Use of general circulation model output in the creation of climate change scenarios for impact analysis

Many scientific studies warn of a rapid global climate change during the next century. These changes are understood with much less certainty on a regional scale than on a global scale, but effects on ecosystems and society will occur at local and regional scales. Consequently, in order to study the true impacts of climate change, regional scenarios of future climate are needed. One of the most important sources of information for creating scenarios is the output from general circulation models (GCMs) of the climate system. However, current state-of-the-art GCMs are unable to simulate accurately even the current seasonal cycle of climate on a regional basis. Thus the simple technique of adding the difference between 2 × CO₂ and 1 × CO₂ GCM simulations to current climatic time series cannot produce scenarios with appropriate spatial and temporal details without corrections for model deficiencies. In this study a technique is developed to allow the information from GCM simulations to be used, while accommodating for the deficiencies. GCM output is combined with knowledge of the regional climate to produce scenarios of the equilibrium climate response to a doubling of the atmospheric CO₂ concentration for three case study regions, China, Sub-Saharan Africa and Venezuela, for use in biological effects models. By combining the general climate change calculated with several GCMs with the observed patterns of interannual climate variability, reasonable scenarios of temperature and precipitation variations can be created. Generalizations of this procedure to other regions of the world are discussed.     

基于IWAP的广西干湿演变尺度效应与过程识别

伴随着全球变化和区域旱涝加剧,明晰最佳表达时间尺度,开展精细化旱涝演变监测和过程识别、支撑业务化精准预警是当前有效应对旱涝灾害的迫切需求。针对广西旱涝并存且频繁交替现象,采用距平改进的加权平均降水指数(IWAP)分析了区域日、候、旬、月、季尺度1961—2017年气象干湿演变监测的尺度效应;并结合游程理论和极端事件强度-过程检测方法(EID)对典型干旱、湿润事件过程进行识别。结果表明:(1)时间尺度越小(如日、候),IWAP对广西大气干湿快速频繁交替波动和空间格局变化监测效果越好;(2)日与候尺度IWAP对广西干湿面积变化监测具有强正相关一致性,其他尺度间的相关性普遍较弱,季尺度结果存在较显著的累加抵消现象,数值明显小于其他尺度;(3)各时间尺度IWAP对广西总干旱、总湿润事件频次监测差异小于各尺度间同等级干湿事件的频次差异,日与候、旬与月尺度分别表达了广西干湿事件相近的演变模态和强度分布;(4)文中方法对广西干湿演变过程及起讫时间识别效果良好,且日尺度能更好地揭示骤发性干旱和突发极端降雨湿润现象。     

Think global,act local? The relevance of place attachments and place identities in a climate changed world

Two decades ago, an article was published in Global Environmental Change proposing the importance of place attachments, at local and global scales, for understanding human responses to climate change (Feitelson, 1991). Despite concluding that ‘studies of individual's attachment to place may provide important inputs for strategies to enhance the prospects for sharing the globe’ (p. 406, 1991), the article remains overlooked. This article takes up and extends Feitelson's argument for more systematic research on place attachments and climate change. First, the paper critically reviews interdisciplinary literature on place attachment and the related concept of place identity, drawing on scholarship in human geography, environmental and social psychology. The review identifies a lack of cross-disciplinary dialogue, as well as several limitations to the ways that scalar aspects have been researched. Second, climate change research, encompassing adaptation, mitigation and communication that has incorporated place related attachments and identities is critically reviewed; in particular, emerging research on the role of ‘psychological distance’ is critiqued. The article concludes with five recommendations for future research: to capture place attachments and identities at global as well as local scales; to integrate qualitative and quantitative methods that capture constructions of place as well as intensity of attachments and identifications; to investigate links between attachments, identities and collective actions, particular ‘NIMBY’ resistance to adaptation and mitigation strategies; to apply greater precision when investigating spatial frames of risk communication; and to investigate links between global attachments and identities, environmental worldviews and climate change engagement. Finally, the implications of such research for evaluating area-based climate interventions are discussed.     

