Climate change and summer mass tourism: the case of Spanish domestic tourism

This paper investigates the impact of climate change on destination choice decisions in a context of domestic coastal tourism in Spain. Destinations are characterized in terms of travel cost and coastal ‘attractors’, such as temperature and beach-related attributes. By means of a discrete choice model based on the random utility theory, these variables are used to explain the observed pattern of interprovincial domestic trips, showing trade-offs between temperature and attractiveness in the probability of a particular destination being chosen. The model is used to investigate the impact of two climate change scenarios on the allocation of domestic tourism within Spain. The findings show that while Spain’s northern colder provinces would benefit from rising temperatures, provinces in the south would experience a decrease in the frequency of trips.     

Climate change,intergenerational equity and international law: An introductory note

The change in the Earth's climate caused by the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may be the most important environmental legacy that we leave to our descendants.Global change raises difficult issues of equity between our generation and future generations, and between different communities within future generations. International law is accustomed to addressing the effects of intentional environmental change on people who are already alive. It needs to be augmented by principles of intergenerational equity. We have certain obligations to future generations to pass on a planet in no worse condition than we received it and to give them equitable access to its resources.This requires a global strategy for climate change which will prevent excessively rapid climate change, prevent or mitigate the damage caused by climate change, and help countries to adapt to climate change. We need to avoid imposing major costs on future generations for our own benefit.To implement this strategy will require enforceable norms of behavior, which should be embodied in a Declaration of Planetary Rights and Obligations to Future Generations, and implemented in appropriate treaties and national and local legislation. Agreements should be drafted in such a way that they can incorporate increases in scientific understanding, for example by the creation of scientific advisory committees.     

Climate change and the world predicament: A case study for interdisciplinary research

The relationship between climatic change and issues of population, food, resources, environment and the human condition i.e., the world predicament, are explored. It is concluded that society is dangerously vulnerable to natural climatic variability at times of depleted food reserves (such as now) and that massive use of technologies (especially energy) to improve the human condition could well cause significant climatic change as early as the year 2000. Therefore, these problems cannot be addressed in the sole context of disciplinary research, and the obstacles and opportunities for interdisciplinary research at academic institutions are explored. Criteria for interdisciplinary research quality review are suggested, and contrasted to traditional peer review processes.The National Center for Atmospheric Research is sponsored by the National Science Foundation.     

气候模式与气候模拟

本文扼要地叙述了气候模式与模拟的定义、内容和发展概况。介绍了不同类型模式,如能量平衡模式、辐射对流模式、大气环流模式和随机模式等的主要特征。最后举了两个实例,即用大气环流模式作由二氧化碳增加而造成大气增温的数值试验以及用机制模式研究气候变化及可预报性,以此来阐明当今气候模拟的两个主要方向。     

琼中35年气候变化分析

利用琼中1971~2005年温度、降水、日照资料进行分析,得出:温度明显上升,日照略有增多,降水则呈下降趋势;不同季节气候变化不同,冬、春季温度回升明显,冬、春、秋季降水偏少;冬、春季气候呈暖干化趋势,对农业生产不利。     

琼中35年气候变化分析

利用琼中1971-2005年温度、降水、日照资料进行分析，得出：温度明显上升，日照略有增多，降水则呈下降趋势;不同季节气候变化不同，冬、春季温度回升明显，冬、春、秋季降水偏少；冬、春季气候呈暖干化趋势，对农业生产不利。     

Climate change impacts on international seaports: knowledge, perceptions, and planning efforts among port administrators

Seaports are located in vulnerable areas to climate change impacts: on coasts susceptible to sea-level rise and storms or at mouths of rivers susceptible to flooding. They serve a vital function within the local, regional, and global economy. Their locations in the heart of sensitive estuarine environments make it an imperative to minimize the impacts of natural hazards. Climate impacts, like a projected SLR of .6?m to 2?m and doubling of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes by 2100, will result in more extreme events at many seaports. To assess the current state of knowledge on this issue, we surveyed port authorities from around the world about how administrators felt climate change might impact their operations, what sea-level change would create operational problems, and how they planned to adapt to new environmental conditions. The planned rapid expansion of ports reported by the survey respondents indicates that adaptation measures should be considered as ports construct new infrastructure that may still be in use at the end of the century. Respondents agreed that the ports community needs to address this issue and most felt relatively uninformed about potential climate impacts. Although most ports felt that SLR would not be an issue at their port this century, sea-level rise was nevertheless an issue of great concern. Our results suggest opportunities for the scientific community to engage with port practitioners to prepare proactively for climate change impacts on this sector.     

