Extreme weather and climate-related events occur in a particular place, by definition, infrequently. It is therefore challenging to detect systematic changes in their occurrence given the relative ...shortness of observational records. However, there is a clear interest from outside the climate science community in the extent to which recent damaging extreme events can be linked to human-induced climate change or natural climate variability. Event attribution studies seek to determine to what extent anthropogenic climate change has altered the probability or magnitude of particular events. They have shown clear evidence for human influence having increased the probability of many extremely warm seasonal temperatures and reduced the probability of extremely cold seasonal temperatures in many parts of the world. The evidence for human influence on the probability of extreme precipitation events, droughts, and storms is more mixed. Although the science of event attribution has developed rapidly in recent years, geographical coverage of events remains patchy and based on the interests and capabilities of individual research groups. The development of operational event attribution would allow a more timely and methodical production of attribution assessments than currently obtained on an ad hoc basis. For event attribution assessments to be most useful, remaining scientific uncertainties need to be robustly assessed and the results clearly communicated. This requires the continuing development of methodologies to assess the reliability of event attribution results and further work to understand the potential utility of event attribution for stakeholder groups and decision makers.
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Micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) account for approximately 97 per cent of all active business entities within the ASEAN region. They are an important contributor to both emissions ...generation and future reduction.A recent large-scale, multi-country quantitative assessment was undertaken into how SMEs are dealing with climate change in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam. Most respondents reported a high level of concern about climate change.Over 90 per cent of firms are currently undertaking measures to reduce emissions, albeit that they are typically simple steps such as reducing air conditioning and electricity, recycling or installing low-energy lighting.Common intentions to deal with future extreme weather events include reducing emissions, developing a disaster plan, or reviewing business insurance policies.Major obstacles to dealing with climate issues are firstly, a lack of knowledge and secondly, insufficient funds. Governments are the preferred source of information, followed by business associations/chambers, friends and family. Social media, YouTube and websites are overwhelmingly the dissemination modes of choice. There were significant variations in these patterns from one reporting country to another.Policymakers can help SMEs adjust to climate change by: encouraging them to adopt simple emission reduction measures; providing training and financial support; ensuring appropriate online delivery of advisory and assistance measures; and localising responses to meet the needs of SMEs which are specific to different ASEAN member states.
We present an overview of results from 11 integrated assessment models (IAMs) that participated in the 33
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study of the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum (EMF-33) on the viability of large-scale ...deployment of bioenergy for achieving long-run climate goals. The study explores future bioenergy use across models under harmonized scenarios for future climate policies, availability of bioenergy technologies, and constraints on biomass supply. This paper provides a more transparent description of IAMs that span a broad range of assumptions regarding model structures, energy sectors, and bioenergy conversion chains. Without emission constraints, we find vastly different CO
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emission and bioenergy deployment patterns across models due to differences in competition with fossil fuels, the possibility to produce large-scale bio-liquids, and the flexibility of energy systems. Imposing increasingly stringent carbon budgets mostly increases bioenergy use. A diverse set of available bioenergy technology portfolios provides flexibility to allocate bioenergy to supply different final energy as well as remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by combining bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration (BECCS). Sector and regional bioenergy allocation varies dramatically across models mainly due to bioenergy technology availability and costs, final energy patterns, and availability of alternative decarbonization options. Although much bioenergy is used in combination with CCS, BECCS is not necessarily the driver of bioenergy use. We find that the flexibility to use biomass feedstocks in different energy sub-sectors makes large-scale bioenergy deployment a robust strategy in mitigation scenarios that is surprisingly insensitive with respect to reduced technology availability. However, the achievability of stringent carbon budgets and associated carbon prices is sensitive. Constraints on biomass feedstock supply increase the carbon price less significantly than excluding BECCS because carbon removals are still realized and valued. Incremental sensitivity tests find that delayed readiness of bioenergy technologies until 2050 is more important than potentially higher investment costs.
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Human activities cause the degradation of innumerable ecosystems, including forests. The degradation of forests leads to far-reaching nutrient cycle changes throughout all environments. Reversible or ...irreversible degradation processes cause declines in an ecosystem’s ability to self-regulate. Reversible processes decrease native forest biodiversity while preserving the ecosystem’s abiotic components, whereas irreversible processes alter the character of the potential natural vegetation. This book discusses forest degradation in three sections on general, climatic, and land-use degradative effects.