Scale mismatches and their ecological and economic effects on landscapes: A spatially explicit model

Mismatches between the spatial scales of human decision-making and natural processes contribute to environmental problems such as global warming and biodiversity losses. People damage the environment through local activities like clearing land or burning fossil fuels, but the damages only become manifest at larger regional or global scales where no one pays for them. Payments for ecological services like carbon sequestration can correct for these damages caused by scale mismatches. This paper presents a spatially explicit land-use model to investigate the consequences of scale mismatches for pollination and carbon storage services and examine the effect of payment for only carbon storage services. The model integrates processes in multiple spatial scales ranging from the parcel level used by landowners’ decision about deforestation, to the larger scale used by animals to pollinate plants, and finally to the global scale where carbon storage services are supplied. We show that payment for carbon storage services can become an effective mechanism to protect forests at the same time that it creates inequities among landowners in income level.These findings suggest that market-based approaches that focus on conservation of a single ecosystem service may reproduce unequal power relations among landowners.     

水文气象学领域的水文循环研究进展

气候系统中的水循环处于不断运转演化和更新中。近年来在全球变暖和人类活动的双重影响下,水文循环发生了显著变化,引起了社会和学界的广泛关注。水文循环是气候系统的核心,是连接气候子系统的纽带,也是水文气象学研究的核心问题。近年来国内外学者采用各种观测手段及海-陆-气耦合模型检测和模拟水文循环变化,取得了丰硕成果。对其变化的物理机制和驱动因素有了深入的理解,提高了对其未来可能变化的预测预估水平。文中对最近20余年与水文气象学相关的水文循环发生的变化,引起全球、区域及流域水文循环通量变化的原因,以及未来变化的预测等问题所取得的进展做了较全面的阐述。最后对水文气象学领域水文循环变化研究应关注的问题进行了探讨。     

Linking global and local scales: designing dynamic assessment and management processes

This paper identifies challenges inherent in addressing multi-scale environmental problems, and outlines tentative guidelines for addressing such challenges and linking science and policy across scales. The study and practice of environmental assessment and management increasingly recognize the importance of scale and cross-scale dynamics in understanding and addressing global environmental change. These ongoing efforts, however, lack a systematic way of thinking about and addressing the challenges involved in integrating science and policy across multiple scales, for example, in the design of policy-relevant, scientific assessments of problems such as climate change. These challenges include matching scales of biogeophysical systems with scales of management systems, avoiding scale discordance (matching the scale of the assessment with the scale of management), and accounting for cross-scale dynamics. In this paper we propose tentative guidelines for meeting such challenges for both assessors and decision-makers: (1) utilize boundary organizations — institutions which serve to mediate between scientists and decision-makers, and between these actors at different scales; (2) utilize scale-dependent comparative advantages — coordinating the allocation of resources, technical expertise, and decision-making authority to best capitalize on scale-specific capabilities; and (3) employ adaptive assessment and management strategies — constructing long-term, iterative, experiment-based processes of integrated assessment and management.     

Multiple scales and regulatory gaps in environmental change: the case of salmon aquaculture

The significance of multiple scales within processes of global environmental change has attracted increasing attention. Yet the fundamental tasks of linking multiple levels at which regulatory decisions are required to multiple scales of impacts have only recently been identified. This paper addresses the importance of attention to multiple scales in regulatory decisions, how those decisions should link together across scales of governance or decision-making, and how mismatches among scales of impact and scales of regulation can lead to regulatory gaps and breakdowns. This paper begins by presenting a definition of a cross-scale regulatory problem, building on the concept of an externality. It argues that virtually all-significant environmental regulatory problems involve multiple scales at which decisions are required, and that coordination of these decisions is one of the major issues in regulatory design. The paper provides a generalization of what is needed for effective cross-scale regulation, and then discusses the example of salmon aquaculture in British Columbia to illustrate these points. In our view, gaps and mismatches in the regulatory framework across institutional scales appear to contribute to social controversy over salmon aquaculture. These gaps include (i) the site-by-site orientation of the current regulatory process, even though the major impacts are cumulative, and regional in significance, and (ii) the degree to which limitations on the extent of salmon aquaculture are implemented by local governments, even though provincial and federal governments have the mandate and expertise to address these questions.     

