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Everyday public denial of anthropogenically caused climate change (ACC) has complex antecedents and exists on both individual and institutional levels. Earlier research has linked ACC denial to opposition to formal science and elites, perceived threats to the industrialist capitalist order and existing system properties. Research also suggest that trust in public organizations is a key factor in determining support or opposition to climate change policies. In this paper, we explore the possibility that right wing populism and anti-elitist attitudes fuel both ACC denial and low trust in environmental institutions. We surveyed a representative sample of Norwegians (N = 3032) to measure ACC denial, how denial is linked to socio-demographic characteristics, trust in environmental institutions, attitudes toward elites and immigration, as well as environmental attitude orientations. Results show that lack of trust in environmental institutions is strongly associated with ACC denial, and furthermore that the degree of trust—or lack thereof—is partly a function of anti-elitist attitudes, opposition to migration and views of nature.

The movement of people has led to several challenges in terms of traffic congestion, energy consumption, emissions and climate change. Human mobility modelling is currently described mainly through socio-economic variables, such as travel time, travel costs, income and car-ownership. The overall objective of this paper is to relate mobility behaviour based on measurable entities of travel time and distance and the entities of speed. A simple underlying mechanism of human mobility is presented based on the human energy expended. The energy is related firstly to the average values of travel modes. Explicit formulas for the distribution within each travel mode are developed and the concept is also shown to apply to multi-modal mobility. The approach is described in its most basic and fundamental form, but opens up perspectives for new applications and analyses approaches to transport modelling, planning and appraisals. The approach shows that travel time and distance are consistently inversely proportional and limited by the physiological power consumption. The basic hypothesis and the related verifications is shown on all modal combinations of daily mobility with a median R2 of around 0.8. The approach is validated using national travel surveys of Germany, Switzerland, UK and US, spanning over five decades to 2018.

Despite the economic importance of the tourism sector and its close relationship to the environment and climate, substantial gaps remain in the investigation of climate change (CC) impacts on tourism. Unlike the increasing body of literature focusing on the variation in the climatic suitability of tourism destinations, this paper focuses on the impacts of CC on the provision of natural resources affecting the attractiveness of destinations. More specifically, the paper provides an economic measurement of climate-induced environmental changes on the coast of Mallorca (Spain), one of the Mediterranean’s leading sun-and-beach destinations. A choice experiment is used to elicit the willingness to pay (WTP) of tourists for the introduction of policies aimed at reducing three climate-induced environmental changes. The estimated results show the positive WTP of tourists to reduce CC impacts and provide evidence of preference heterogeneity among individuals with different socioeconomic and travel characteristics., This work is supported by the CLIMPACT project (CGL2014-54246-C2-1-R) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy. Alejandra R. Enríquez acknowledges an FPI grant associated with the CLIMPACT project.

This paper assesses the long-term combined effects of land use (LU) and climate change on river hydrology and water scarcity of two rivers of the Western Ghats of India. The historical LU changes were studied for four decades (1988–2016) using the maximum likelihood algorithm and the long-term LU (2016–2075) was estimated using the Dyna-CLUE prediction model. Five General Circulation Models (GCMs) were utilized to assess the effects of climate change (CC) and the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model was used for hydrological modeling of the two river catchments. To characterize granular effects of LU and CC on regional hydrology, a scenario approach was adopted and three scenarios depicting near-future (2006–2040), mid-future (2041–2070), and far-future (2071–2100) based on climate were established. The present rate of LU change indicated a reduction in forest cover by 20% and an increase in urbanized areas by 9.5% between 1988 and 2016. It was estimated that forest cover in the catchments may be expected to halve compared to the present-day LU (55% in 2016 to 23% in 2075), along with large-scale conversion to agricultural lands (13.5% in 2016 to 49.5% in 2075). As a result of changes to LU and forecasted climate, it was found that rivers in the Western Ghats of India might face scarcity of fresh water in the next two decades until the year 2040. However, because of large-scale LU conversion toward the year 2050, streamflow in rivers might increase as high as 70.94% at certain times of the year. Although an increase in streamflow is perceived favorable, the streamflow changes during summer and winter may be expected to affect the cropping calendar and crop yield. The changes to streamflow were also linked to a 4.2% increase in ecologically sensitive wetlands of the Aghanashini river catchment.

Part of the Managing Forest Ecosystems book series (MAFE, volume 38), Only a handful of bird species can be considered specialists of Mediterranean pine forests; however, many forest birds occupy pine and mixed forest, due to the biogeographic history of Mediterranean forest birds. Nevertheless, pine forest bird communities show clear-cut responses to changes in forest distribution, structure and composition at both local and landscape scales. Both forest management (especially plantation and harvesting strategies, forest fragmentation and landscape distribution of pine stands) and climate change may have strong effects on bird communities, and potential interactions between these two drivers may mitigate, or amplify, negative effects, depending on management strategies. Relationships are non-linear, with saturation points at which biodiversity increases no further (and may even decrease). Furthermore, relationships vary geographically and temporally due to interactions with climate and landscape-scale land uses. Bird diversity provides direct regulating ecosystem services of pest control and seed dispersal, cultural services, and even provisioning services in the case of game birds. Knowledge of the variable relationships between bird diversity, societal attitudes and the effects of global change drivers on pine forests is essential for designing realistic, regionally adapted management strategies aimed at enhancing the multifunctional role of forests beyond the market., This paper is a contribution to the projects RTA2013-00048-C03-01 and RTI2018-096348-R-C21, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness; BiodivERsA 3-2015-180, funded by the Spanish National Research Agency, the Bulgarian Science Fund, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, and the European Commission within the ERA-Net BiodivERsA Co-Fund scheme; and to the thematic network REMEDINAL3-CM (S2013/MAE-2719).

Copyright © The Author(s) 2021. Increasing resilience to natural hazards and climate change is critical for achieving many Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In recent decades, China has experienced rapid economic development and became the second-largest economy in the world. This rapid economic expansion has led to large-scale changes in terrestrial (e.g., land use and land cover changes), aquatic (e.g., construction of reservoirs and artificial wetlands) and marine (e.g., land reclamation) environments across the country. Together with climate change, these changes may significantly influence flood risk and, in turn, compromise SDG achievements. The Luanhe River Basin (LRB) is one of the most afforested basins in North China and has undergone significant urbanisation and land use change since the 1950s. However, basin-wide flood risk assessment under different development scenarios has not been considered, although this is critically important to inform policy-making to manage the synergies and trade-offs between the SDGs and support long-term sustainable development. Using mainly open data, this paper introduces a new framework for systematically assessing flood risk under different social and economic development scenarios. A series of model simulations are performed to investigate the flood risk under different land use change scenarios projected to 2030 to reflect different development strategies. The results are systematically analysed and compared with the baseline simulation based on the current land use and climate conditions. Further investigations are also provided to consider the impact of climate change and the construction of dams and reservoirs. The results potentially provide important guidance to inform future development strategies to maximise the synergies and minimise the trade-offs between various SDGs in LRB. Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) of the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) through the Towards a Sustainable Earth (TaSE) programme (NE/S012427/1).