Climate change: High-latitude regions

The distinctive physical setting of high-latitude regions results not only in enhanced change in mean surface temperature for a given perturbation of planetary heat balance, but an enhanced regional and seasonal environmental response due to non-uniformity in poleward heat flux, and to the energy relationships of phase change and albedo change connected with ice and snow cover. The environmental response of the Arctic is characteristically different from that of the Antarctic because of differences in planetary geography and energy circulation. Ecosystems that have adapted to the low natural energy flows of high latitudes are relatively more sensitive to a given change in magnitude and timing of available energy, and to changes in physical and geochemical conditions, than most of those in lower latitudes. These natural sensitivities have a profound influence on human activities in polar areas. Policies to adapt to, or where possible to benefit from the environmental changes that will be brought about by climate change in high latitudes will have to be adapted to the distinctive environmental responses of polar areas. Careful research to understand the environmental response to climate change is essential as arctic and antarctic regions assume a greater importance in world affairs, and as the arctic regions in particular are the subject of increasing policy attention on strategic, resource development, socioeconomic and environmental protection grounds.     

Climate change,income and happiness: An empirical study for Barcelona

The present article builds upon the results of an empirical study exploring key factors which determine life satisfaction in Barcelona. Based on a sample of 840 individuals we first look at the way changes in income, notably income reductions, associated with the current economic situation in Spain, affect subjective well-being. Income decreases which occur with respect to one year ago have a negative effect on happiness when specified in logarithmic terms, and a positive one when specified as a dummy variable (and percentage change). The divergence in results is discussed and various explanations are put forward. Both effects are however temporary and do not hold for a period longer than a year, probably for reasons of adaptation and a downward adjustment of reference consumption and income levels. Next, we examine the implications of experiencing forest fires and find a lasting negative effect on life satisfaction. Our results suggest that climate policy need not reduce happiness in the long run, even when it reduces income and carbon-intensive consumption. Climate policy may even raise life well-being, if accompanied by compensatory measures that decrease formal working hours and reference consumption standards, while maintaining employment security.     

Climate change impact assessment: the role of climate extremes in crop yield simulation

This work was aimed at assessing the role of climate extremes in climate change impact assessment of typical winter and summer Mediterranean crops by using Regional Circulation Model (RCM) outputs as drivers of a modified version of the CropSyst model. More specifically, climate change effects were investigated on sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) and winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) development and yield under the A2 and B2 scenarios of the IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES). The direct impact of extreme climate events (i.e. heat stress at anthesis stage) was also included. The increase in both mean temperatures and temperature extremes under A2 and B2 scenarios (2071?C2100) resulted in: a general advancement of the main phenological stages, shortening of the growing season and an increase in the frequency of heat stress during anthesis with respect to the baseline (1961?C1990). The potential impact of these changes on crop yields was evaluated. It was found that winter and summer crops may possess a different fitting capacity to climate change. Sunflower, cultivated in the southern regions of the Mediterranean countries, was more prone to the direct effect of heat stress at anthesis and drought during its growing cycle. These factors resulted in severe yield reduction. In contrast, the lower frequency of heat stress and drought allowed the winter wheat crop to attain increased yields with respect to the baseline period. It can be concluded that the impact of extreme events should be included in crop-modelling approaches, otherwise there is the risk of underestimating crop yield losses, which in turn would result in the application of incorrect policies for coping with climate change.     

Climate change impacts on pricing long-term flood insurance: A comprehensive study for the Netherlands

Recently long-term flood insurance contracts with a duration of 5, 10 or 15 years have been proposed as a solution for covering flood risk and mitigating increasing flood losses. Establishing a long-term relation between the policyholder and the insurer can provide better incentives to reduce risk through undertaking damage mitigation measures. However, the uncertainty about the development of future flood risk in the face of climate and socio-economic change may complicate insurers’ rate-setting of long-term contracts. This issue has been examined in this study by estimating the effects of these changes on flood risk and pricing flood insurance premiums of short- and long-term flood insurance contracts in all (53) dike-ring areas in the Netherlands. A broad range of simulations with hydrological and flood damage models are used to estimate the future development of flood risk and premiums. In addition, the long-term development of insurance funds is estimated with a spatial “Climate Risk Insurance Model (CRIM)” for a private insurance arrangement and for a ‘three-layered’ public-private insurance program. The estimation of flood insurance premiums of long-term insurance contracts reveals fundamental problems. One is that there is an incentive for either the consumer or the insurer to prefer short-term rather than long-term contracts in the face of climate-related uncertainty. Therefore, it seems advisable to examine the introduction of one-year flood insurance contracts in the Netherlands, at least until the large uncertainties with climate and socio-economic change on flood risk have been resolved. The estimations performed with the Climate Risk Insurance Model indicate that a private insurance fund could have difficulties with building up enough financial reserves to pay for flood damage, while the layered public-private insurance scheme is more robust.     