A statistical model to downscale local daily temperature extremes from synoptic-scale atmospheric circulation patterns in the Australian region

 The study seeks to describe one method of deriving information about local daily temperature extremes from larger scale atmospheric flow patterns using statistical tools. This is considered to be one step towards downscaling coarsely gridded climate data from global climate models (GCMs) to finer spatial scales. Downscaling is necessary in order to bridge the spatial mismatch between GCMs and climate impact models which need information on spatial scales that the GCMs cannot provide. The method of statistical downscaling is based on physical interaction between atmospheric processes with different spatial scales, in this case between synoptic scale mean sea level pressure (MSLP) fields and local temperature extremes at several stations in southeast Australia. In this study it was found that most of the day-to-day spatial variability of the synoptic circulation over the Australian region can be captured by six principal components. Using the scores of these PCs as multivariate indicators of the circulation a substantial part of the local daily temperature variability could be explained. The inclusion of temperature persistence noticeably improved the performance of the statistical model. The model established and tested with observations is thought to be finally applied to GCM-simulated pressure fields in order to estimate pressure-related changes in local temperature extremes under altered CO₂ conditions. Received: 26 March 1996 / Accepted: 20 September 1996     

Notes on the temporal and spatial scales of climatic changes

Summary An investigation of the relationship between climatic change at various temporal and spatial scales was conducted making use of correlation and coherence analyses applied to observed monthly and annual global mean temperature data. Results indicate that the spatial scale does not change in spite of an increase in the temporal scale. Furthermore, a certain pattern, suggesting a teleconnection, was often observed in the scatter diagrams of correlations and coherence squared related to distance. We speculate that this is due to the constancy of the general circulation of the atmosphere for temporal scales.With 5 Figures     

Predictability in limited area and global models

Summary Selected small domain LAM forecasts modulated by highly corrugated underlying topography, and driven by different state-of-science outer models suggest that uncertain outer model guidance for LAMs produces large, domain averaged sensitivity. A further literature survey indicates that many LAM forecasts are relatively insensitive to details of the local initial state, and that mesoscales show slight error growth, in contradiction to classical predictability theory. A series of global predictability experiments is presented in order to reconcile the contradiction. The experiments imply that, even in baroclinically unstable atmospheres, the most common sources of local error growth are associated with small uncertainties of the larger spatial scales rather than small uncertainties of the smaller spatial scales. Variable resolution, real-data experiments of barotropic versions of the global model display substantial mesoscale error growth, due principally to the effect of larger scales. The uncertainties possessing largest spatial scale appear as boundary uncertainties in LAMs, and explain the strong boundary sensitivity and weak local initial data sensitivity observed in many LAMs. We infer that accurate depiction of the largest spatial scales is a first order priority for accurate local prediction, and that for the advective portion of the dynamics, errors of the outer model that provides lateral boundary conditions may impose the largest current practical limitation for many LAM predictions.With 10 Figures     

Measuring Environmental Values and Environmental Impacts: Going from the Local to the Global

Measuring the impact of global change depends critically upon our ability to gauge the impacts of changes at the local and individual level. There are strong philosophical and practical concerns in measuring environmental, health, social, and economic impacts even at this level. Aggregating these across commodities, individuals, sectors, regions, and time presents further difficulties. Overcoming these obstacles oftentimes runs afoul of our inability to make interpersonal and intergenerational comparisons. This paper walks through the process of economic valuation from the very local scale of individual choices up to global aggregations across goods and services, individuals, space, and time. Along the way, important assumptions, particularly those related to analyses across different scales and aggregation from lower to higher scales will be emphasized. The effects of making different assumptions will be noted. Fundamental questions about the 'scientific' versus 'political/moral/ethical' nature of valuation will also be highlighted.     