Landscape-scale approaches to conservation stem largely from the classic ideas of reserve design: encouraging bigger and more sites, enhancing connectivity among sites, and improving habitat quality. Trade-offs are imposed between these four strategies by the limited resources and opportunities available for conservation programmes, including the establishment and management of protected areas, and wildlife-friendly farming and forestry. Although debate regarding trade-offs between the size, number, connectivity and quality of protected areas was prevalent in the 1970-1990s, the implications of the same trade-offs for ongoing conservation responses to threats from accelerating environmental change have rarely been addressed. Here, we reassess the implications of reserve design theory for landscape-scale conservation, and present a blueprint to help practitioners to prioritise among the four strategies. We consider the new perspectives placed on landscape-scale conservation programmes by twenty-first century pressures including climate change, invasive species and the need to marry food security with biodiversity conservation. A framework of the situations under which available theory and evidence recommend that each of the four strategies be prioritized is provided, seeking to increase the clarity required for urgent conservation decision-making.

The understanding of airborne pollen transportation is crucial for the reconstruction of the paleoenvironment. Under favorable conditions, a considerable amount of long-distance-transported pollen can be deposited far from its place of origin. In extreme arid regions, in most cases, such situations occur and increase the difficulty to interpret fossil pollen records. In this study, three sets of Cour airborne pollen trap were installed on the northern slope of Tianshan Mountains to collect airborne Picea schrenkiana (spruce) pollen grains from July 2001 to July 2006. The results indicate that Picea pollen disperses extensively and transports widely in the lower atmosphere far away from spruce forest. The airborne Picea pollen dispersal period is mainly concentrated between mid-May and July. In desert area, weekly Picea pollen began to increase and peaked suddenly in concentration. Also, annual pollen indices do not decline even when the distance increased was probably related to the strong wind may pick up the deposited pollen grains from the topsoil into the air stream, leading to an increase of pollen concentration in the air that is irrelevant to the normal and natural course of pollen transport and deposition. This, in turn, may lead to erroneous interpretations of the pollen data in the arid region. This study provided insight into the shift in the Picea pollen season regarding climate change in arid areas. It is recorded that the pollen pollination period starts earlier and the duration became longer. The results also showed that the temperature of May and June was positively correlated with the Picea pollen production. Furthermore, the transport of airborne Picea pollen data is useful for interpreting fossil pollen records from extreme arid regions. peerReviewed

This study investigates the effects of climatic variations and extremes captured by variability in temperature, precipitation, and incidents of typhoons on aggregate inter-provincial migration within the Philippines using panel data. Our results indicate that a rise in temperature and to some extent increased typhoon activity increase outmigration, while precipitation does not have a consistent, significant effect. We also find that temperature and typhoons have significant negative effects on rice yields, a proxy for agricultural productivity, and generate more outmigration from provinces that are more agriculturally dependent and have a larger share of rural population. Finally, migration decisions of males, younger individuals, and those with higher levels of education are more sensitive to rising temperature and typhoons. We conclude that temperature increase and to some extent typhoon activities promote migration, potentially through their negative effect on crop yields. The migration responses of males, more educated, and younger individuals are more sensitive to these climatic impacts.

Although the effects of climate change on biodiversity are increasingly evident by the shifts in species ranges across taxonomical groups, the underlying mechanisms affecting individual species are still poorly understood. The power of climate envelopes to predict future ranges has been seriously questioned in recent studies. Amongst others, an improved understanding of the effects of current weather on population trends is required. We analysed the relation between butterfly abundance and the weather experienced during the life cycle for successive years using data collected within the framework of the Dutch Butterfly Monitoring Scheme for 40 species over a 15-year period and corresponding climate data. Both average and extreme temperature and precipitation events were identified, and multiple regression was applied to explain annual changes in population indices. Significant weather effects were obtained for 39 species, with the most frequent effects associated with temperature. However, positive density-dependence suggested climatic independent trends in at least 12 species. Validation of the short-term predictions revealed a good potential for climate-based predictions of population trends in 20 species. Nevertheless, data from the warm and dry year of 2003 indicate that negative effects of climatic extremes are generally underestimated for habitat specialists in drought-susceptible habitats, whereas generalists remain unaffected. Further climatic warming is expected to influence the trends of 13 species, leading to an improvement for nine species, but a continued decline in the majority of species. Expectations from climate envelope models overestimate the positive effects of climate change in northwestern Europe. Our results underline the challenge to include population trends in predicting range shifts in response to climate change. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00442-011-2007-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Anthropogenic climate change is inherently a biometeorological issue. As such, it would be reasonably expected that the International Society of Biometeorology (ISB) and its journal, International Journal of Biometeorology (IJB), would have had climate change feature prominently in their activities, articles etc., and to therefore have made a substantial and valuable contribution to the science of the issue. This article presents an analysis of climate change science in ISB and IJB. The analysis focusses on climate-change-related publications by ISB Presidents found through searches of Thomson Reuters Web of Science; contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC's) Working Group II (WGII) by ISB Presidents; and climate change-related publications in IJB found through searches of Thomson Reuters Web of Science. The results demonstrate that the ISB, as represented by its recent, current, and future Presidents, is actively engaged in climate change research and the production of scholarly climate change publications. For example, ISB Presidents have contributed as authors to all four IPCC WGII Assessment Reports, with some Presidents having contributed to more than one Assessment Report or several chapters of the one report. Similarly, it is evident that the IJB is increasingly attracting and publishing climate-change-related articles, with such articles generally having greater impact (as indicated by citations) than other IJB articles. Opportunities for the ISB to provide an internal framework for, and showcase, its climate change work are described. Such opportunities, if enacted, would complement the recent creation of two IJB climate change Field Editor positions.

The aim of this study is to supply detailed information about oak (Quercus sp.) pollen seasons in Pozna\', Poland, based on a 16-year aerobiological data series (1996--2011). The pollen data were collected using a volumetric spore trap of the Hirst design located in Pozna\' city center. The limits of the pollen seasons were calculated using the 95 % method. The influence of meteorological parameters on temporal variations in airborne pollen was examined using correlation analysis. Start and end dates of oak pollen seasons in Pozna\' varied markedly from year-to-year (14 and 17 days, respectively). Most of the pollen grains (around 75 % of the seasonal pollen index) were recorded within the first 2 weeks of the pollen season. The tenfold variation was observed between the least and the most intensive pollen seasons. These fluctuations were significantly related to the variation in the sum of rain during the period second fortnight of March to first fortnight of April the year before pollination (r = 0.799; pÂ

