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The article presents information on a study conducted on a 500 year model simulation of the mid-Pliocene Warm Period (mPWP) by using the Community Climate System Model, version 4 (CCSM4). Results from the CCSM4 mPWP simulation showed a 1.9 Degrees Centigrade increase in global mean annual temperature, along with a polar amplification of nearly three times the global warming.

Robust appraisals of climate impacts at different levels of global-mean temperature increase are vital to guide assessments of dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. Currently, two such levels are discussed in the context of the international climate negotiations as long-term global temperature goals: a below 2 °C and a 1.5 °C limit in global-mean temperature rise above pre-industrial levels. Despite the prominence of these two temperature limits, a comprehensive assessment of the differences in climate impacts at these levels is still missing. Here we provide an assessment of key impacts of climate change at warming levels of 1.5 °C and 2 °C, including extreme weather events, water availability, agricultural yields, sea-level rise and risk of coral reef loss. Our results reveal substantial differences in impacts between 1.5 °C and 2 °C. For heat-related extremes, the additional 0.5 °C increase in global-mean temperature marks the difference between events at the upper limit of present-day natural variability and a new climate regime, particularly in tropical regions. Similarly, this warming difference is likely to be decisive for the future of tropical coral reefs. In a scenario with an end-of-century warming of 2 °C, virtually all tropical coral reefs are projected to be at risk of severe degradation due to temperature induced bleaching from 2050 onwards. This fraction is reduced to about 90 % in 2050 and projected to decline to 70 % by 2100 for a 1.5 °C scenario. Analyses of precipitation-related impacts reveal distinct regional differences and several hot-spots of change emerge. Regional reduction in median water availability for the Mediterranean is found to nearly double from 9 to 17 % between 1.5 °C and 2 °C, and the projected lengthening of regional dry spells increases from 7 % longer to 11 %. Projections for agricultural yields differ between crop types as well as world regions. While some (in particular high-latitude) regions may benefit, tropical regions like West Africa, South-East Asia, as well as Central and Northern South America are projected to face local yield reductions, particularly for wheat and maize. Best estimate sea-level rise projections based on two illustrative scenarios indicate a 50 cm rise by 2100 relative to year 2000-levels under a 2 °C warming, which is about 10 cm lower for a 1.5 °C scenario. Our findings highlight the importance of regional differentiation to assess future climate risks as well as different vulnerabilities to incremental increases in global-mean temperature. The article provides a consistent and comprehensive assessment of existing projections and a solid foundation for future work on refining our understanding of warming-level dependent climate impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phenomenon of global warming is raising concerns in the U.S. and abroad as scientific studies report that potentially costly climate changes are to take place. For the U.S. in particular, it is expected that the 2008 presidential elections will shift the U.S. approach to global warming. Using externality theory, public goods, and game theory, this paper provides a theoretical, economic analysis of different responses to global warming. It concludes that a science and technology based market strategy is superior to a regulatory approach under the assumptions of a flat social marginal benefit curve and uncertainty about the costs and benefits of pollution reduction. However, the paper argues that an adequate carbon tax or a capand- trade system can stimulate firms to turn to green production, depending on their response to the regulatory regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The climate impact of bioenergy is commonly quantified in terms of CO2 equivalents, using a fixed 100‐year global warming potential as an equivalency metric. This method has been criticized for the inability to appropriately address emissions timing and the focus on a single impact metric, which may lead to inaccurate or incomplete quantification of the climate impact of bioenergy production. In this study, we introduce Dynamic Relative Climate Impact (DRCI) curves, a novel approach to visualize and quantify the climate impact of bioenergy systems over time. The DRCI approach offers the flexibility to analyze system performance for different value judgments regarding the impact category (e.g., emissions, radiative forcing, and temperature change), equivalency metric, and analytical time horizon. The DRCI curves constructed for fourteen bioenergy systems illustrate how value judgments affect the merit order of bioenergy systems, because they alter the importance of one‐time (associated with land use change emissions) versus sustained (associated with carbon debt or foregone sequestration) emission fluxes and short‐ versus long‐lived climate forcers. Best practices for bioenergy production (irrespective of value judgments) include high feedstock yields, high conversion efficiencies, and the application of carbon capture and storage. Furthermore, this study provides examples of production contexts in which the risk of land use change emissions, carbon debt, or foregone sequestration can be mitigated. For example, the risk of indirect land use change emissions can be mitigated by accompanying bioenergy production with increasing agricultural yields. Moreover, production contexts in which the counterfactual scenario yields immediate or additional climate impacts can provide significant climate benefits. This paper is accompanied by an Excel‐based calculation tool to reproduce the calculation steps outlined in this paper and construct DRCI curves for bioenergy systems of choice. Dynamic Relative Climate Impact (DRCI) curves are a novel approach to quantify the climate impact of bioenergy systems over time. The DRCI approach offers the flexibility to analyze system performance for different value judgments regarding the impact category, equivalency metric, and analytical time horizon. The DRCI curves for four bioenergy systems illustrated in this figure show how the aforementioned value judgments can lead to alternative conclusions about the (relative) performance of bioenergy systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a quantitative dynamic ecosystem vegetation model to explore the potential impact of warming up to 9-12 degrees C on global ecosystems. The paper does not find evidence of a global collapse in terrestrial ecosystems but there is evidence of substantial changes. Temperate and tropical forests expand and replace boreal forests and forests shift to woodlands and parkland at high temperatures. Net primary productivity and standing forest biomass per hectare rise. These changes will affect dependent animal species. Further research is needed to measure the resulting benefits and damages to market and nonmarket