Economic impacts of climate change in Europe: sea-level rise

This paper uses two models to examine the direct and indirect costs of sea-level rise for Europe for a range of sea-level rise scenarios for the 2020s and 2080s: (1) the DIVA model to estimate the physical impacts of sea-level rise and the direct economic cost, including adaptation, and (2) the GTAP-EF model to assess the indirect economic implications. Without adaptation, impacts are quite significant with a large land loss and increase in the incidence of coastal flooding. By the end of the century Malta has the largest relative land loss at 12% of its total surface area, followed by Greece at 3.5% land loss. Economic losses are however larger in Poland and Germany (483 and483 and 391 million, respectively). Coastal protection is very effective in reducing these impacts and optimally undertaken leads to protection levels that are higher than 85% in the majority of European states. While the direct economic impact of sea-level rise is always negative, the final impact on countries’ economic performances estimated with the GTAP-EF model may be positive or negative. This is because factor substitution, international trade, and changes in investment patterns interact with possible positive implications. The policy insights are (1) while sea-level rise has negative and huge direct economic effects, overall effects on GDP are quite small (max −0.046% in Poland); (2) the impact of sea-level rise is not confined to the coastal zone and sea-level rise indirectly affects landlocked countries as well (Austria for instance loses −0.003% of its GDP); and (3) adaptation is crucial to keep the negative impacts of sea-level rise at an acceptable level.     

The water impacts of climate change mitigation measures

A variety of proposed activities to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions will impact on scarce water resources, which are coming under increasing pressure in many countries due to population growth and shifting weather patterns. However, the integrated analysis of water and carbon impacts has been given limited attention in greenhouse mitigation planning. In this Australian case study, we analyse a suite of 74 mitigation measures ranked as highest priority by one influential analysis, and we find that they have highly variable consequences for water quantity. We find: (1) The largest impacts result from land-based sequestration, which has the potential to intercept large quantities of water and reduce catchment yields, estimated to exceed 100 Mm³/MtCO₂-e of carbon mitigated (100,000 l per tonne CO₂-e). (2) Moderate impacts result from some renewable power options, including solar thermal power with a water cost estimated at nearly 4 Mm³/MtCO₂-e. However, the water impacts of solar thermal power facilities could be reduced by designing them to use existing power-related water supplies or to use air or salt-water cooling. (3) Wind power, biogas, solar photovoltaics, energy efficiency and operational improvements to existing power sources can reduce water demand through offsetting the water used to cool thermal power generation, with minor savings estimated at 2 Mm³/MtCO₂-e and amounting to nearly 100 Mm³ of water saved in Australia per annum in 2020. This integrated analysis significantly changes the attractiveness of some mitigation options, compared to the case where water impacts are not considered.     

A climate trend analysis of Ethiopia: examining subseasonal climate impacts on crops and pasture conditions

Ethiopia experiences significant climate-induced drought and stress on crop and livestock productivity, contributing to widespread food insecurity. Here, we present subseasonal crop water stress analyses that indicate degrading, growing conditions along Ethiopia’s eastern highlands, including productive and populated highland regions. These seasonally shifting areas of increasing water stress stretch from the north to south across eastern Ethiopia, intersecting regions of acute food insecurity and/or high population. Crop model simulations indicate that between 1982 and 2014, parts of eastern Amhara and eastern Oromia experienced increasing water deficits during the critical sowing, flowering, and ripening periods of crop growth. These trends occurred while population in these regions increased by 143% between 2000 and 2015. These areas of enhanced crop water stress in south-central Ethiopia coincide with regions of high population growth and ongoing crop extensification. Conversely, large regions of relatively unpopulated western Ethiopia are becoming wetter. These areas may therefore be good targets for agricultural development.     

The impacts of climate change on tribal traditional foods

American Indian and Alaska Native tribes are uniquely affected by climate change. Indigenous peoples have depended on a wide variety of native fungi, plant and animal species for food, medicine, ceremonies, community and economic health for countless generations. Climate change stands to impact the species and ecosystems that constitute tribal traditional foods that are vital to tribal culture, economy and traditional ways of life. This paper examines the impacts of climate change on tribal traditional foods by providing cultural context for the importance of traditional foods to tribal culture, recognizing that tribal access to traditional food resources is strongly influenced by the legal and regulatory relationship with the federal government, and examining the multi-faceted relationship that tribes have with places, ecological processes and species. Tribal participation in local, regional and national climate change adaption strategies, with a focus on food-based resources, can inform and strengthen the ability of both tribes and other governmental resource managers to address and adapt to climate change impacts.     