Central and semiarid north-eastern Asia was subject to twentieth century warming far above the global average. Since forests of this region occur at their drought limit, they are particularly vulnerable to climate change. We studied the regional variations of temperature and precipitation trends and their effects on tree growth and forest regeneration in Mongolia. Tree-ring series from more than 2,300 trees of Siberian larch (Larix sibirica) collected in four regions of Mongolia’s forest zone were analyzed and related to available weather data. Climate trends underlie a remarkable regional variation leading to contrasting responses of tree growth in taiga forests even within the same mountain system. Within a distance of a few hundred kilometers (140–490 km), areas with recently reduced growth and regeneration of larch alternated with regions where these parameters remained constant or even increased. Reduced productivity could be correlated with increasing summer temperatures and decreasing precipitation; improved growth conditions were found at increasing precipitation, but constant summer temperatures. An effect of increasing winter temperatures on tree-ring width or forest regeneration was not detectable. Since declines of productivity and regeneration are more widespread in the Mongolian taiga than the opposite trend, a net loss of forests is likely to occur in the future, as strong increases in temperature and regionally differing changes in precipitation are predicted for the twenty-first century. peerReviewed

The Valley of Lakes is approximately a 500-km elongate depression in Central Mongolia, where Eocene to Miocene continental sediments are long known for their outstanding fossil richness. The palaeontological record of this region is an exceptional witness for the evolution of mammalian communities during the Cenozoic global cooling and regional aridification. In order to precisely elucidate the climatic evolution of the region, we studied the mostly siliciclastic sediments with several levels of paleosols for their sedimentology, mineralogy, major and trace element composition and δ13C and δ18O composition. The obtained results show that temperate hydrothermal fluids induced a strong illitization of the fluvial and lacustrine sediments. This finding contradicts the current conceptual view that the fine fraction of the sediments is of aeolian origin. Moreover, the diagenetic growth of illite resulted in a strong overprinting of the sediments and, subsequently, largely disturbed the pristine mineralogical and geochemical composition of the sediments that could have carried any palaeo-climatic information. An exception is the δ13C (and δ18O) isotope values of authigenic carbonate found in calcrete horizons that still record the ambient climatic conditions prevailing during paleosol formation. Our novel δ13C and δ18O record suggests an early Oligocene aridification in Central Asia at ∼31 Ma, whereas the Oligocene glacial maximum shows no increase in aridification. A second, regional-scale aridification occurs at ~25 Ma and corresponds to a late Oligocene marked mammalian turnover in the Valley of Lakes sediments.

Soil is the largest terrestrial carbon pool, making it crucial for climate change mitigation. Soil organic carbon (SOC) is suggested to depend on biodiversity components, but much evidence comes from diversity-function experiments. To disentangle the relationships of plant guild diversity with SOC storage (kg m−2) at broad spatial scales, we applied diversity-interaction models to a regional grassland database (n = 96) including wide environmental conditions and management regimes. The questions were: (1) Are the effects of plant guilds on SOC stocks in natural grasslands consistent with those found in experimental systems? (2) Are plant guild effects on SOC stocks independent of each other or do they show interactive—synergistic or antagonistic—effects? (3) Do environmental variables, including abiotic and management, modify guild effects on SOC stocks? Among our most novel results we found, legume effects on grassland SOC vary depending on legume proportion consistently across broad spatial scales. SOC increased with legume proportion up to 7–17%, then decreased. Additionally, these effects were strengthened when grasses and forbs were codominant. Grazing intensity modulated grass proportion effects on SOC, being maximum at relatively high intensities. Interpreting our results in terms of existing contrasted ecological theories, we confirmed at broad spatial scales and under wide-ranging environmental conditions the positive effects of plant guild diversity on SOC, and we showed how legumes exert a keystone effect on SOC in natural grasslands, probably related to their ability to fix inorganic N. Niche complementarity effects were illustrated when codominance of forbs and grasses at optimum legume proportions boosted SOC storage, whereas grass dominance increased SOC stocks at medium–high grazing intensities. These findings can facilitate the preparation of regional and local strategies to ameliorate the soil capacity to absorb carbon. Research in this paper is based on the PASTUS database, compiled from different funding sources over time, the most relevant being: the EU Interreg III- A Programme (I3A- 4- 147- E) and the POCTEFA Programme/Interreg IV- A (FLUXPYR, EFA 34/08); the Spanish Science Foundation FECYT- MICINN (CARBOPAS: REN2002- 04300- C02- 01; CARBOAGROPAS: CGL2006- 13555- C03- 03 and CAPAS: CGL2010- 22378- C03- 01); the Foundation Catalunya- La Pedrera; and the Spanish Institute of Agronomical Research INIA (CARBOCLUS: SUM2006- 00029- C02- 0). This work was funded by the Spanish Science Foundation FECYT- MINECO (BIOGEI: CGL2013-49142-C2-1-R and IMAGINE: CGL2017-85490-R) and the University of Lleida (PhD Fellowship to AR). This research article has received a grant for its linguistic revision from the Language Institute of the University of Lleida (2021 call).

Palms are highly significant tropical plants. Oil palms produce palm oil, the basic commodity of a highly important industry. Climate change from greenhouse gasses is likely to decrease the ability of palms to survive, irrespective of them providing ecosystem services to communities. Little information about species survival in tropical regions under climate change is available and data on species migration under climate change is important. Palms are particularly significant in Africa: a palm oil industry already exists with Nigeria being the largest producer. Previous work using CLIMEX modelling indicated that Africa will have reduced suitable climate for oil palm in Africa. The current paper employs this modelling to assess how suitable climate for growing oil palm changed in Africa from current time to 2100. An increasing trend in suitable climate from west to east was observed indicating that refuges could be obtained along the African tropical belt. Most countries had reduced suitable climates but others had increased, with Uganda being particularly high. There may be a case for developing future oil palm plantations towards the east of Africa. The information may be usefully applied to other palms. However, it is crucial that any developments will fully adhere to environmental regulations. Future climate change will have severe consequences to oil palm cultivation but there may be scope for eastwards mitigation in Africa., info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Cities worldwide are facing a number of serious challenges including population growth, resource depletion, climate change, and degradation of ecosystems. To cope with these challenges, the transformation of our cities into sustainable systems using a holistic approach is required. The pathway to this urban transition is adopting the concept of circular economy for resource management. In this way, resources are kept and reused within the city. Nature-based solutions can be implemented for these tasks, and besides the circularity, they can provide additional benefits for the urbanites and the urban environment in general. This paper describes which urban challenges related to circularity can be addressed through nature-based solutions. This systematic review was developed within the COST Action CA17133 Circular City that investigates how nature-based solutions can be used to progress the circular economy in the urban built environment.

Forest structural properties largely govern surface fluxes of moisture, energy, and momentum that strongly affect regional climate and hydrology. Forest structural properties are greatly shaped by forest management activities, especially in the Fennoscandia (Norway, Sweden, and Finland). Insight into transient developments in forest structure in response to management intervention is therefore essential to understanding the role of forest management in mitigating regional climate change. The aim of this study is to present a simple grid-based framework – the Fennoscandic Forest State Simulator (F2S2) -- for predicting time-dependent forest structural trajectories in a manner compatible with land models employed in offline or asynchronously coupled climate and hydrological research. F2S2 enables the prescription of future regional forest structure as a function of: i) exogenously defined scenarios of forest harvest intensity; ii) forest management intensity; iii) climate forcing. We demonstrate its application when applied as a stand-alone tool for forecasting three alternative future forest states in Norway that differ with respect to background climate forcing, forest harvest intensity (linked to two Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs)), and forest management intensity. F2S2 captures impacts of climate forcing and forest management on general trends in forest structural development over time, and while climate is the main driver of longer-term forest structural dynamics, the role of harvests and other management-driven effects cannot be overlooked. To our knowledge this is the first paper presenting a method to map forest structure in space and time in a way that is compatible with land surface or hydrological models employing sub-grid tiling.