Diffusion of global climate policy: National depoliticization,local repoliticization in Turkey

Although climate policy diffusion is widely studied, we know comparatively little about how these global policies and the norms that surround them are used by various political actors seeking to advance their own agendas. In this article, we focus on how global climate norms are diffused differently at national and local scales and used to repoliticize or depoliticize climate change. We focus on the case of Turkey, which carries the stark contrast of showing willingness to achieve global climate goals in the international arena but less so in domestic politics and actions. The article employs a novel methodological approach, using topic modeling and network analyses on a range of climate change–related policy documents, and interviews with high-level officers, conducted at the three jurisdictional levels in Turkey. The findings reveal that although global climate policy is diffused to both national and local governments, it is used in different ways at these levels. The national government uses climate policy diffusion to depoliticize climate change by creating ad hoc climate coalitions and limiting local climate actions to seeking external climate-related funds. Meanwhile, the metropolitan municipalities replicate nationally adopted climate goals, whereas the district municipalities domesticate ambitious climate norms and repoliticize climate change via local climate entrepreneurs and civic action. The paper contributes to understanding how climate policy diffusion and norm domestication can have different political outcomes in achieving global climate goals and argues for increased policy attention to the strategic use of climate policy diffusion for the depoliticization of climate change.     

The role of sea ice in climatic variability: Theories and evidence 1

Abstract

The climatic role of sea ice is assessed in a survey of the recent literature. Theoretical or model‐based results are compared with existing evidence of ice‐atmosphere interactions over scales ranging from the local and regional to the hemispheric and global.

The evidence shows that sea‐ice fluctuations are meteorologically important locally, primarily through associations with air temperature. On the regional and hemispheric scales, atmospheric and sea‐ice fluctuations are correlated according to both observational evidence and model experiments. While the causal links have not been evaluated quantitatively, there is evidence that the stronger signal occurs in the response of the ice to the atmosphere. On the longer time‐scales, model experiments and qualitative arguments suggest that sea ice may play a major role in the climatic change. However, the results of large‐scale coupled model simulations contain deficiencies and must be viewed with caution pending more realistic treatments of sea‐ice dynamics, leads, ice thickness variations, and the areally‐integraled effects of the small‐scale features of sea ice.     

Climate warming and natural disaster management: An exploration of the issues

This paper explores two issues that have been receiving increasing attention in recent decades, climate change adaptation and natural disaster risk reduction. An examination of the similarities and differences between them reveals important linkages but also significant differences, including the spectrum of threats, time and spatial scales, the importance of local versus global processes, how risks are perceived, and degree of uncertainty. Using a risk perspective to analyze these issues, preferential strategies emerge related to choices of being proactive, reactive, or emphasizing risk management as opposed to the precautionary principle. The policy implications of this analysis are then explored, using Canada as a case study.     

气候突变现象的研究

本文分析了各种时间尺度的气候突变现象，特别是本世纪以来的三次主要气候突变（1900、1920和1960），讨论了十年尺度气候突变现象的几个主要特点:气候突变与全球温度变化的关系、突变的空间尺度以及季风系统 在气候突变中的敏感性等。     

Transborder political ecology of mangroves in Senegal and The Gambia

Existing studies of mangroves in Senegal and The Gambia have found net increases in mangrove tree cover at the national scale, but these do not accord with local accounts and explanations of loss. This paper utilizes remote sensing analysis and political ecology frameworks to assess local accounts of mangrove wood trafficking across the border between The Gambia and southern Senegal, which were encountered in conducting qualitative field research. The remote sensing results demonstrate overall increases in mangrove cover in The Gambia and in the Sine Saloum and Low Casamance estuaries in Senegal between 1988 and 2018, but also highlight greater declines in mangrove cover in Low Casamance in the 1990s—a period of heightened regional political conflict—and in particular areas of the estuary near the Gambian and Guinea-Bissauan borders. Focusing on political ecology’s attention to multiple scales of analysis, this paper addresses divergent interpretations of mangrove changes in the region, and how local accounts of destruction may not be fully captured by the scale of observation and analysis in remote sensing. The paper argues for greater attention to spatial and temporal variation in studies of mangrove dynamics, and greater consideration for how these patterns may result from confluences of political, social, and natural factors.     