services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO THE PROBLEM: THE GROWING AWARENESS OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND ITS LINK TO CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSIONS HAVE CAUSED CONCERNS IN THE COMMUNITY. A substantial amount of carbon dioxide emitted is due to the energy consumed by residential households. Heating/cooling of a residential house consumes a large proportion of the total household energy. Purpose: This paper explores the concept by comparing thermal efficiency of the four most common external wall structures, with varying amounts of insulation added in the context of Sydney, Australia. Design/methodology/approach: Cost and thermal analysis for each wall type are calculated. Life cycle cost saving and payback period are then evaluated. Findings: It is found that up to 95.7% cost saving can be achieved in heating/cooling in comparing the use of insulated wall systems and air film. Cement sheet wall system is found to be the most cost effective wall system for insulation with minimum 50% of cost saving can be achieved. The results also identify substantial energy cost required for heating/cooling a house without insulation when the climate gets extreme. The payback period for the installation of the insulated wall systems can be achieved in 4.98 years for normal climate condition or 2.58 years for extreme climate condition. Practical implications: The community is currently at great risk of being unable to deal with climate change issue as not clear the effective use of insulated wall systems. This paper can help provide insight and suggestions for residential households in tackling global warming issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose — In 2007, the issues of global and climate change in particular, have become major issues in the social psyche. With the United Nations declaring 2008 the "International Year of Planet Earth", this; paper aims to look at four recent reports and comments on how the reports aim to deal with the climate and global change challenges ahead. Design/methodology/approach — After a brief introduction to the subject, this paper looks at each of the four reports in turn. It describes the methodology of each report and then discusses its relative strengths and weaknesses. This is followed by a conclusion on the reports as a whole and where policy makers can make improvements. Findings — All four reports are well structured and they have certainly raised the profile and illustrated the importance of global and climate change. However, there are a number of ways each could and should be improved in future updates. Practical implications — This paper aims to bring the reports to a wider audience and make recommendations on improvements to future reports on these important global issues. Originality/value — The paper evaluates four recent reports on the important social issues of global, change and climate change. By comparing and contrasting the reports, the paper gives an overview 01 what some of the larger policy makers are doing to tackle global and climate change. The paper also makes recommendations for improvements to the reports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The climate is an aggregate of the mean and variability of a range of meteorological variables, notably temperature (T) and precipitation (P). While the impacts of an increase in global mean surface temperature (GMST) are commonly quantified through changes in regional means and extreme value distributions, a concurrent shift in the shapes of the distributions of daily T and P is arguably equally important. Here, we employ a 30‐member ensemble of coupled climate model simulations (CESM1 LENS) to consistently quantify the changes of regionally and seasonally resolved probability density functions of daily T and P as function of GMST. Focusing on aggregate regions covering both populated and rural zones, we identify large regional and seasonal diversity in the probability density functions and quantify where CESM1 projects the most noticeable changes compared to the preindustrial era. As global temperature increases, Europe and the United States are projected to see a rapid reduction in wintertime cold days, and East Asia to experience a strong increase in intense summertime precipitation. Southern Africa may see a shift to a more intrinsically variable climate but with little change in mean properties. The sensitivities of Arctic and African intrinsic variability to GMST are found to be particularly high. Our results highlight the need to further quantify future changes to daily temperature and precipitation distributions as an integral part of preparing for the societal and ecological impacts of climate change and show how large ensemble simulations can be a useful tool for such research. Plain Language Summary: The weather varies naturally from day to day and between regions, seasons, and years. Ecosystems and our society are both adapted to the average weather conditions of a given place and to how variable the temperature and rainfall amounts are around that average. As the global surface temperature changes, whether through natural cycles or human interference, so may this variability. In this paper, we investigate changes to the distributions of daily temperature and rainfall for different levels of surface temperature increase. By using a large set of simulations from the same climate model, we estimate their means and shapes, currently and in the near future. We find that in parts of Europe and the United States, wintertime cold days will disappear more rapidly with global warming than hot days increase, leading to a less variable climate state. In Africa and the Arctic, however, climate conditions will rapidly transition out of the range of preindustrial variability and into a climate state not yet experienced by modern society. We emphasize that in order to prepare for the impacts of climate change, we need information about changes to average properties and to extreme events and about the potential changes to daily variability itself. Key Points: Daily temperature and precipitation distributions from CESM1 Large Ensemble are shown to be functions of region, season, and surface temperatureLarge differences are found in regional distributions, where they are particularly sensitive to surface temperature anomalyWe identify regions where global warming may rapidly shift seasonal climate away from preindustrial conditions [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Year 2017 was, at a global warming level, the third year in descending order of temperature averages. In Oltenia, as in the whole country, during the summer there were long dry and canicular periods. For the period 4-5.VIII.2017, a red and orange code of meteorological warning for the whole country was issued for high temperature and thermal discomfort, being the first such warning for the whole of Romania throughout the ANM's history. On August 3, 4 and 5, the thermal comfort index (ITU) exceeded the critical threshold of 80 across the country except for the mountain range. The maximum value of this parameter for the whole country was 86.3 at Brăila and in Oltenia 86.0 at Calafat on the 6th of June. The heat wave between July 29 and August 12 (15-day duration), with the peak on August 4, 5 and 6, is a new record for Romania. In Oltenia six absolute thermal records and four values of monthly thermal maxima were recorded, in the second place in descending order of the data strings. The paper is a continuation of extensive studies on climate variability and climatic conditions in southwest Romania (Marinica I, 2006; Marinica, Andreea, Floriana, Marinica 2016). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of different primary energy sources in human society has led to two major polluting emissions in the environment: energy (mostly heat), and chemical substances (mostly carbon dioxide). In this paper, a new approach, based on the similarity between sensible heat and CO2 transfer properties, was used to determine the effect of anthropogenic heat release on the global air temperature. The total global anthropogenic emissions of sensible heat were divided into two separate streams: directly transferred to: (1) water and land, and (2) to the atmosphere. The direct emissions of heat to the atmosphere during the industrial era (years 1850-2018) were determined and their effect on the change of global atmospheric temperature was calculated. The global atmospheric temperature increase caused by anthropogenic heat emissions was estimated. The resulting calculations showed that at least half of the actual atmospheric temperature rise recorded during the last 170-year period, was due to the anthropogenic heat release. These results suggest that the temperature change of the atmosphere (global warming) is strongly affected by anthropogenic heat emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Waste was once seen as a burden on our industries and communities; however, shifting attitudes and better understanding of global warming and the depletion of resources have led to the identification of waste as a valuable resource that demands responsible solutions for collecting, separating, managing, and recovering. In particular, over the last decade the holistic concept of a “zero waste” lifecycle has emerged as part of a cultural shift and a new way of thinking about the age-old problem of waste and the economic obsession with endless growth and consumption. A global understanding has emerged, which widely accepts that the broad impact of climate change—which includes biodiversity loss: increasing air, water, and soil pollution; deforestation; and a shortage of resources and materials—is a consequence of over-consumption and unsustainable production processes. Emerging complex global issues, such as health and the environment, or lifestyles and consumption, and development require approaches that transcend the traditional boundaries between disciplines. Today, it is increasingly understood that we need to discuss resource-efficiency and resource-recovery in the same way that we currently discuss energy-efficiency. This includes waste minimization strategies and the concept of “designing waste out of processes and product[s].” At the local level, every municipality or company can take immediate action to identify its own particular solutions. Separating recyclable materials, such as paper, metals, plastics, and glass bottles, and consolidating all identified waste categories into one collection point are some basic measures. However, a waste stream analysis should be conducted, involving an inventory of the entire waste composition, measurement of the volumes of different material categories, and their origins and destinations. Municipalities can create databases to track all waste types and to cross reference by facility type, so the amount and type of waste each facility, district, or precinct generates can be identified, thus pinpointing where reductions are most feasible. The concept of “zero waste” directly challenges the common assumption that waste is unavoidable and has no value by focusing on waste as a “misallocated resource” that has to be recovered. It also focuses on the avoidance of waste creation in the first place. In Australia for instance, households throw out approximately five billion dollars of food every year. This raises much wider social questions of attitude and behavior, and has further implications on urban development. How will we design, build, and operate cities in the future? What role will materials flow and waste play in the “city of tomorrow”? How will we better engage sustainable urban development principles and “zero waste” thinking? These are some of the topics discussed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on an analysis of the tropical cyclone (TC) potential intensity (PI) and its control parameters in transient global warming simulations. Specifically, the TC PI is calculated for phase 3 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3) integrations during the first 70 yr of a transient run forced by a 1% yr-1 CO2 increase. The linear trend over the period is used to project a 70-yr change in relevant model parameters. The results for a 15-model ensemble-mean climate projection show that the thermodynamic potential intensity (THPI) increases on average by 1.0% to ∼3.1% over various TC basins, which is mainly attributed to changes in the disequilibrium in enthalpy between the ocean and atmosphere in the transient response to increasing CO2 concentrations. This modest projected increase in THPI is consistent with that found in other recent studies. In this paper the effects of evolving large-scale dynamical factors on the projected TC PI are also quantified, using an empirical formation that takes into account the effects of vertical shear and translational speed based on a statistical analysis of present-day observations. Including the dynamical efficiency in the formulation of PI leads to larger projected changes in PI relative to that obtained using just THPI in some basins and smaller projected changes in others. The inclusion of the dynamical efficiency has the largest relative effect in the main development region (MDR) of the North Atlantic, where it leads to a 50% reduction in the projected PI change. Results are also presented for the basin-averaged changes in PI for the climate projections from each of the 15 individual models. There is considerable variation among the results for individual model projections, and for some models the projected increase in PI in the eastern Pacific and south Indian Ocean regions exceeds 10%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global Warming Potential (GWP) is an index used to measure the cumulative radiative forcing of a tonne of greenhouse house gas (GHG) relative to that of a ‘reference’ gas (CO2). Under the Kyoto Protocol, GWP can be used as a fixed index to govern the trade-off between different GHGs in a multi-gas approach to GHGs abatement. The use of fixed GWPs has been criticized for not being very cost effective compared to the use of some flexible indices. To gain wider acceptance, however, a flexible index must also prove to be easy to use, and the economic gains from its adoption must be significant. In this paper, we develop a flexible index based on the concept of marginal rather than cumulative or average global warming potentials. These marginal global warming potentials (MGWPs) can be endogenously determined within a climate model given a particular climate objective based on radiative forcing