Projected climate change impacts on skiing and snowmobiling: A case study of the United States

We use a physically-based water and energy balance model to simulate natural snow accumulation at 247 winter recreation locations across the continental United States. We combine this model with projections of snowmaking conditions to determine downhill skiing, cross-country skiing, and snowmobiling season lengths under baseline and future climates, using data from five climate models and two emissions scenarios. Projected season lengths are combined with baseline estimates of winter recreation activity, entrance fee information, and potential changes in population to monetize impacts to the selected winter recreation activity categories for the years 2050 and 2090. Our results identify changes in winter recreation season lengths across the United States that vary by location, recreational activity type, and climate scenario. However, virtually all locations are projected to see reductions in winter recreation season lengths, exceeding 50% by 2050 and 80% in 2090 for some downhill skiing locations. We estimate these season length changes could result in millions to tens of millions of foregone recreational visits annually by 2050, with an annual monetized impact of hundreds of millions of dollars. Comparing results from the alternative emissions scenarios shows that limiting global greenhouse gas emissions could both delay and substantially reduce adverse impacts to the winter recreation industry.     

Assessing impacts of climate change on forests: The state of biological modeling

Models that address the impacts of climate change on forests are reviewed at four levels of biological organization: global, regional or landscape, community, and tree. The models are compared for their ability to assess changes in fluxes of biogenic greenhouse gases, land use, patterns of forest type or species composition, forest resource productivity, forest health, biodiversity, and wildlife habitat. No one model can address all of these impacts, but landscape transition models and regional vegetation and land-use models have been used to consider more impacts than the other models. The development of landscape vegetation dynamics models of functional groups is suggested as a means to integrate the theory of both landscape ecology and individual tree responses to climate change. Risk assessment methodologies can be adapted to deal with the impacts of climate change at various spatial and temporal scales. Four areas of research needing additional effort are identified: (1) linking socioeconomic and ecologic models; (2) interfacing forest models at different scales; (3) obtaining data on susceptibility of trees and forest to changes in climate and disturbance regimes; and (4) relating information from different scales.The U.S. Government right to retain a non-exclusive, royalty-free license in and to any copyright is acknowledged.Managed by Martin Marietta Energy Systems, Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy under contract DE-AC05-84OR21400.     

Interdependencies of urban climate change impacts and adaptation strategies: a case study of Metropolitan Boston USA

An analysis of the interdependencies of the impacts of climate change and adaptation strategies upon infrastructure systems in the Metro Boston urban area in the northeastern USA found that taking anticipatory actions well before 2050 results in less total adaptation and impact costs to the region than taking no actions. Because of the interrelations among infrastructure systems, it is critical to take account of the impacts that adaptation actions have on each other and other systems. For the most part these cross-system effects are complementary in nature. But there are important exceptions, so an integrated approach to adaptation policy formulation is needed. Furthermore, adaptation efforts must be designed so as not to confound mitigation efforts.     

The benefits of quantifying climate model uncertainty in climate change impacts assessment: an example with heat-related mortality change estimates

The majority of climate change impacts assessments account for climate change uncertainty by adopting the scenario-based approach. This typically involves assessing the impacts for a small number of emissions scenarios but neglecting the role of climate model physics uncertainty. Perturbed physics ensemble (PPE) climate simulations offer a unique opportunity to explore this uncertainty. Furthermore, PPEs mean it is now possible to make risk-based impacts estimates because they allow for a range of estimates to be presented to decision-makers, which spans the range of climate model physics uncertainty inherent from a given climate model and emissions scenario, due to uncertainty associated with the understanding of physical processes in the climate model. This is generally not possible with the scenario-based approach. Here, we present the first application of a PPE to estimate the impact of climate change on heat-related mortality. By using the estimated impacts of climate change on heat-related mortality in six cities, we demonstrate the benefits of quantifying climate model physics uncertainty in climate change impacts assessment over the more common scenario-based approach. We also show that the impacts are more sensitive to climate model physics uncertainty than they are to emissions scenario uncertainty, and least sensitive to whether the climate change projections are from a global climate model or a regional climate model. The results demonstrate the importance of presenting model uncertainties in climate change impacts assessments if the impacts are to be placed within a climate risk management framework.     

Tropical storms: representation and diagnosis in climate models and the impacts of climate change

Tropical storms are located and tracked in an experiment in which a high-resolution atmosphere only model is forced with observed sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and sea ice. The structure, geographic distribution and seasonal variability of the model tropical storms show some similarities with observations. The simulation of tropical storms is better in this high-resolution experiment than in a parallel standard resolution experiment. In an anomaly experiment, sea ice, SSTs and greenhouse-gas forcing are changed to mimic the changes that occur in a coupled model as greenhouse-gases are increased. There are more tropical storms in this experiment than in the control experiment in the Northeast Pacific and Indian Ocean basins and fewer in the North Atlantic, Northwest Pacific and Southwest Pacific region. The changes in the North Atlantic and Northwest Pacific can be linked to El Niño-like behaviour. A comparison of the tracking results with two empirically derived tropical storm genesis parameters is carried out. The tracking technique and a convective genesis parameter give similar results, both in the global distribution and in the changes in the individual basins. The convective genesis parameter is also applied to parallel coupled model experiments that have a lower horizontal resolution. The changes in the global distribution of tropical storms in the coupled model experiments are consistent with the changes seen at higher resolution. This indicates that the convective genesis parameter may still provide useful information about tropical storm changes in experiments carried out with models that cannot resolve tropical storms.     