This paper focuses on long-term evidence on economic growth, international tourism, globalization, energy consumption and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in OECD countries for the period of 1994-2014. The empirical analysis reveals that climate change is magnified by energy use, tourism and economic growth. An inverted U-shaped relationship is also found between international tourism and CO2 emissions. The contribution of international tourism to climate change in the early stages of development is thus diminished by globalization in the later stages. In other words, globalization appears to reduce carbon emissions from international tourism. The empirical results provide additional arguments for shaping regulatory frameworks aimed at reversing the current energy mix in OECD countries by facilitating energy efficiency and promoting renewable sources.

This paper investigates the role of intervening transport processes on lake sediment records of the atmospherically deposited radionuclides 210Pb and 137Cs. Brotherswater is of particular interest to this issue in that its large catchment/lake area ratio and short water residence time are likely to amplify the influence of these processes, both from the catchment and through the water column. Brotherswater is also unique in being the site of two earlier multicore studies that, together with the present study, span a period of 4 decades. Measurements of fallout radionuclides were made on soil cores, suspended sediments and sediment cores, and the results combined with those from earlier studies to construct mass balances for 210Pb and 137Cs in Brotherswater. The results showed that catchment inputs accounted for 63% of 210Pb entering the lake. Further, just 47% of 210Pb entering the water column was delivered to the sediment record. For comparison, in an earlier study at nearby Blelham Tarn with a relatively smaller catchment but longer water residence time it was shown that 47% of 210Pb inputs were delivered via the catchment, 75% of which were delivered to the sediment record. Results from both sites suggest that 210Pb is predominantly transported on fine particulates with a mean particle size of 3–4 μm. Their relatively slow removal from the water column allows them to be transported relatively uniformly throughout the lake and may help account for the fact that simple 210Pb dating models are relatively reliable in spite of the complexities of the transport processes. Mass balance calculations for 137Cs are more complicated because of the variable fallout record. Measurements of 137Cs in the input stream and water column showed that catchment inputs are still significant 30 years after the last significant fallout (Chernobyl). Modelled results showed that catchment inputs delayed the date of peak inputs of weapons test fallout to the lake though by no more than 2 years. Although the results presented here are primarily concerned with fallout radionuclides and their reliability for dating, they also have implications for the use of sediment archives in reconstructing historical records of other atmospherically deposited substances such as trace metals or persistent organic pollutants.

The UNFCCC Paris Agreement, entered into force on 4 November 2016, represents a step forward in involving all countries in mitigation actions, even though it is based on a voluntary approach and lacks the active participation of some major polluting countries. The underinvestment in mitigation actions depends on market and policy failures and the absence of price signals internalizing the economic losses due to climatic damage. This contributes to underestimating potential benefits from global action. In this paper we discuss how crucial is the assessment of the vulnerability of a country to climate change in defining the threat and action strategies. A dynamic climate-economy CGE model is developed that includes a monetary evaluation of regional damages associated with climate change. By considering alternative damage profiles, results show that internalizing climatic costs might change the bargaining position of countries in climate negotiations. Consequently, damage costs should be given greater importance when defining the implementation of a global climate agreement. © 2018, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

This paper investigates the once ubiquitous vernacular earth-built structures of Scotland and how perceptions of such buildings were shaped and developed through periods of intense cultural and environmental change. We focus upon the past exploitation of traditional resources to construct vernacular architectures and on changes in the perception of the resultant buildings. Historic earth-built structures are today deeply hidden within the landscapes of Scotland, although they were once a common feature of both urban and rural settlements. Whilst the eighteenth and nineteenth century period of Improvement – during which many of these structures were destroyed, repurposed, or left to decay – has received extensive attention by historians, there exists no previous serious study of the human and environmental dimensions. Through analysis of the material aspects of landscape resource use and analysis of the historical perceptions of such use, we emphasize the national significance of this undervalued aspect of Scotland’s built and cultural heritage, increasingly at risk of being lost completely, highlighting the prior ubiquity of mudwall structures.

Transdisciplinary knowledge integration and cross-scale management remain challenges in coastal management after several decades of research and experience with integrated and sustainable coastal management. The aim of this paper is to identify requirements for knowledge integration and development of multi-scale approaches to coastal management through reviewing and re-analysing three Swedish-European research projects: the SUCOZOMA project about sustainable coastal zone management, the FRAP project about conflicts between coastal fishery and species protection, and the SECOA project about solutions to contrasts in coastal metropolitan areas. The strategy of adaptive governance is considered in the light of its ability to assess knowledge requirements for sustainable resource management under conditions of climate change.

The overall global-scale consequences of climate change are dependent on the distribution of impacts across regions, and there are multiple dimensions to these impacts. This paper presents a global assessment of the potential impacts of climate change across several sectors, using a harmonised set of impacts models forced by the same climate and socio-economic scenarios. Indicators of impact cover the water resources, river and coastal flooding, agriculture, natural environment and built environment sectors. Impacts are assessed under four SRES socio-economic and emissions scenarios, and the effects of uncertainty in the projected pattern of climate change are incorporated by constructing climate scenarios from 21 global climate models. There is considerable uncertainty in projected regional impacts across the climate model scenarios, and coherent assessments of impacts across sectors and regions therefore must be based on each model pattern separately; using ensemble means, for example, reduces variability between sectors and indicators. An example narrative assessment is presented in the paper. Under this narrative approximately 1 billion people would be exposed to increased water resources stress, around 450 million people exposed to increased river flooding, and 1.3 million extra people would be flooded in coastal floods each year. Crop productivity would fall in most regions, and residential energy demands would be reduced in most regions because reduced heating demands would offset higher cooling demands. Most of the global impacts on water stress and flooding would be in Asia, but the proportional impacts in the Middle East North Africa region would be larger. By 2050 there are emerging differences in impact between different emissions and socio-economic scenarios even though the changes in temperature and sea level are similar, and these differences are greater in 2080. However, for all the indicators, the range in projected impacts between different climate models is considerably greater than the range between emissions and socio-economic scenarios.

Combining bioenergy and carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and storage (CCS) technologies (BECCS) has the potential to remove CO2 from the atmosphere while producing useful energy. BECCS has played a central role in scenarios that reduce climate forcing to low levels such as 2.6 Wm−2. In this paper we consider whether BECCS is essential to limiting radiative forcing (RF) to 2.6 Wm−2 by 2100 using the Global Change Assessment Model, a closely coupled model of biogeophysical and human Earth systems. We show that BECCS can potentially reduce the cost of limiting RF to 2.6 Wm−2 by 2100 but that a variety of technology combinations that do not include BECCS can also achieve this goal, under appropriate emissions mitigation policies. We note that with appropriate supporting land-use policies terrestrial sequestration could deliver carbon storage ranging from 200 to 700 PgCO2-equiavalent over the 21st century. We explore substantial delays in participation by some geopolitical regions. We find that the value of BECCS is substantially higher under delay and that delay results in higher transient RF and climate change. However, when major regions postponed mitigation indefinitely, it was impossible to return RF to 2.6 Wm−2 by 2100. Neither finite land resources nor finite potential geologic storage capacity represented a meaningful technical limit on the ability of BECCS to contribute to emissions mitigation in the numerical experiments reported in this paper.