level. The MGPWs are then linked to the marginal abatement costs of the GHGs, which are also endogenously determined within an economic model. When the two concepts are linked in this way, the result is a cost-effective way of achieving a particular climate change objective with multigas abatement. We show that the savings in costs when using this flexible MGPWs can be significant, and more importantly, they are not uniformly distributed across different regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The dominant interannual El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon and the short length of climate observation records make it difficult to study long-term climate variations in the spatiotemporal domain. Based on the fact that the ENSO signal spreads to remote regions and induces delayed climate variation through atmospheric teleconnections, an ENSO-removal method is developed through which the ENSO signal can be approximately removed at the grid box level from the spatiotemporal field of a climate parameter. After this signal is removed, long-term climate variations are isolated at mid- and low latitudes in the climate parameter fields from observed and reanalysis datasets. This paper addresses the long-term global warming trend (GW); a companion paper concentrates on Pacific pan-decadal variability (PDV). The warming that occurs in the Pacific basin (approximately 0.4 K in the twentieth century) is much weaker than in surrounding regions and the other two ocean basins (approximately 0.8 K). The modest warming in the Pacific basin is likely due to its dynamic nature on the interannual and decadal time scales and/or the leakage of upper ocean water through the Indonesian Throughflow. Based on the National Centers for Environmental Prediction–National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP–NCAR) and the 40-yr European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Re-Analysis (ERA-40), a comprehensive atmospheric structure associated with the GW trend is given. Significant discrepancies exist between the two datasets, especially in the tightly coupled dynamics and water vapor fields. The dynamics fields based on NCEP–NCAR, which show a change in the Walker Circulation, are consistent with the GW change in the surface temperature field. However, intensification in the Hadley Circulation is associated with GW trend in ERA-40 instead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the estimation of time trends in temperature anomaly series. However, instead of imposing that the estimated residuals from the time trends are covariance stationary processes with spectral density that is positive and finite at the zero frequency [I(0)], the author allows them to be fractionally integrated. In this context, a new procedure for testing fractional integration with segmented trends is applied to the northern, southern, and global temperature anomaly series. The results show that the three series are fractionally integrated, and the warming effects are substantially higher after the break in all cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transport sector is consistently responsible for around 30 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions in developed countries and is one of few sectors where emissions continue to increase as a result of apparently insatiable demand for road and air travel. This paper examines how the formulation of transport policy fits into the exposition of UK climate policy, focusing on three principal areas of tension: policy priority (congestion and carbon reduction); strategies to reduce emissions (technological and behavioural solutions) and timescale (short- and long-term vision). We suggest that in overcoming such tensions government ministers will need to devolve significant policy formulation and implementation powers to an appropriate scale of governance – in this case the city-region – to fashion a ‘convergence space’ capable of promoting meaningful action with regard to transport's climate impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines bilateral cooperation between developed countries (home country) and developing countries (host country) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to enhance carbon dioxide sinks. With the home-host country pair as the unit of analysis, our logistic regression model examines 158 Activities Implemented Jointly (AIJ) investment projects from 1993 until 2002 across 2541 country-pairs. Because the marginal costs of reducing emissions may be lower in developing countries, the AIJ projects served as a policy laboratory to assess whether such investments might be advantageous to both countries in the event future regimes allowed emission credits from such bilateral projects. Instead of investing in home countries where maximum pollution reductions (or carbon sequestration) might be possible, home countries invest in locations where they can conduct their policy experiments at low transaction costs. Prior trade and aid relationships were used as a proxy. Regarding energy projects, location decisions are driven by home countries’ desire to reduce air pollution that they receive from abroad. Geography – proximity of a host country to a home country – in interaction with host country's coal production, is a very important driver of location decision in AIJ energy sector projects. Location of sequestration projects is impacted by the host country's potential for avoiding deforestation as well as by previous aid and trade patterns between a home and a host country. Proximity is not important in this case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents comments and criticisms on the published paper "Hurricanes and global warming. This is presentation of the views and scientific perspectives as well as the perspectives on structure and function of scientific assessments given by Anthes et al.(2006) and Pielke et al. (2005). The policy action in question here deals with what could be the most effective policy with regards to tropical cyclone that have an impact in the societal vulnerability. There is an on-going investigation on the issues of research in climate changes and tropical cyclones. Also, a brief enumeration on the criticisms by Pielke et al.(2005) and Anthes et al.(2006) is emphasized.