My country or my planet? Exploring the influence of multiple place attachments and ideological beliefs upon climate change attitudes and opinions

Research on people-place relations, specifically place attachment and place identity, is beginning to make an important contribution to understanding human responses to climate change. However, to date there has been a dearth of research on how place attachments at multiple scales, particularly the global, and individual level ideological beliefs combine to influence climate change attitudes and opinions. To address these gaps, survey data was collected from a representative sample of Australian citizens (N = 1147), capturing attachments at neighbourhood, city/town, state/territory, country and global scales, as well as a range of climate change belief and individual difference measures. Results show the importance of the interplay between national and global place attachments. Individuals expressing stronger global than national attachments were more likely to attribute climate change to anthropogenic causes, to oppose hierarchy-enhancing myths that legitimize climate inaction, and to perceive positive economic impacts arising from climate change responses, in comparison to individuals indicating stronger national over global place attachments. Individuals with stronger global than national attachments were more likely to be female, younger, and self-identify as having no religion, to be more likely to vote Green and to be characterized by significantly lower levels of right wing authoritarian and social dominance beliefs. Right wing authoritarian and social dominance beliefs mediated the effects of place attachments upon climate change skepticism. Explanations for the findings and implications for future research are discussed.     

Ecosystem stewardship: A resilience framework for arctic conservation

Ecosystem stewardship is a framework for actively shaping trajectories of ecological and social change to foster a more sustainable future for species, ecosystems, and society. We apply this framework to conservation challenges and opportunities in the Arctic, where the rapid pace of human-induced changes and their interactions force us now to consider a new relationship between people and the rest of nature. Biodiversity, which has traditionally been the target of conservation efforts, is increasingly affected by human impacts such as energy demand and industrial development that are motivated more by short-term profits than by concerns for societal consequences of long-term arctic biodiversity change. We posit that effective approaches to conservation must (a) foster both ecosystem resilience and human wellbeing, (b) integrate ecological and social processes across scales, and (c) take actions that shape the future rather than seeking only to restore the past. To this end, we identify progress through actions that have been or could be taken at local, national, and international scales to promote arctic resilience and conservation. A stewardship approach to conservation aims to prevent undesirable changes and prepares for adaptation to rapid and uncertain changes that cannot be avoided and for transformation to avoid or escape undesirable states. The greatest opportunity for arctic stewardship at the local scale may lie in building upon culturally engrained (often indigenous) respect for nature and reliance on local environment, empowering it through knowledge and power sharing with national regulatory frameworks. This, in turn, allows connection of drivers with impacts across scales and raises awareness of the value of human–environment relationships. At national and international scales stewardship provides rules for coordinated action to reconcile local and regional conservation actions with those that are motivated by constraints at the global level, to foster ecosystem integrity and human wellbeing in the face of transformative changes in environment, landscapes, species, and society.     

From Climate to Global Change: Following the Footprint of Prof. Duzheng YE's Research

To commemorate 100 years since the birth of Professor Duzheng YE, this paper reviews the contribution of Ye and his research team to the development from climate to global change science in the past 30 or so years, including:(1) the role of climate change in global change;(2) the critical time scales and predictability of global change;(3) the sensitive regions of global change—transitional zones of climate and ecosystems; and(4) orderly human activities and adaptation to global change, with a focus on the development of a proactive strategy for adaptation to such change.     

Latest Advances in Climate Change Detection Techniques

In recent years,the global warming and its influences on people and social economy have received increasing attention from international communities.Determining the current trend of global temperature variation has become one of the critical issues in climate change research.Obviously,it is rather important to develop new climate change detection technology in order to identify new characteristics of the global warming.This review introduces the latest advances and past achievements on the climate change...