Open Access., Recent trends in climate modeling find in GRID computing a powerful way to achieve results by sharing geographically distributed computing and storage resources. In particular, ensemble prediction experiments are based on the generation of multiple model simulations to explore, statistically, the existing uncertainties in weather and climate forecast. In this paper, we present a GRID application consisting of a state-of-the-art climate model. The main goal of the application is to provide a tool that can be used by a climate researcher to run ensemble-based predictions on the GRID for sensitivity studies. One of the main duties of this tool is the management of a workflow involving long-term jobs and data management in a user-friendly way. In this paper we show that, due to weaknesses of current GRID middleware, this management is complex task. Those weaknesses made necessary the development of a robust workflow adapted to the requirements of the climate application. As an illustrative scientific challenge, the application is applied to study the El Niño phenomenon, by simulating an El Niño year with different forcing conditions and analyzing the precipitation response over south-American countries subject to flooding risk. © Springer-Verlag 2009., This work has been partially funded by the EELA project under the 6th Framework Program of the European Commission (contract no. 026409) and the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science through the Juan de la Cierva program.

Semi-arid river basins often rely on reservoirs for water supply. Small reservoirs may impact on large-scale water availability both by enhancing availability in a distributed sense and by subtracting water for large downstream user communities, e.g. served by large reservoirs. Both of these impacts of small reservoirs are subject to climate change. Using a case-study on North-East Brazil, this paper shows that climate change impacts on water availability may be severe, and impacts on distributed water availability from small reservoirs may exceed impacts on centralised water availability from large reservoirs. Next, the paper shows that the effect of small reservoirs on water availability from large reservoirs may be significant, and increase both in relative and absolute sense under unfavourable climate change.

This paper considers aspects of environmental social science research in the UK and explores an obvious bias towards the development of instruments to manage demand as an adaptation to climate change, and consequently the predominance of interest in the customer from a demand-side perspective. In the case of water, this has resulted in an inappropriate mixing of individualist research methods designed to measure public perceptions of risk and water-based practices, with mass consumption data that cannot be specifically linked to the individual. This mixing has a tendency to reinforce a long-standing blame culture that drives interest in the development of behaviour change initiatives while the relatively unchallenged hydraulic mission to provide safe drinking water and sanitation progresses. With this in mind this paper reviews examples of water use research from California, Australia, and the UK and highlights the more effective routes to understanding water customers and developing behaviour change initiatives that utilise stages of change models and grounded techniques incorporating qualitative and quantitative data from individual sources. A secondary aim is to argue for re-framing the relations between various actors in a changing climate to allow the development of new policy approaches, learning, and openness, from industry, regulators, and customers, based on new theories from the field.

This paper examines climate change adaptation and gender issues through an application of a feminist intersectional approach. This approach permits the identification of diverse adaptation responses arising from the existence of multiple and fragmented dimensions of identity (including gender) that intersect with power relations to shape situation-specific interactions between farmers and ecosystems. Based on results from contrasting research cases in Bihar and Uttarakhand, India, this paper demonstrates, inter alia, that there are geographically determined gendered preferences and adoption strategies regarding adaptation options and that these are influenced by the socio-ecological context and institutional dynamics. Intersecting identities, such as caste, wealth, age and gender, influence decisions and reveal power dynamics and negotiation within the household and the community, as well as barriers to adaptation among groups. Overall, the findings suggest that a feminist intersectional approach does appear to be useful and worth further exploration in the context of climate change adaptation. In particular, future research could benefit from more emphasis on a nuanced analysis of the intra-gender differences that shape adaptive capacity to climate change. This paper examines climate change adaptation and gender issues through an application of a feminist intersectional approach. This approach permits the identification of diverse adaptation responses arising from the existence of multiple and fragmented dimensions of identity (including gender) that intersect with power relations to shape situation-specific interactions between farmers and ecosystems. Based on results from contrasting research cases in Bihar and Uttarakhand, India, this paper demonstrates, inter alia, that there are geographically determined gendered preferences and adoption strategies regarding adaptation options and that these are influenced by the socio-ecological context and institutional dynamics. Intersecting identities, such as caste, wealth, age and gender, influence decisions and reveal power dynamics and negotiation within the household and the community, as well as barriers to adaptation among groups. Overall, the findings suggest that a feminist intersectional approach does appear to be useful and worth further exploration in the context of climate change adaptation. In particular, future research could benefit from more emphasis on a nuanced analysis of the intra-gender differences that shape adaptive capacity to climate change. © 2016, The Author(s).

The effectiveness of climate adaptation policies in one sector can be compromised or aided by policies developed in another sector. When the focus of adaptation is a single geographical region, this potential for interaction between sectoral policies is heightened due to spatial, political and functional proximities. This paper analyses interactions within three suites of climate adaptation options developed for Australia’s ‘South-East Queensland’ region relating to: (1) wetland migration, coastal infrastructure and planned retreat; (2) urban water security and energy demand; and (3) terrestrial biodiversity and agricultural viability. Using the concept of ‘institutional interplay’ to structure a process of dialogue amongst researchers, we identify a number of critical implementation requirements for successful regional-scale adaptation. There is a need for greater focus on neighbourhood or sub-regional scales of policy design and intervention, particularly for the coordination of adapted infrastructure and services to households. Policy-makers must also be more explicit in considering broader drivers of land-use change and economic adjustment likely to impact on proposed adaptations. In considering these issues, our paper also demonstrates a process for conducting cross-sectoral syntheses that can be employed in other regional-scale adaptation studies.

This paper investigates the effectiveness of traffic management tools, includ- ing traffic signal control and en-route navigation provided by variable message signs (VMS), in reducing traffic congestion and associated emissions of CO2, NOx, and black carbon. The latter is among the most significant contributors of climate change, and is associated with many serious health problems. This study combines traffic microsimulation (S-Paramics) with emission modeling (AIRE) to simulate and predict the impacts of different traffic management measures on a number traffic and environmental Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) assessed at different spatial levels. Simulation results for a real road network located in West Glasgow suggest that these traffic management tools can bring a reduction in travel delay and BC emission respectively by up to 6 % and 3 % network wide. The improvement at local levels such as junctions or corridors can be more significant. However, our results also show that the potential benefits of such interventions are strongly dependent on a number of factors, including dynamic demand profile, VMS compliance rate, and fleet composition. Extensive discussion based on the simulation results as well as managerial insights are provided to support traffic network operation and control with environmental goals. The study described by this paper was conducted under the support of the FP7-funded CARBOTRAF project.