The analysis of large data sets in meteorological and air quality studies is often made though the examination of specific case studies, especially when time-consuming computational models are employed. This paper presents the development of a tool to identify specific case studies, termed as representative days, that would subsequently be modelled. The success of such tools should be judged on the discrimination between the specified cases: and the degree to which they capture and recreate historical characteristics of the original data set. The developed approach utilises a principal component algorithm with varimax rotation (r-PCA) and the subtractive clustering algorithm coupled with a cluster validity criterion. In this paper, the developed tool is applied to a data set from the North Sea, utilizing two years worth of data from the DNMI operational forecasting model. The results will be subsequently used in photochemical and radiative forcing modelling tools as part of the EC funded project AEOLOS, with the ultimate goal to estimate the global warming potential of non-radioactive tracing substances such as SF6 and PFCs, which are heavily used in the oil industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the possible consequences of global warming is that there will be more days with precipitation throughout the year, and also that the level of precipitation will be higher. In this paper a detailed statistical analysis of a century of daily precipitation levels is provided for the central meteorological station in the Netherlands. This paper shows that the often-considered gamma distribution does not fit well to samples of yearly data. It is argued that its incorrect use can lead to spuriously high probabilities of extreme precipitation levels. Relying on advanced nonparametric techniques, it is first found that there are fewer rainy days in the central part of the Netherlands. Next, more rainy days involve higher precipitation levels. Most importantly, no statistically significant shift is found in the annual largest values of daily rainfall over the course of the century, which suggest that the probability of extremely high levels has not changed over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper comments on the issue of global warming and climate change, in an attempt to provide fresh perspective. Essentially, five main arguments are made. First, that the process of modern economic development has been based on the burning of fossil fuels, and that this will continue to apply for the foreseeable future. Second, that in large part due to momentum in economic and demographic processes, it is inevitable that there will be a major rise in atmospheric CO2 during the present century. Third, that available data on global temperatures suggest strongly that the coming warming will be appreciably faster than anything that humanity has experienced during historical times. Moreover, especially in a system that is being forced, the chance of an abrupt change in climate happening must be rated as fair. Fourth, that while it is impossible to attach precise probabilities to different scenarios, the range of plausible unpleasant climate outcomes seems at least as great as the range of more manageable ones. The consequences of future climate change may be considerable; indeed, they could be almost inconceivable—with several negative changes occurring simultaneously and to cumulative adverse effect. There is an urgent need to improve ways of thinking about what could happen. Fifth, the paper maintains that the human response to other difficult ‘long’ threats—such as that posed by HIV/AIDS—reveals a broadly analogous sequence of social reactions (e.g. denial, avoidance, recrimination) to that which is unfolding with respect to carbon emissions and climate change. Therefore the view expressed here is that major behavioral change to limit world carbon emissions is unlikely in the foreseeable future, and that the broad sway of future events is probably now set to run its course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Fennoscandian boreal and mountain regions harbour a wide range of vegetation types, from boreal forest to high alpine tundra and barren soils. The area is facing a rise in air temperature above the global average and changes in temperature and precipitation patterns. This is expected to alter the Fennoscandian vegetation composition and change the conditions for areal land use such as forestry, tourism and reindeer husbandry. In this study we used a unique high-resolution (3 km) climate scenario with considerable warming resulting from strongly increasing carbon dioxide emissions to investigate how climate change can alter the vegetation composition, biodiversity and availability of suitable reindeer forage. Using a dynamical vegetation model, including a new implementation of potential reindeer grazing, resulted in simulated vegetation maps of unprecedented high resolution for such a long time period and spatial extent. The results were evaluated at the local scale using vegetation inventories and for the whole area against satellite-based vegetation maps. A deeper analysis of vegetation shifts related to statistics of threatened species was performed in six "hotspot" areas containing records of rare and threatened species. In this high-emission scenario, the simulations show dramatic shifts in the vegetation composition, accelerating at the end of the century. Alarmingly, the results suggest the southern mountain alpine region in Sweden will be completely covered by forests at the end of the 21st century, making preservation of many rare and threatened species impossible. In the northern alpine regions, most vegetation types will persist but shift to higher elevations with reduced areal extent, endangering vulnerable species. Simulated potential for reindeer grazing indicates latitudinal differences, with higher potential in the south in the current climate. In the future these differences will diminish, as the potentials will increase in the north, especially for the summer grazing grounds. These combined results suggest significant shifts in vegetation composition over the present century for this scenario, with large implications for nature conservation, reindeer husbandry and forestry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the widening wealth gap and increasing pressures on Environmental standards and practices. Topics discussed include positive impacts of a moderate global temperature rise overall were outweighed by negative effects, negatives of global climate change outweighing the positives to be seen as the temperature pass the 1.1 degree Celsius global warming threshold according to economist Richard Tol.

The importance of investigating regional climate changes associated with degrees of global warming is increasingly being recognized, but the majority of relevant research has been based on multimodel ensembles (MMEs) from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP). This has left two important questions unanswered: Are there plausible futures which are not represented by the models in CMIP? And, how would regional climates evolve under enhanced global warming, beyond 4°C? In this paper, two perturbed physics ensembles (PPEs) are used to address these issues with reference to African precipitation. Examination of model versions that generate warming greater than 4°C in the twenty-first century shows that changes in African precipitation are enhanced gradually, even to high global temperatures; however, there may be nonlinearities that are not incorporated here due to limited model complexity. The range of projections from the PPEs is compared to data from phases 3 and 5 of CMIP (CMIP3 and CMIP5), revealing regional differences. This is partly the result of implausible model versions, but the PPE dataset can be justifiably constrained given its size and systematic nature, highlighting an additional advantage over MMEs. After applying constraints, the PPEs still show changes that are outside the range of CMIP, most prominently strong dry signals in west equatorial Africa and the Sahel, implying that MMEs may underestimate risks for these regions. Analysis of African precipitation changes therefore demonstrates that regional assessments that rely on CMIP3 and CMIP5 may