wintertime occurrence of extremely cold days in idealized atmosphere-only experiments performed with two of the CMIP5 climate models (CNRM-CM5 and IPSL-CM5A-LR). First we find that most of the present-day temperature biases are due to systematic errors in non-dynamical processes, while the main features of the large-scale dynamics are well captured in such experiments driven by observed sea-surface temperatures, with the exception of a generalized underestimation of blocking episodes. Then we show that uncertainties associated with changes in large-scale circulation modulate the depletion in cold extremes under an idealized scenario for the late twentyfirst century. These preliminary results suggest that the original methodology proposed in this paper can be helpful for understanding spreads of larger model-ensembles when simulating the response of temperature extremes to climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The projected climate change signals of a five-member high resolution ensemble, based on two global climate models (GCMs: ECHAM5 and CCCma3) and two regional climate models (RCMs: CLM and WRF) are analysed in this paper (Part II of a two part paper). In Part I the performance of the models for the control period are presented. The RCMs use a two nest procedure over Europe and Germany with a final spatial resolution of 7 km to downscale the GCM simulations for the present (1971-2000) and future A1B scenario (2021-2050) time periods. The ensemble was extended by earlier simulations with the RCM REMO (driven by ECHAM5, two realisations) at a slightly coarser resolution. The climate change signals are evaluated and tested for significance for mean values and the seasonal cycles of temperature and precipitation, as well as for the intensity distribution of precipitation and the numbers of dry days and dry periods. All GCMs project a significant warming over Europe on seasonal and annual scales and the projected warming of the GCMs is retained in both nests of the RCMs, however, with added small variations. The mean warming over Germany of all ensemble members for the fine nest is in the range of 0.8 and 1.3 K with an average of 1.1 K. For mean annual precipitation the climate change signal varies in the range of −2 to 9 % over Germany within the ensemble. Changes in the number of wet days are projected in the range of ±4 % on the annual scale for the future time period. For the probability distribution of precipitation intensity, a decrease of lower intensities and an increase of moderate and higher intensities is projected by most ensemble members. For the mean values, the results indicate that the projected temperature change signal is caused mainly by the GCM and its initial condition (realisation), with little impact from the RCM. For precipitation, in addition, the RCM affects the climate change signal significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a vote-counting procedure to estimate the probability density function of the total economic impact as a parabolic function of global warming. There is a wide range of uncertainty about the impact of climate change up to 3°C, and the information becomes progressively more diffuse beyond that. Warming greater than 3°C most likely has net negative impacts, and warming greater than 7°C may lead to a total welfare loss. The expected value of the social cost of carbon is about $29/tC in 2015 and rises at roughly 2% per year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Expanding on some ideas introduced in the paper by Albe and Gombert () ' Students' communication, argumentation and knowledge in a citizen' conference on global warming', I explore two issues relevant to their work: global warming (GW) as a socioscientific controversy and scientific literacy in regards to climate change science. For the first issue, the definition of GW socioscientific controversy provided in the article raises controversies in both scientific communities and society or social groups concerned by the issue. I review this from two perspectives that can be considered at the extreme ends of a spectrum of perspectives. I then address the role of debates in education about global warming and climate change and suggest a new type of classroom debates to replace those addressing the existence and cause of global warming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global warming is now recognized as a significant threat to sustainable development on an international scale. One of the key challenges in mounting a global response to it is the seeming unwillingness of the fastest growing economies such as China and India to sign a treaty that limits their emissions. The aim of this paper is to examine the differential incentives of countries on different trajectories of capital growth. A benchmark dynamic game to study global warming, introduced in Dutta and Radner (J Econ Behav Organ, ), is generalized to allow for exogenous capital accumulation. It is shown that the presence of capital exacerbates the 'tragedy of the common'. Furthermore, even with high discount factors, the threat of reverting to the inefficient 'tragedy' equilibrium is not sufficient to deter the emissions growth of the fastest growing economies-in contrast to standard folk theorem like results. However, foreign aid can help. If the slower growth economies-like the United States and Western Europe-are willing to make transfers to China and India, then the latter can be incentivized to cut emissions. Such an outcome is Pareto improving for both slower and faster growth economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In evaluating international treaties, in particular, the United Nations Framework on Climate Change Convention, this paper shows that necessary preparations have not been made to protect the rights of individuals who are refugees or have been forced to migrate from their homeland. Immigrants are deprived of the most essential human rights, such as language, culture, and having a right to a healthy living environment. The current legal administration has not made the necessary contingencies for responding to the environmental consequences of immigration and is extremely inefficient in expanding this phenomenon. This paper seeks to address the question of to what extent existing forms of legal and operational protection can apply in climate change-related displacement in general and cross-border displacement in particular. In this work some strategies have been proposed for dealing with these existing gaps. It is expected that analyzing these gaps and determining the international community's duties and commitments (governments and international organizations) can result in efficient management of this crisis and prevent the outbreak of chaos across the globe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent does economic analysis of climate change depend on low-probability, high-impact events? This question has received a great deal of attention lately, with the contention increasingly made that climate damage could be so large that societal willingness to pay to avoid extreme outcomes should overwhelm other seemingly important assumptions, notably on time preference. This paper provides an empirical examination of some key theoretical points, using a probabilistic integrated assessment model. New, fat-tailed distributions are inputted for key parameters representing climate sensitivity