Climate change impacts affecting coastal areas, such as sea-level rise and storm surge events, are expected to have significant social, economic and environmental consequences worldwide. Ongoing population growth and development in highly urbanised coastal areas will exacerbate the predicted impacts on coastal settlements. Improving the adaptation potential of highly vulnerable coastal communities will require greater levels of planning and policy integration across sectors and scales. However, to date, there is little evidence in the literature which demonstrates how climate policy integration is being achieved. This paper contributes to this gap in knowledge by drawing on the example provided by the process of developing cross-sectoral climate change adaptation policies and programmes generated for three coastal settlement types as part of the South East Queensland Climate Adaptation Research Initiative (SEQCARI), a 3-year multi-sectoral study of climate change adaptation options for human settlements in South East Queensland, Australia. In doing so, we first investigate the benefits and challenges to cross-sectoral adaptation to address climate change broadly and in coastal areas. We then describe how cross-sectoral adaptation policies and programmes were generated and appraised involving the sectors of urban planning and management, coastal management, emergency management, human health and physical infrastructure as part of SEQCARI. The paper concludes by discussing key considerations that can inform the development and assessment of cross-sectoral climate change adaptation policies and programmes in highly urbanised coastal areas.

Just over 40 years ago, I wrote a paper entitled “Climate change: Are we on the brink of a pronounced global warming?” In it, I attempted to explain why despite a rise in the atmosphere’s CO2 content there had been no significant warming. I predicted that a natural cooling was about to give way to a warming, and that industrial emissions of CO2 would amplify this warming. The paper published in Science in 1975. Warming did follow in 1976–1977. However, a retrospective look shows that my analysis was flawed. What is more—and to my chagrin—based on the words “global warming” in my Science paper, I was given the title “Father of Global Warming.” Not only did I not like this title, I had done little to merit it.

The multitude of wetlands in the Prairie Pothole Region of North America forms one of Earth’s largest wetland complexes. The midcontinent location exposes this ecologically and economically important wetland system to a highly variable climate, markedly influencing ponded-water levels, hydroperiods, chemical characteristics, and biota of individual basins. Given their dominance on the landscape and recognized value, great interest in how projected future changes in climate will affect prairie-pothole wetlands has developed and spawned much scientific research. On June 2, 2015, a special symposium, “Midcontinent Prairie-Pothole Wetlands: Influence of a Changed Climate,” was held at the annual meeting of the Society of Wetland Scientists in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. The symposium’s twelve presenters covered a wide range of relevant topics delivered to a standing-room-only audience. Following the symposium, the presenters recognized the need to publish their presented papers as a combined product to facilitate widespread distribution. The need for additional papers to more fully cover the topic of prairie-pothole wetlands and climate change was also identified. This supplemental issue of Wetlands is the realization of that vision.

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.

Sub-Saharan Africa is particularly vulnerable to climate change. Multiple biophysical, political, and socioeconomic stresses interact to increase the region’s susceptibility and constrain its adaptive capacity. Climate change is commonly recognized as a major issue likely to have negative consequences on food security and livelihoods in the region. This paper reviews three bodies of scholarship that have evolved somewhat separately, yet are inherently interconnected: climate change impacts, vulnerability and adaptation, food security, and sustainable livelihoods. The paper develops a conceptualization of the relationships among the three themes and shows how food security’s vulnerabilities are related to multiple stresses and adaptive capacities, reflecting access to assets. Food security represents one of several livelihood outcomes. The framework shows how several research paradigms relate to the issue of food security and climate change and provides a guide for empirical investigations. Recognizing these interconnections can help in the development of more effective policies and programs. The framework is applied here to synthesize findings from an array of studies in sub-Saharan Africa dealing with vulnerability to climate change, food security, and livelihoods.

Producing food, transportation, and energy for seven billion people has led to large and widespread increases in the use of synthetic nitrogen (N) fertilizers and fossil fuel combustion, resulting in a leakage of N into the environment as various forms of air and water pollution. The global N cycle is more severely altered by human activity than the global carbon (C) cycle, and reactive N dynamics affect all aspects of climate change considerations, including mitigation, adaptation, and impacts. In this special issue of Biogeochemistry, we present a review of the climate–nitrogen interactions based on a technical report for the United States National Climate Assessment presented as individual papers for terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, agriculture and human health within the US. We provide a brief overview of each of the paper’s main points and conclusions is presented in this foreword summary.

Adaptation to climate change is becoming a prominent issue in both landscape research and land-use planning. Current research focuses mainly on the description of potential impacts for different societal sectors and in general fails to provide useful information to help define climate adaptation strategies and specific policy measures or development plans. This editorial briefly explores the reasons why this may be the case and proposes a conceptual framework for more effective climate adaptation research. Furthermore, it introduces three papers that address adaptation of landscape systems to climate change as an integrated multi-level challenge. The included papers focus on the relationship between climate-induced changes in the natural system and the economics-oriented societal system and specifically address the interdependencies across scales.

This paper argues that more work is needed to facilitate cross-disciplinary collaborations by scholars across the physical sciences and humanities to improve Data Rescue Activities (DARE). Debate over the scale and potential impact of anthropogenic global warming is one of the dominant narratives of the twenty-first century. Predicting future climates and determining how environment and society might be affected by climate change are global issues of social, economic and political importance. They require responses from different research communities and necessitate closer inter-disciplinary working relationships for an integrated approach. Improving the datasets required for long-term climate models is an important part of this process. Establishing a multi-disciplinary dialogue and approach to DARE activities is increasingly being recognised as the best way to achieve this. This paper focuses on the recovery of the long-term instrumental weather observations used for models and reconstructions of the climate over the past two-hundred years. Written from the perspective of an historian working in the field, it does not seek to explore the reconstructions themselves but the process of data gathering, advocating a closer working relationship between the arts, social sciences, and sciences to extend the geographic and temporal coverage of extant datasets. This is especially important for regions where data gaps exist currently. First, it will offer a justification for extending data recovery activities for Southeast Asia and the China Seas region. Second, it will offer a brief overview of the data recovery projects currently operating in that area and the typesof historic source material that are used. Third, it will explore the work currently being undertaken for Southeast Asia and China under the Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth initiative as an example of a successful cross-disciplinary program. Finally, it will argue the importance of advertising DARE activities across different fields and the benefits of a more joined-up discussion on potential data sources by exploring the use of the resource by the wider academic community.