overlook uncertainties associated with model parameterizations and pronounced warming. More systematic approaches are needed for conservative estimates of danger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, global warming caused by emission of CO 2 has attracted considerable attention from the public. Although the measurements from AIRS, GOSAT, SCIAMACHY and IASI have been frequently used to derive atmospheric CO 2 concentration, comprehensive quantification of the differences among these CO 2 products is still not fully investigated yet. In this paper, a series of strategies have been proposed to allow the CO 2 products from different instruments to be physically inter-comparable. Based on this, these CO 2 products are inter-compared in terms of magnitude and their spatiotemporal distributions. The results reveal that the correlations among these CO 2 products are relatively weak, and some discrepancies are detected in terms of the CO 2 spatiotemporal characteristics, demonstrating more efforts should be made in the future to improve the retrievals of CO 2. Their spatial coverage differences reflected in this study imply the great necessity to generate consistent products with improved spatial and temporal continuities by combining these CO 2 measurements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last few years there has been much debate about the hypothesis that anthropogenic emissions of CO and other greenhouse gases increase global temperature permanently. By using recent advances in time series econometrics, this paper tries to answer the question on how human activity affects Earth's surface temperatures. Bearing in mind this goal, we estimated the long-run cointegration relations between global temperatures and changes in radiative forcings by a set of perturbing factors. We found that the temperature response to a doubling in radiative forcing of anthropogenic greenhouse gases is + 2.94 ° C [95 % CI: + 1.91, + 3.97], in perfect accordance with prior research, and that the orthogonalized cumulated effect over a 100 year time period, in response to a unit increase of size of one standard deviation in greenhouse gas radiative forcing, is + 3.86 ° C [95 % CI: + 0.03, + 6.54]. Conversely, the amplitude of solar irradiance variability is hardly sufficient to explain observed variations in the Earth's climate. Our results show that the combined effect of stochastic trends attributable to anthropogenic radiative forcing variations are driving the Earth's climate system toward an ongoing phase of global warming, and that such long-run movement is unlikely to be transient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interpretation of changes of global temperature is important for our understanding of the climate system and for our confidence in projections for the future. Massive efforts have been devoted to improve the accuracy of reproducing the global temperature by the available climate models, but the hindcasts are still inaccurate. Notwithstanding the need to further advance climate models, one may consider data-driven approaches, providing practically useful results in a simpler and faster way. Without assuming any prior knowledge about physics and without imposing a model structure that encapsulates the existing knowledge about the underlying processes, we hindcast global temperature by automatically identified evolutionary computation models. We use 60 years of records of global temperature and climate drivers, with training and testing periods being 1950-1999 and 2000-2009, respectively. This paper demonstrates that the global temperature observed in the past is mimicked with reasonably good accuracy. Evolutionary computation holds promise for modeling the global climate system, which looks hopelessly complex in classical perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Impacts of climate change on agriculture are a major concern worldwide, but uncertainties of climate models and emission scenarios may hamper efforts to adapt to climate change. In this paper, a probabilistic approach is used to estimate the uncertainties and simulate impacts of global warming on wheat production and water use in the main wheat cultivation regions of China, with a global mean temperature (GMT) increase scale relative to 1961-90 values. From output of 20 climate scenarios of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Data Distribution Centre, median values of projected changes in monthly mean climate variables for representative stations are adapted. These are used to drive the Crop Environment Resource Synthesis (CERES)-Wheat model to simulate wheat production and water use under baseline and global warming scenarios, with and without consideration of carbon dioxide (CO2) fertilization effects. Results show that, because of temperature increase, projected wheat-growing periods for GMT changes of 1°, 2°, and 3°C would shorten, with averaged median values of 3.94%, 6.90%, and 9.67%, respectively. There is a high probability of decreasing (increasing) changes in yield and water-use efficiency under higher temperature scenarios without (with) consideration of CO2 fertilization effects. Elevated CO2 concentration generally compensates for the negative effects of warming temperatures on production. Moreover, positive effects of elevated CO2 concentration on grain yield increase with warming temperatures. The findings could be critical for climate-change-driven agricultural production that ensures global food security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the modulations of the North Atlantic tripole (NAT) decadal variability from global warming are studied by conducting a series of coupled ocean-atmosphere experiments using the Fast Ocean Atmosphere Model (FOAM). The model reasonably captures the observed NAT decadal variability with a preferred time scale of about 11 years. With the aid of partial-blocking and partial-coupling experiments, it is found that the NAT decadal cycle can be attributed to oceanic planetary wave adjustment in the subtropical basin and ocean-atmosphere coupling over the North Atlantic. In a doubled CO2 experiment, the spatial pattern of the NAT is preserved; however, the decadal cycle is significantly suppressed. This suppression appears to be associated with the acceleration of oceanic planetary waves due to an increase of buoyancy frequency in global warming. This shortens the time from a decadal to an interannual time scale for the first-mode baroclinic Rossby waves to cross the subtropical North Atlantic basin, the primary memory for the NAT decadal variability in the model. The modeling study also found that the global warming does not modulate the North Atlantic air-sea coupling significantly, but it may be model dependent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the current estimates of uncontrolled carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere that is expected to lead to increases in average temperature within the next 50 years. Topics covered include the consequences of increased carbon dioxide concentration, such as the melting of the land-borne ice, sea level rises and warming global temperature, the effect of increased carbon dioxide on agriculture, and the approaches to keeping atmospheric concentrations to a reasonable level.