Humans have significantly altered the energy balance of the Earth’s climate system mainly not only by extracting and burning fossil fuels but also by altering the biosphere and using halocarbons. The ...3rd US National Climate Assessment pointed to a need for a system of indicators of climate and global change based on long-term data that could be used to support assessments and this led to the development of the National Climate Indicators System (NCIS). Here we identify a representative set of key atmospheric indicators of changes in atmospheric radiative forcing due to greenhouse gases (GHGs), and we evaluate atmospheric composition measurements, including non-CO2GHGs for use as climate change indicators in support of the US National Climate Assessment. GHG abundances and their changes over time can provide valuable information on the success of climate mitigation policies, as well as insights into possible carbon-climate feedback processes that may ultimately affect the success of those policies. To ensure that reliable information for assessing GHG emission changes can be provided on policy-relevant scales, expanded observational efforts are needed. Furthermore, the ability to detect trends resulting from changing emissions requires a commitment to supporting long-term observations. Long-term measurements of greenhouse gases, aerosols, and clouds and related climate indicators used with a dimming/brightening index could provide a foundation for quantifying forcing and its attribution and reducing error in existing indicators that do not account for complicated cloud processes.
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The Way Things Go contains a mix of poetry, art writing, and life writing about anticipatory grief, or mourning someone or something before it’s gone. Each successive chapter in the book decreases in ...length by exactly one sentence, from a 71-sentence-long opening chapter, to a 70-sentence-long second chapter, to 69 sentences, 68 sentences, and so on down to 1 (a book-length Oulipian “melting snowball”). This shrinking form enacts the book’s concerns with loss, climate change, and the passage of time. At the level of its content, however, The Way Things Go is not fatalistic. Its title comes from a cult classic 1987 Fischli and Weiss film, in which objects such as bags of trash, car tires, and oil drums knock into one another in a Rube Goldberg-esque chain reaction. Moving through both personal history (his sister’s lupus and heroin addiction, his grandmother’s experience as a Holocaust survivor) and more global concerns (the Sixth Mass Extinction, COVID-19, the war in Ukraine), Bury considers the disruptions that occur as “things go,” as well as the continuity that remains. The book suggests that recent negotiations between optimism and pessimism with respect to the future reflect people’s feelings of vulnerability, particularly people who are used to taking their life’s stability for granted, in a world that seems increasingly precarious.
Climate change affects all segments of the agricultural enterprise, and there is mounting evidence that the continuing warming trend with shifting seasonality and intensity in precipitation will ...increase the vulnerability of agricultural systems. Agricultural is a complex system within the USA encompassing a large number of crops and livestock systems, and development of indicators to provide a signal of the impact of climate change on these different systems would be beneficial to the development of strategies for effective adaptation practices. A series of indicators were assembled to determine their potential for assessing agricultural response to climate change in the near term and long term and those with immediate capability of being implemented and those requiring more development. The available literature reveals indicators on livestock related to heat stress, soil erosion related to changes in precipitation, soil carbon changes in response to increasing carbon dioxide and soil management practices, economic response to climate change in agricultural production, and crop progress and productivity. Crop progress and productivity changes are readily observed data with a historical record for some crops extending back to the mid-1800s. This length of historical record coupled with the county-level observations from each state where a crop is grown and emerging pest populations provides a detailed set of observations to assess the impact of a changing climate on agriculture. Continued refinement of tools to assess climate impacts on agriculture will provide guidance on strategies to adapt to climate change.
Universities on Fire Alexander, Bryan
Johns Hopkins University Press,
2023, 2023-03-28, 2023-05-23
eBook, Book
Scientists agree that we are on the precipice of a global climate crisis. How will it transform colleges and universities?In 2019, intense fires in the San Francisco Bay Area closed universities and ...drove afflicted people to shelter at other campuses. At the same time, extraordinary fires ravaged eastern Australia. Several universities responded by promising material and research support to damaged businesses while also hosting refugees and emergency response teams in student residence halls. This was an echo of the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina on Tulane University in 2005.In Universities on Fire, futurist Bryan Alexander explores higher education during an age of unfolding climate crisis. Powered by real-world examples and the latest research, Alexander assesses practical responses and strategies by surveying contemporary programs and academic climate research from around the world. He establishes a model of how academic institutions may respond and offers practical pathways forward for higher education. How will the two main purposes of education—teaching and research—change as the world heats up? Alexander positions colleges and universities in the broader social world, from town-gown relationships to connections between how campuses and civilization as a whole respond to this epochal threat.Current studies of climate change trace the likely implications across a range of domains, from agriculture to policy, urban design, technology, culture, and human psychology. However, few books have predicted or studied the effects of the climate crisis on colleges and universities. By connecting climate research to a deep, futures-informed analysis of academia, Universities on Fire explores how climate change will fundamentally reshape higher education.
How can subnational governments best integrate climate change considerations across policy areas? Which factors contribute to successful integration? With a specific focus on transport, spatial ...planning policies, and energy and water in selected cases located at the border of the Alpine region between Italy and Austria, this volume shows that coordination (vertical and horizontal), public participation and information, leadership, and dedicated funding play fundamental and interlinked roles in climate change policy integration.
This book examines global warming and climate change over the past five decades in mainly subtropical and tropical countries. The amount and types of changes in these countries vary with the ...environment but are often less than those occurring in the Arctic and northern countries. Chapters address such topics as the controversy surrounding global warming, the effects of climate change on agriculture, changes in land use and hydrology, and more.
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