and economic costs. It is found that welfare estimates do strongly depend on tail risks, but for a set of plausible assumptions time preference can still matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes seasonal peculiarities of modern climate warming in the European region. It is shown that warming scenarios considerably differ in cold and warm periods of the year. The warming is accompanied with growth and considerable change in the phase of the yearly cycle in solarity data. A strong half-year cycle is recognized in seasonal variation of long-term trends over the last few years. Peculiarities of climate change in Europe and the increased influence of the tropics are discussed in view of the results obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that the climate projection using climate models that took account of both human and natural factors provided credible quantitative estimates of future climate change; however, the mismatches between the IPCC AR4 model ensembles and the observations, especially the multi-decadal variability (MDV), have cast shadows on the confidence of the model-based decadal projections of future climate. This paper reports an evaluation of many individual runs of AR4 models in the simulation of past global mean temperature. We find that most of the individual model runs fail to reproduce the MDV of past climate, which may have led to the overestimation of the projection of global warming for the next 40 years or so. Based on such an evaluation, we propose an alternative approach, in which the MDV signal is taken into account, to project the global mean temperature for the next 40 years and obtain that the global warming during 2011-2050 could be much smaller than the AR4 projection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate changes in the wave climate of the west-European shelf seas under global warming scenarios. In particular, climate change wind fields corresponding to the present (control) time-slice 1961-2000 and the future (scenario) time-slice 2061-2100 are used to drive a wave generation model to produce equivalent control and scenario wave climate. Yearly and seasonal statistics of the scenario wave climates are compared individually to the corresponding control wave climate to identify relative changes of statistical significance between present and future extreme and prevailing wave heights. Using global, regional and linked global-regional wind forcing over a set of nested computational domains, this paper further demonstrates the sensitivity of the results to the resolution and coverage of the forcing. It suggests that the use of combined forcing from linked global and regional climate models of typical resolution and coverage is a good option for the investigation of relative wave changes in the region of interest of this study. Coarse resolution global forcing alone leads to very similar results over regions that are highly exposed to the Atlantic Ocean. In contrast, fine resolution regional forcing alone is shown to be insufficient for exploring wave climate changes over the western European waters because of its limited coverage. Results obtained with the combined global-regional wind forcing showed some consistency between scenarios. In general, it was shown that mean and extreme wave heights will increase in the future only in winter and only in the southwest of UK and west of France, north of about 44-45° N. Otherwise, wave heights are projected to decrease, especially in summer. Nevertheless, this decrease is dominated by local wind waves whilst swell is found to increase. Only in spring do both swell and local wind waves decrease in average height. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Merck suppressed data on harmful effects of its drug Vioxx, and Guidant suppressed data on electrical flaws in one of its heart-defibrillator models. Both cases reveal how financial conflicts of interest can skew biomedical research. Such conflicts also occur in electric-utility-related research. Attempting to show that increased atomic energy can help address climate change, some industry advocates claim nuclear power is an inexpensive way to generate low-carbon electricity. Surveying 30 recent nuclear analyses, this paper shows that industry-funded studies appear to fall into conflicts of interest and to illegitimately trim cost data in several main ways. They exclude costs of full-liability insurance, underestimate interest rates and construction times by using 'overnight' costs, and overestimate load factors and reactor lifetimes. If these trimmed costs are included, nuclear-generated electricity can be shown roughly 6 times more expensive than most studies claim. After answering four objections, the paper concludes that, although there may be reasons to use reactors to address climate change, economics does not appear to be one of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

wide variety of scenarios for future development have played significant roles in climate policy discussions. This paper presents projections of greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations, sea level rise due to thermal expansion and glacial melt, oceanic acidity, and global mean temperature increases computed with the MIT Integrated Global Systems Model (IGSM) using scenarios for twenty-first century emissions developed by three different groups: intergovernmental (represented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), government (represented by the U.S. government Climate Change Science Program) and industry (represented by Royal Dutch Shell plc). In all these scenarios the climate system undergoes substantial changes. By 2100, the CO concentration ranges from 470 to 1020 ppm compared to a 2000 level of 365 ppm, the CO-equivalent concentration of all greenhouse gases ranges from 550 to 1780 ppm in comparison to a 2000 level of 415 ppm, oceanic acidity changes from a current pH of around 8 to a range from 7.63 to 7.91, in comparison to a pH change from a preindustrial level by 0.1 unit. The global mean temperature increases by 1.8 to 7.0°C relative to 2000. Such increases will require considerable adaptation of many human systems and will leave some aspects of the earth's environment irreversibly changed. Thus, the remarkable aspect of these different approaches to scenario development is not the differences in detail and philosophy but rather the similar picture they paint of a world at risk from climate change even if there is substantial effort to reduce emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I review methodologies to assess strategies of greenhouse gas emissions reduction by installing existing technologies and by investing in research and development of advanced technologies, expressed as 'greenhouse insurance' by Manne and Richels (Buying greenhouse insurance: the economic costs of CO emissionlimits. The MIT Press, Cambridge, 1992), under several sorts of uncertainty. While the authors of some advanced studies have applied exogenous and endogenous stochastic processes to deal with the uncertainty in their mathematical models on the economic assessment of climate change, this review points out some room for improving these approaches in ways that will result in more reasonable hedging strategies to cope with uncertain climate change, taking into account up-to-date research trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]