Background In the context of a warming climate and increasing urbanisation (with the associated urban heat island effect), interest in understanding temperature related health effects is growing. Previous reviews have examined how the temperature-mortality relationship varies by geographical location. There have been no reviews examining the empirical evidence for changes in population susceptibility to the effects of heat and/or cold over time. The objective of this paper is to review studies which have specifically examined variations in temperature related mortality risks over the 20th and 21st centuries and determine whether population adaptation to heat and/or cold has occurred. Methods We searched five electronic databases combining search terms for three main concepts: temperature, health outcomes and changes in vulnerability or adaptation. Studies included were those which quantified the risk of heat related mortality with changing ambient temperature in a specific location over time, or those which compared mortality outcomes between two different extreme temperature events (heatwaves) in one location. Results The electronic searches returned 9183 titles and abstracts, of which eleven studies examining the effects of ambient temperature over time were included and six studies comparing the effect of different heatwaves at discrete time points were included. Of the eleven papers that quantified the risk of, or absolute heat related mortality over time, ten found a decrease in susceptibility over time of which five found the decrease to be significant. The magnitude of the decrease varied by location. Only two studies attempted to quantitatively attribute changes in susceptibility to specific adaptive measures and found no significant association between the risk of heat related mortality and air conditioning prevalence within or between cities over time. Four of the six papers examining effects of heatwaves found a decrease in expected mortality in later years. Five studies examined the risk of cold. In contrast to the changes in heat related mortality observed, only one found a significant decrease in cold related mortality in later time periods. Conclusions There is evidence that across a number of different settings, population susceptibility to heat and heatwaves has been decreasing. These changes in heat related susceptibility have important implications for health impact assessments of future heat related risk. A similar decrease in cold related mortality was not shown. Adaptation to heat has implications for future planning, particularly in urban areas, with anticipated increases in temperature due to climate change. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12940-016-0102-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Tourism climate indices (TCI) are commonly used to describe the climate conditions suitable for tourism activities, from the planning, investment or daily operations perspectives. A substantial amount of research has been carried out, in particular with respect to new indices formulae adapted to specific tourism products, and parameters and their weighting, taking into account surveys on the stated preferences of tourists, especially in terms of comfort. This paper illustrates another field of research, which seeks to better understand the different sources of uncertainty associated with indices. Indeed, slight differences in formula thresholds, variations in computation methods, and also the use of multimodel ensembles create nuances that affect the ways in which indices projections are usually presented. Firstly, we assess the impact of differences in preference surveys on the definition of indices thresholds, in particular for thermal comfort. Secondly, we compare computation methods for France, showing the need to better specify detailed data sources and their use to ensure the comparability of results. Thirdly, using multimodel ensembles for the Mediterranean basin, we assess the uncertainty inherent in long-term projections, which are used in modelling the economic impact of climate change. This paper argues in favour of a more cautious use of tourism comfort indices, with more consideration given to the robustness of data (validation, debiasing, uncertainty assessment, etc.) and users’ needs, from the climate services perspective. This paper was written by a team participating in the EU FP7 project CLIM-RUN “Climate Local Information in the Mediterranean region Responding Users Needs” (2011–2014).

Background The default international accounting rules estimate the carbon emissions from forest products by assuming all harvest is immediately emitted to the atmosphere. This makes it difficult to assess the greenhouse gas (GHG) consequences of different forest management or manufacturing activities that maintain the storage of carbon. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) addresses this issue by allowing other accounting methods. The objective of this paper is to provide a new model for estimating annual stock changes of carbon in harvested wood products (HWP). Results The model, British Columbia Harvested Wood Products version 1 (BC-HWPv1), estimates carbon stocks and fluxes for wood harvested in BC from 1965 to 2065, based on new parameters on local manufacturing, updated and new information for North America on consumption and disposal of wood and paper products, and updated parameters on methane management at landfills in the USA. Based on model results, reporting on emissions as they occur would substantially lower BC’s greenhouse gas inventory in 2010 from 48 Mt CO2 to 26 Mt CO2 because of the long-term forest carbon storage in-use and in the non-degradable material in landfills. In addition, if offset projects created under BC’s protocol reported 100 year cumulative emissions using the BC-HWPv1 the emissions would be lower by about 11%. Conclusions This research showed that the IPCC default methods overestimate the emissions North America wood products. Future IPCC GHG accounting methods could include a lower emissions factor (e.g. 0.52) multiplied by the annual harvest, rather than the current multiplier of 1.0. The simulations demonstrated that the primary opportunities for climate change mitigation are in shifting from burning mill waste to using the wood for longer-lived products.

Methane emissions from sheep and cattle production have gained increasing profile in the context of climate change. Policy and scientific research communities have suggested a number of technological approaches to mitigate these emissions. This paper uses the concept of co-production as an analytical framework to understand farmers’ evaluation of a 'good animal’. It examines how technology and sheep and beef cattle are co-produced in the context of concerns about the climate change impact of methane. Drawing on 42 semi-structured interviews, this paper demonstrates that methane emissions are viewed as a natural and integral part of sheep and beef cattle by farmers, rather than as a pollutant. Sheep and beef cattle farmers in the UK are found to be an extremely heterogeneous group that need to be understood in their specific social, environmental and consumer contexts. Some are more amenable to appropriating methane reducing measures than others, but largely because animals are already co-constructed from the natural and the technical for reasons of increased production efficiency.

The purpose of the present paper is to present and discuss some techno-economic aspects of the impact of the automotive industry and its supply chain to climate change. In order to provide a well-structured estimate to this global concern nowadays, we will deal with the following: we will clearly define what is meant by climate change and will resume the origins, the extend and the contribution of the automotive vehicles to this phenomenon; we will give an account of the actual world-fleet of vehicles and of the expected increase of this fleet in the forthcoming future, taking into consideration the projected in the future contribution of the world-fleet of vehicles in climate change and of the actions that have been taken by regulation authorities to reduce this phenomenon by limiting the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) as well as of other pollutants by newly produced vehicles; we will provide a comprehensive approach of well-to-wheel studies regarding emission and energy consumption mainly performed in the USA, Japan and in the European Union. The above studies will permit us to evaluate alternative technologies that the automotive industry is considering in order to comply with these regulations and to contribute in reducing the impact of vehicles in the environment and, subsequently, in the climate change. CO2 equivalent gas emissions of vehicles are expected to increase in the coming years and, consequently, the contribution of the transport sector to climate change will also increase. Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) constitute the technology to be adopted in order to reduce the contribution of vehicles to climate change. Given the multinational character of the automotive industry and of its suppliers, no major problems will appear in the introduction of new technology vehicles that are conceived to face the environment and climate change problems.

Political leaders in numerous nations argue for an upper limit of the global average surface temperature of 2 K above the pre-industrial level, in order to attempt to avoid the most serious impacts of climate change. This paper analyzes what this limit implies in terms of radiative forcing, emissions pathways and abatement costs, for a range of assumptions on rate of ocean heat uptake and climate sensitivity. The primary aim is to analyze the importance of ocean heat uptake for radiative forcing pathways that temporarily overshoot the long-run stabilization forcing, yet keep the temperature increase at or below the 2 K limit. In order to generate such pathways, an integrated climate-economy model, MiMiC, is used, in which the emissions pathways generated represent the least-cost solution of stabilizing the global average surface temperature at 2 K above the pre-industrial level. We find that the level of overshoot can be substantial. For example, the level of overshoot in radiative forcing in 2100 ranges from about 0.2 to 1 W/m2, where the value depends strongly and positively on the effective diffusivity of heat in the oceans. Measured in relative terms, the level of radiative forcing overshoot above its longrun equilibrium level in 2100 is 20% to 60% for high values of climate sensitivity (i.e., about 4.5 K) and 8% to 30% for low values of climate sensitivity (i.e., about 2 K). In addition, for cases in which the radiative forcing level can be directly stabilized at the equilibrium level associated with a specific climate sensitivity and the 2 K limit, the net present value abatement cost is roughly cut by half if overshoot pathways are considered instead of stabilization of radiative forcing at the equilibrium level without an overshoot.