In this paper, I investigate how much green polluters mitigate the familiar dynamic 'tragedy of the commons' ('global warming'). Green consumers feel penalized ('pain') for any consumption in excess of the social optimum; this can arise, for example, from Kant's categorical moral imperative. Interplays among and between green and brown consumers are investigated as differential games. Green preferences, the heterogeneity of consumers, and the irreversibility of emissions lead to discontinuous strategies. Associated with these are a number of non-trivial and even puzzling features (e.g., the possibility of another 'green paradox'). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the effects that temperature changes in the Rhine river distributaries have on native and exotic fish diversity. Site-specific potentially affected fractions (PAFs) of the regional fish species pool were derived using species sensitivity distributions (SSDs) for water temperature. The number of fish species in the river distributaries has changed remarkably over the last century. The number of native rheophilous species declined up until 1980 due to anthropogenic disturbances such as commercial fishing, river regulation, migration barriers, habitat deterioration and water pollution. In spite of progress in river rehabilitation, the native rheophilous fish fauna has only partially recovered thus far. The total number of species has strongly increased due to the appearance of more exotic species. After the opening of the Rhine-Main-Danube waterway in 1992, many fish species originating from the Ponto-Caspian area colonized the Rhine basin. The yearly minimum and maximum river temperatures at Lobith have increased by circa 4 °C over the period 1908-2010. Exotic species show lower PAFs than native species at both ends of the temperature range. The interspecific variation in the temperature tolerance of exotic fish species was found to be large. Using temporal trends in river temperature allowed past predictions of PAFs to demonstrate that the increase in maximum river temperature negatively affected a higher percentage of native fish species than exotic species. Our results support the hypothesis that alterations of the river Rhine's temperature regime caused by thermal pollution and global warming limit the full recovery of native fish fauna and facilitate the establishment of exotic species which thereby increases competition between native and exotic species. Thermal refuges are important for the survival of native fish species under extreme summer or winter temperature conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change and the wish to reduce the dependence on oil are the incentives for the development of alternative energy sources. The use of lignocellulosic biomass together with cellulosic processing technology provides opportunities to produce fuel ethanol with less competition with food and nature. Many studies on energy analysis and life cycle assessment of second-generation bioethanol have been conducted. However, due to the different methodology used and different system boundary definition, it is difficult to compare their results. To permit a direct comparison of fuel ethanol from different lignocelluloses in terms of energy use and environmental impact, seven studies conducted in our group were summarized in this paper, where the same technologies were used to convert biomass to ethanol, the same system boundaries were defined, and the same allocation procedures were followed. A complete set of environmental impacts ranging from global warming potential to toxicity aspects is used. The results provide an overview on the energy efficiency and environmental performance of using fuel ethanol derived from different feedstocks in comparison with gasoline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we have provided an overview of cosmic ray effects on terrestrial processes such as electrical properties, global electric circuit, lightning, cloud formation, cloud coverage, atmospheric temperature, space weather phenomena, climate, etc. It is suggested that cosmic rays control short-term and long-term variations in climate. There are many basic phenomena which need further study and require new and long-term data set. Some of these have been pointed out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on a school project on making students understand the severity of the effects of global warming. The project consists of students formed into groups where they are asked to collect the same data. Each group was required to show their findings in a research paper and through visual presentation which includes the types and numbers of cars being driven to school, the time and length it takes to drive to school and the total greenhouse gas emissions put into the atmosphere by the cars. The findings show that each car coming through the driveway and parking lot waited an average of 14 minutes per day in the morning and 11 minutes in the afternoon which emits a total of 148,97 pounds of greenhouse gases every school year.

The response mechanisms of the tropical Pacific Ocean temperature to increased atmospheric CO2 are investigated in a coupled climate model. Ensemble simulations are performed under both the transient and stable CO2 forcing. It is found that the dominant mechanism for temperature change differs in different stages of global warming. During the transient stage, the surface heat flux is a major driving factor for the tropical surface warming. During the equilibrium stage, the dominant mechanism to maintain the surface warming is the meridional advection. The heat flux forcing becomes a damping factor instead, particularly for the western tropical Pacific. Different from the surface warming, the subsurface warming results from the oceanic mixings during the entire period of global warming, whereas the advection terms generally play a cooling role, consistent with the slowdown of the shallow meridional overturning circulation. This paper emphasizes the deterministic role of the dynamic adjustment of the ocean circulation in the long-term change of ocean climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an analysis on the focal Concepts and Synthesis paper of Kevin D. Lafferty on climate change impacts on infectious diseases. Lafferty's paper strongly summarizes the impact of climate change on mosquito--transmitted human infectious disease, as well as the inability of the people to detect climate drivers. The paper also failed to discuss the importance of climate warming and changes in host migratory in the spread of infectious diseases, the impact of climate change on disease dynamics, and the interaction between wildlife hosts and their communities of parasites.

In this paper, an idealized framework based on a cloud-topped mixed layer model is developed for investigating feedbacks between subtropical stratocumulus (Sc) and global warming. The two principal control parameters are Sc-region sea surface temperature (SST) and intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) SST (which controls the temperature and mean subsidence profiles above the Sc). The direct effect of CO2 doubling (leaving all other parameters fixed) is tested and found to somewhat reduce liquid water path; discussion of this effect on the SST-change simulations is included. The presence of a cold boundary layer is found to significantly affect the temperature and subsidence rate just above cloud top by enhancing lower-tropospheric diabatic cooling in this region. A simple representation of this effect (easily generalizable to a more realistic boundary layer model) is developed. Steady-state solutions are analyzed as a function of local and ITCZ SST. Two climate change scenarios are considered. The first scenario is an equal increase of local and ITCZ SSTs. In this case, predicted boundary layer depth and cloud thickness increase. This is found in a simplified context to result from subsidence and entrainment decreases due to increased static stability in a warmer climate. In the second case, local SST change is diagnosed from a surface energy balance under the assumption that ocean heat transport remains unchanged. In this case, predicted boundary layer depth decreases. Cloud continues to thicken with rising ITCZ SST, but at a rate much reduced in comparison to the equal-warming scenario. This cloud shading feedback keeps SST in the Sc region nearly constant as the ITCZ SST increases. Model sensitivity to aerosol indirect effects is also considered by varying the assumed droplet concentration. The resulting change in liquid water path is small, suggesting a weaker dependence on second indirect effect than found in previous studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the myth about the agreement among climate scientists in the 1970s, on the global cooling or the return of ice age in due time. Climate researcher Reid Bryson is the one who integrated the description of the climate change and the consequence of global warming. Due to this myth, scientific literature on greenhouse warming grew, as well as research enterprises arose. Discourses tackling about the potential problems of environmental pollution including the polluting effects of urban air pollution, pesticides, aerosols and carbon dioxide, dominated among media coverage, government, and researchers. An overview of the global temperature records and literatures is offered. Meanwhile, the review of the climate science literature from 1965 to 1979 was proven to be a faux.