“一带一路”区域气候变化事实、影响及可能风险

“一带一路”区域国家经济、政治发展极不平衡,随着全球气候变暖,区域内的自然环境、气候资源、水资源等都将面临着显著而复杂的变化,并且干旱、洪涝等多种气候灾害是“一带一路”区域可持续发展和重大基础设施建设面临的重大威胁之一。目前,“一带一路”倡议已经进入实质性建设阶段,沿线地区的气候变化及其灾害风险关乎“一带一路”倡议能否顺利实施及亚投行的投资安全。在此背景下,2016—2018年中国科学院地球科学学部实施了“‘一带一路’区域气候变化问题”咨询评议项目,项目针对该区域气候变化的事实、未来变化预估、气候变化的可能影响以及带来的潜在风险等问题进行了系统的调研,并开展了若干分析和研究。经过两年的努力,项目组完成了有关进展报告四份,包括一份总报告和三份分报告。本文扼要地概括和介绍了项目取得的主要成果。     

The impacts of climate change on agricultural production systems in China

Climate change can bring positive and negative effects on Chinese agriculture, but negative impacts tend to dominate. The annual mean surface temperature has risen about 0.5–0.8 °C. The precipitation trends have not been identified during the past 100 years in China, although the frequency and intensity of extreme weather/climate events have increased, especially of drought. Water scarcity, more frequent and serious outbreaks of insects and diseases, and soil degradation caused by climate change have impacted agro-environmental conditions. However, temperature rise prolonged the crop growth seasons and cold damages have reduced in Northeast China. The projection of climate change indicates that the surface temperature will continue to increase with about 3.9 to 6.0 °C and precipitation is expected to increase by 9 to 11 % at the end of 21st century in China. Climate warming will provide more heat and as a consequence, the boundary of the triple-cropping system (TCS) will extend northwards by as much as 200 to 300 km, from the Yangtze River Valley to the Yellow River Basin, and the current double-cropping system (DCS) will move to the central part of China, into the current single cropping system (SCS) area which will decrease in SCS surface area of 23.1 % by 2050. Climate warming will also affect the optimum location for the cultivation of China’s main crop varieties. If no measures are taken to adapt to climate changes, compared with the potential yield in 1961–1990, yields of irrigated wheat, corn and rice are projected to decrease by 2.2–6.7 %, 0.4 %–11.9 % and 4.3–12.4 % respectively in the 2050s. Climate warming will enhance potential evaporation and reduce the availability of soil moisture, thus causing a greater need for agricultural irrigation, intensifying the conflict between water supply and demand, especially in arid and semi-arid areas of China. With adequate irrigation, the extent of the reduction in yield of China’s corn and wheat can be improved by 5 % to 15 %, and rice by 5 % or so than the potential yield in 1961–1990. Adaptive measures can reduce the agricultural loss under climate change. If effective measures are taken in a timely way, then climate change in the next 30–50 years will not have a significant influence on China’s food security.     

The implications of climate policy for the impacts of climate change on global water resources

This paper assesses the implications of climate policy for exposure to water resources stresses. It compares a Reference scenario which leads to an increase in global mean temperature of 4 °C by the end of the 21st century with a Mitigation scenario which stabilises greenhouse gas concentrations at around 450 ppm CO₂e and leads to a 2 °C increase in 2100. Associated changes in river runoff are simulated using a global hydrological model, for four spatial patterns of change in temperature and rainfall. There is a considerable difference in hydrological change between these four patterns, but the percentages of change avoided at the global scale are relatively robust. By the 2050s, the Mitigation scenario typically avoids between 16 and 30% of the change in runoff under the Reference scenario, and by 2100 it avoids between 43 and 65%. Two different measures of exposure to water resources stress are calculated, based on resources per capita and the ratio of withdrawals to resources. Using the first measure, the Mitigation scenario avoids 8-17% of the impact in 2050 and 20-31% in 2100; with the second measure, the avoided impacts are 5-21% and 15-47% respectively. However, at the same time, the Mitigation scenario also reduces the positive impacts of climate change on water scarcity in other areas. The absolute numbers and locations of people affected by climate change and climate policy vary considerably between the four climate model patterns.     

Turning climate change information into economic and health impacts

The PRUDENCE project has generated a set of spatially and temporally high-resolution climate data, which provides new opportunities for assessing the impacts of climate variability and change on economic and human systems in Europe. In this context, we initiated the development of new approaches for linking climate change information and economic studies. We have considered a number of case studies that illustrate how linkages can be established between geographically detailed climate data and economic information. The case studies included wheat production in agriculture, where regional climate data has been linked to farm enterprise data in an integrated model of physical conditions, production inputs and outputs, and farm management practices. Similarly, temperature data were used to assess consequences of extreme heat and excess mortality in urban areas. We give an introduction of an analytical approach for assessing economic impacts of climate change and discuss how economic concepts and valuation paradigms can be applied to climate change impact evaluation. A number of methodological difficulties encountered in economic assessments of climate change impacts are described and a number of issues related to social and private aspects of costs are highlighted. It is argued that, in particular, detailed climate information matters in relation to understanding how private agents react to observed climate data.