The Arctic is subject to growing economic and political interest. Meanwhile, its climate and water systems are in rapid transformation. In this paper, we review and extend a set of studies on climate model results, hydro-climatic change, and hydrological monitoring systems. Results indicate that general circulation model (GCM) projections of drainage basin temperature and precipitation have improved between two model generations. However, some inaccuracies remain for precipitation projections. When considering geographical priorities for monitoring or adaptation efforts, our results indicate that future projections by GCMs and recent observations diverge regarding the basins where temperature and precipitation changes currently are the most pronounced and where they will be so in the future. Regarding late twentieth-century discharge changes in major Arctic rivers, data generally show excess of water relative to precipitation changes. This indicates a possible contribution to sea-level rise of river water that was previously stored in permafrost or groundwater. The river contribution to the increasing Arctic Ocean freshwater inflow is similar in magnitude to the separate contribution from glaciers, which underlines the importance of considering all possible sources of freshwater when assessing sea-level change. We further investigate monitoring systems and find a lack of harmonized water chemistry data, which limits the ability to understand the origin and transport of nutrients, carbon and sediment to the sea. To provide adequate information for research and policy, Arctic hydrological and hydrochemical monitoring needs to be extended, better integrated and made more accessible. Further water-focused data and modeling efforts are required to resolve the source of excess discharge in Arctic rivers. Finally, improvements in climate model parameterizations are needed, in particular for precipitation projections.

Purpose Current estimations of the climate impact from indirect land use change (ILUC) caused by biofuels are heavily influenced by assumptions regarding the biofuel production period. The purpose of this paper is to propose a new method (baseline time accounting) that takes global land use dynamics into account that is consistent with the global warming potential, that is applicable to any phenomenon causing land use change, and that is independent of production period assumptions. Methods We consider ILUC in two forms. The first is called “accelerated expansion” and concerns ILUC in regions with an expanding agricultural area. The second is called “delayed reversion” and concerns ILUC in regions with a decreasing agricultural area. We use recent trends in international land use and projections of future land use change to assess how ILUC from biofuels will alter the development in global agricultural land use dynamics compared to the existing trend (i.e., the baseline development). We then use the definition of the global warming potential to determine the CO2 equivalence of the change in land use dynamics. Results and discussion We apply baseline time accounting to two existing ILUC studies in the literature. With current trends in global agricultural land use, the method significantly reduces the estimated climate impact in the previous ILUC studies (by more than half). Sensitivity analyses show that results are somewhat sensitive to assumptions regarding carbon sequestration and assumptions regarding postreversion ecosystems. Conclusions The global dynamic development in land use has important implications for the time accounting step when estimating the climate impact of ILUC caused by biofuel production or other issues affecting land use. Ignoring this may lead to erroneous conclusions about the actual climate impact of ILUC. Several land use projections indicate that the global agricultural area will keep expanding up to and beyond 2050. We therefore recommend to apply the baseline time accounting concept as an integrated part of future ILUC studies and to update the results on a regular basis.

A regional climate modelling system, the Providing REgional Climates for Impacts Studies developed by the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, has been used to study future climate change scenarios over Indus basin for the impact assessment. In this paper we have examined the three Quantifying Uncertainty in Model Predictions simulations selected from 17-member perturbed physics ensemble generated using Hadley Centre Coupled Module. The climate projections based on IPCC SRES A1B scenario are analysed over three time slices, near future (2011–2040), middle of the twenty first century (2041–2070), and distant future (2071–2098). The baseline simulation (1961–1990) was evaluated with observed data for seasonal and spatial patterns and biases. The model was able to resolve features on finer spatial scales and depict seasonal variations reasonably well, although there were quantitative biases. The model simulations suggest a non-uniform change in precipitation overall, with an increase in precipitation over the upper Indus basin and decrease over the lower Indus basin, and little change in the border area between the upper and lower Indus basins. A decrease in winter precipitation is projected, particularly over the southern part of the basin. Projections indicate greater warming in the upper than the lower Indus, and greater warming in winter than in the other seasons. The simulations suggest an overall increase in the number of rainy days over the basin, but a decrease in the number of rainy days accompanied by an increase in rainfall intensity in the border area between the upper and lower basins, where the rainfall amount is highest.

Nowadays, adaptation has become a key focus of the scientific and policy-making communities and is a major area of discussion in the multilateral climate change process. As climate change is projected to hit the poorest the hardest, it is especially important for developing countries to pay particular attention to the management of natural resources and agricultural activities. In most of these countries such as Cameroon, forest can play important role in achieving broader climate change adaptation goals. However, forest generally receives very little attention in national development programme and strategies such as policy dialogues on climate change and poverty reduction strategies. Using a qualitative approach to data collection through content analysis of relevant Cameroon policy documents, the integration of climate change adaptation was explored and the level of attention given to forests for adaptation analysed. Results indicate that, with the exception of the First National Communication to UNFCCC that focused mostly on mitigation and related issues, current policy documents in Cameroon are void of tangible reference to climate change, and hence failing in drawing the relevance of forest in sheltering populations from the many projected impacts of climate change. Policies related to forest rely on a generalized concept of sustainable forest management and do not identify the specific changes that need to be incorporated into management strategies and policies towards achieving adaptation. The strategies and recommendations made in those documents only serve to improve understanding of Cameroon natural resources and add resilience to the natural systems in coping with anthropogenic stresses. The paper draws attention to the need to address the constraints of lack of awareness and poor flow of information on the potentials of forests for climate change adaptation. It highlights the need for integrating forest for adaptation into national development programmes and strategies, and recommends a review of the existing environmental legislations and their implications on poverty reduction strategy and adaptation to climate change.

Effectively communicating the complexity of climate change to the public is an important goal for the climate change research community, particularly for those of us who receive public funds. The challenge of communicating the science of climate change will be reduced if climate change researchers consider the links between personality types, communication tendencies and learning preferences. Jungian personality type is one of many factors related to an individual’s preferred style of taking in and processing information, i.e., preferred communication style. In this paper, we demonstrate that the Jungian personality type profile of interdisciplinary, early career climate researchers is significantly different from that of the general population in the United States. In particular, Ph.D. climate researchers tend towards Intuition and focus on theories and the “big picture”, while the U.S. general population tends towards Sensing and focuses on concrete examples and experience. There are other differences as well in the way the general public as a group prefers to take in information, make decisions, and deal with the outer world, compared with the average interdisciplinary climate scientist. These differences have important implications for communication between these two groups. We suggest that climate researchers will be more effective in conveying their messages if they are aware of their own personality type and potential differences in preferred learning and communication styles between themselves and the general public (and other specific audiences), and use this knowledge to more effectively target their audience.