In the companion paper (Part I), we presented a model of permafrost carbon cycle to study the sensitivity of frozen carbon stocks to future climate warming. The mobilization of deep carbon stock of the frozen Pleistocene soil in the case of rapid stepwise increase of atmospheric temperature was considered. In this work, we adapted the model to be used also for floodplain tundra sites and to account for the processes in the soil active layer. The new processes taken into account are litter input and decomposition, plant-mediated transport of methane, and leaching of exudates from plant roots. The SRES-A2 transient climate warming scenario of the IPSL CM4 climate model is used to study the carbon fluxes from the carbon-rich Pleistocene soil with seasonal active-layer carbon cycling on top of it. For a point to the southwest from the western branch of Yedoma Ice Complex, where the climate warming is strong enough to trigger self-sustainable decomposition processes, about 256 kgC m−2, or 70% of the initial soil carbon stock under present-day climate conditions, are emitted to the atmosphere in about 120 yr, including 20 kgC m−2 released as methane. The total average flux of CO2 and methane emissions to the atmosphere during this time is of 2.1 kgC m−2 yr−1. Within the Yedoma, whose most part of the territory remains relatively cold, the emissions are much smaller: 0.2 kgC m−2 yr−1 between 2050 and 2100 for Yakutsk area. In a test case with saturated upper-soil meter, when the runoff is insufficient to evacuate the meltwater, 0.05 kgCH4 m−2 yr−1 on average are emitted as methane during 250 yr starting from 2050. The latter can translate to the upper bound of 1 GtC yr−1 in CO2 equivalent from the 1 million km2 area of the Yedoma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents statistical analyses of possible associations between major stratospheric sudden warming (SSW) and tropospheric blocking events in the Northern Hemisphere (NH) with 49 yr of NCEP–NCAR reanalysis data from 1957/58 to 2005/06. Using a random shuffling or “bootstrap” method, these analyses explore two hypotheses claiming that blocking events occur preferentially and last longer in association with SSWs (pre- and post-SSW periods are considered separately). In the shuffling method, the defined SSWs are randomly redistributed to evaluate the statistical significance of linked cases in the original data. The author’s analyses generally do not support either hypothesis for the pre- or post-SSW period when treating the SSW events all together, suggesting that such associations are not dominant modes of coupling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are living in a climate of fear about our future climate. The language of the public discourse around global warming routinely uses a repertoire which includes words such as ‘catastrophe’, ‘terror’, ‘danger’, ‘extinction’ and ‘collapse’. To help make sense of this phenomenon the story of the complex relationships between climates and cultures in different times and in different places is in urgent need of telling. If we can understand from the past something of this complex interweaving of our ideas of climate with their physical and cultural settings we may be better placed to prepare for different configurations of this relationship in the future. This paper examines two earlier European discourses of fear associated with climate – one from the early-modern era (climate as judgement) and one from the modern era (climate as pathology) – and traces the ways in which these discourses formed and dissolved within a specific cultural matrix. The contemporary discourse of fear about future climate change (climate as catastrophe) is summarised and some ways in which this discourse, too, might be dissolved are examined. Conventional attempts at conquering the climatic future all rely, implicitly or explicitly, upon ideas of control and mastery, whether of the planet, of global governance or of individual and collective behaviour. These attempts at ‘engineering’ future climate seem a degree utopian and brash. Understanding the cultural dimensions of climate discourses offers a different way of thinking about how we navigate the climatic future. However our contemporary climatic fears have emerged – as linked, for example, to neoliberal globalism, to ecological modernisation and the emergence of a risk society, or to a deeper instinctive human anxiety about the future – they will in the end be dissipated, re-configured or transformed as a function of cultural change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper expands the relevance of the collective interest model of mass political action to explain collective-action behavior in the context of global warming and climate change. The analysis is an attempt to answer Ostrom’s call for a behavioral model of collective action that can be generalized beyond political protest to other collective-action problems. We elaborate, specify, and empirically test a collective interest model approach to citizen policy support, environmental political participation, and environmental behavior related to the issue of global warming. Key elements of the collective interest model—perceived risk, personal efficacy, and environmental values—are found to be directly, and positively, related to support of government policies and personal behaviors that affect global warming. We also discuss the links between the collective interest model and other important approaches to political behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An Inconvenient Truth (AIT) has earned Al Gore an Oscar and a share of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize and has been widely acclaimed by the mass media. However, significant errors exist in the film, owing to alarmism and exaggeration. As this forum does not provide for a detailed examination of these errors, this paper will focus only on the portrayal of the hydrologic cycle by AIT--precipitation and floods, soil moisture and droughts, and storminess. AIT argues that precipitation and intense rainfalls, floods, droughts, and the total number, intensity, and duration of tropical cyclones have all increased due exclusively to anthropogenically-driven climate change; indeed, AIT paints a picture of near scientific certainty with an overwhelming bias toward catastrophe scenarios. A closer look at the science, however, reveals that the data do not support these claims and that the scientific community is divided as to what the impact of anthropogenic climate change on the hydrologic cycle will be. Thus, the film gives a false impression of both the current state of climate change and that 'the science is settled'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds an econometric model that attempts to explain the effect of global trade on the environment from data provided by the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) at Purdue University. We estimated stable parameters for econometric models to forecast the impact of doubling carbon dioxide (2 × CO2) levels in the atmosphere. Robustness is checked against the Specific Factor Model in trade theory. The overall and zonal predictions for the lower and higher latitudes and the Northern and Southern Hemispheres are compared with the norms. The estimates of the model are also used as inputs into several computable general equilibrium (CGE) models to explore regional welfare impacts by climate change scenarios. The model's prediction comes within range of the norms and therefore, should be an important addition to the stock of pedagogic tools explaining the relationship between trade and the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]