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I want to enter Laurie Zoloths 'At the Last Well on Earth: Climate Change Is a Feminist Issue' through an ecowomanist analytical lens. Ecowomanism is an approach that centers the [...]

Many areas of the natural and social sciences involve complex systems that link multiple areas and disciplines. This is particularly true for the science, economics, and policy of climate change, [...]

ABSTRACT Global surface temperature changes are a fundamental expression of climate change. Recent, much-debated variations in the observed rate of surface temperature change have highlighted the importance of uncertainty in [...]

Integrated assessment models (IAMs) are the main tools for combining physical and economic analyses to develop and assess climate change policy. Policy makers have relied heavily on three IAMs in [...]

Time series of global or regional average surface air temperature (SAT) are fundamental to climate change studies. A number of studies have developed several national and regional SAT series for [...]

ABSTRACT Urban induced industrialization, energy consumption, carbon emission and rising percapita automobile consumption have impelled society to brace for the heat wave like conditions. Over last 50 years (1956-2005), average [...]

ABSTRACT Africa is a continent with huge resource endowments and prospects for growth. However, the continent battles with myriads of problems such as poverty, food insecurity and dwindling commodity prices [...]

Ice cellars are a natural form of refrigeration constructed within permafrost. They are traditionally employed by indigenous Arctic peoples to store harvested wildlife. Recent reports from Alaska indicate that ice cellars are 'failing' through mechanisms that include flooding and collapse, which are often attributed to climate change. In cooperation with local stakeholders, we instrumented five cellars to record internal air temperature in Barrow, Alaska. A decade of thermal monitoring (2005-2015) revealed little thermal change. A survey was also conducted to identify all known ice cellar locations in Barrow. A total of seventy-one cellars were catalogued and mapped. The large number of catalogued cellars shows the importance and great potential loss for the Barrow community if widespread failures were to occur. Although climate change has considerable potential for affecting ice cellars, sediment chemistry, local hydrology, and urbanization are also important impacting factors. Keywords: Barrow, ice cellar, Inupiat, permafrost, thermal regime., Permafrost--perennially frozen ground--underlies substantial portions of Earth's land area. Although many research projects have focused on aspects of permafrost related to hydrology, biogeochemical cycling, and engineering, few investigations have focused [...]

One of the most significant climate change impacts on arctic urban landscapes is the warming and degradation of permafrost, which negatively affects the structural integrity of infrastructure. We estimate potential changes in stability of Russian urban infrastructure built on permafrost in response to the projected climatic changes provided by six preselected General Circulation Models (GCMs) participated in the most recent Climate Model Inter-comparison Project (CMIP5). The analysis was conducted for the entire extent of the Russian permafrost-affected area. According to our analysis a significant (at least 25%) climate-induced reduction in the urban infrastructure stability throughout the Russian permafrost region should be expected by the mid-2ist century. However, the high uncertainty, resulting from the GCM-produced climate projections, prohibits definitive conclusion about the rate and magnitude of potential climate impacts on permafrost infrastructure. Results presented in this paper can serve as guidelines for developing adequate adaptation and mitigation strategy for Russian northern cities. Keywords: Climate Change, Permafrost Infrastructure, Russian Arctic Cities., INTRODUCTION Planned socio-economic development during the Soviet period promoted migration into the Arctic and work force consolidation in urbanized settlements to support mineral resources extraction and transportation industries. These policies [...]

BACKGROUND: While various policies have been implemented globally to mitigate climate change and reduce exposure to toxic air pollutants, policy assessments have considered few if any of the benefits to children. OBJECTIVE: To comprehensively assess the co-benefits of climate change mitigation to children, we expanded the suite of adverse health outcomes in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Benefits Mapping and Analysis Program (BenMAP) to include additional outcomes associated with prenatal and childhood exposure to ambient fine particulate matter (P[M.sub.2.5]). We applied this newly expanded program to an assessment of the U.S. Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the United States' first regional market-based regulatory program designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the electric power sector within the Northeast. METHODS: We used calculated changes in ambient P[M.sub.2.5] concentrations for the period 2009-2014, with newly incorporated concentration-response (C-R) functions to quantify changes in the incidence of preterm birth (PTB), term low birth weight (TLBW), autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and asthma. These outcomes are causally or likely to be causally related to P[M.sub.2.5] exposure. Cost per case estimates were incorporated to monetize those changes in incidence. RESULTS: The estimated avoided cases of adverse child health outcomes included 537 asthma cases, 112 preterm births, 98 cases of ASD, and 56 cases of TLBW, with an associated avoided cost estimate ranging from $191 to $350 million. In a previous analysis of health benefits of RGGI, the only benefits accruing to children were limited to prevented cases of infant mortality and respiratory illnesses, with a monetized impact of $8.1 million--only 2-4% of the new results attributable to RGGI. CONCLUSION: The results of this innovative analysis indicate that RGGI has provided substantial child health benefits beyond those initially considered. Moreover, those health benefits had significant estimated economic value. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP6706, Introduction Toxic air pollutants such as ambient fine particulate matter [PM [less than or equal to]2.5 [micro]m in aerodynamic diameter (P[M.sub.2.5])] and the major climate-altering gas, carbon dioxide (C[O.sub.2]) emitted [...]

Background: The Cameroon government has set a target that, by 2030, 58% of the population will be using Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) as a cooking fuel, in comparison with less than 20% in 2014. The National LPG Master Plan (Master Plan) was developed for scaling up the LPG sector to achieve this target. Objectives: This study aimed to estimate the potential impacts of this planned LPG expansion (the Master Plan) on population health and climate change mitigation, assuming primary, sustained use of LPG for daily cooking. Methods: We applied existing and developed new mathematical models to calculate the health and climate impacts of expanding LPG primary adoption for household cooking in Cameroon over two periods: a) short-term (2017-2030): Comparing the Master Plan 58% target with a counterfactual LPG adoption of 32% in 2030, in line with current trends; and b) long-term (2031-2100, climate modeling only), assuming Cameroon will become a mature and saturated LPG market by 2100 (73% adoption, based on Latin American countries). We compared this with a counterfactual adoption of 41% by 2100, in line with current trends. Results: By 2030, successful implementation of the Master Plan was estimated to avert about 28,000 (minimum = 22,000, maximum = 35,000) deaths and 770,000 (minimum = 580,000 maximum = 1 million) disability-adjusted life years. For the same period, we estimated reductions in pollutant emissions of more than a third in comparison with the counterfactual, leading to a global cooling of -0.1 milli [degrees]C in 2030. For 2100, a cooling impact from the Master Plan leading to market saturation (73%) was estimated to be -0.70milli [degrees]C in comparison with to the counterfactual, with a range of -0.64 to -0.93 milli [degrees]C based on different fractions of nonrenewable biomass. Discussion: Successful implementation of the Master Plan could have significant positive impacts on population health in Cameroon with no adverse impacts on climate. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP4899, Introduction Household air pollution (HAP) is a major risk factor for disease and disability in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) (Gakidou et al. 2017). HAP is caused by incomplete combustion [...]