Climate change perceptions and their individual-level determinants: A cross-European analysis

There is now an extensive literature on the question of how individual-level factors affect climate change perceptions, showing that socio-political variables, notably values, worldviews and political orientation, are key factors alongside demographic variables. Yet little is known about cross-national differences in these effects, as most studies have been conducted in a single or small number of countries and cross-study comparisons are difficult due to different conceptualisations of key climate change dimensions. Using data from the European Social Survey Round 8 (n = 44,387), we examine how key socio-political and demographic factors are associated with climate change perception across 22 European countries and Israel. We show that human values and political orientation are important predictors of climate change beliefs and concern, as are the demographics of gender, age, and education. Certain associations with climate change perceptions, such as the ones for the self-transcendence versus self-enhancement value dimension, political orientation, and education, are more consistent across countries than for gender and age. However, even if the direction of the associations are to a large extent consistent, the sizes of the effects are not. We demonstrate that the sizes of the effects are generally smaller in Central and Eastern European countries, and that some demographic effects are larger in Northern European as compared to Western European countries. This suggests that findings from one country do not always generalize to other national contexts.     

Climate change and human activities: a case study in Xinjiang, China

We examined both long-term climate variability and anthropogenic contributions to current climate change for Xinjiang province of northwest China. Xinjiang encompasses several mountain ranges and inter-mountain basins and is comprised of a northern semiarid region and a more arid southern region. Climate over the last three centuries was reconstructed from tree rings and temperature series were calculated for the past 50 years using weather station data. Three major conclusions from these analyses are: (1) Although temperature varied considerably in Xinjiang over the last 200 years, it was non-directional until the last 50 years when a substantial warming trend occurred; (2) The semiarid North Xinjiang was representative of the northern hemisphere climate, while the more arid South Xinjiang resembled the southern hemisphere climate, meanwhile, (3) The entire Xinjiang province captured the global-scale climate signal. We also compared human contributions to global change between North and South Xinjiang, including land cover/land use, population, and greenhouse gas production. For both regions, urban areas acted as heat islands; and large areas of grassland and forest were converted to barren land, especially in North Xinjiang. Additionally, North Xinjiang also showed larger increase in population and greenhouse gas emissions mainly associated with animal production than those in South Xinjiang. Although Xinjiang province is a geographically coupled mountain–basin system, the two regions have distinct climate patterns and anthropogenic activities related to land cover conversion and greenhouse gas production.     

Climate change and agriculture: A perspective on priorities for economic policy

Research on the effects of climate change on U.S. agriculture and world grain markets suggests that adaptation will occur with relatively small effects on total production. Additional research shows that reducing emission of greenhouse gases from U.S. agricultural production is relatively expensive compared to encouraging reforestation as an offset to emissions of carbon dioxide. Nevertheless, continued population growth and the increasing inequality of income across countries are likely to exacerbate the adverse effects of climate change. Concepts of sustainability should be expanded to cover industrial as well as agricultural production, and promote the efficient use of fossil fuels in general. Dealing with climate change effectively will require international cooperation and a willingness to address population growth and the divergence of incomes between rich and poor countries.     

Climate change and sustainable development: towards dialogue

The consequences of climate change and sustainable development remaining as separate discourses are explored, both in general and in the Canadian context. One of these consequences is the difference in emission and economic development scenarios generated by the two groups. A second is that strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are designed and assessed in a narrow technical context, divorced from the economic and social forces that underlie them. We identify the need for climate change and sustainable development to be represented in a more explicit manner in each other's research agendas, and for integrated assessment of climate change to incorporate alternative methodologies that complement global scale integrated assessment models. These methodologies should include greater involvement of stakeholders as partners with researchers in a shared learning experience.     

Climate change: long-term targets and short-term commitments

International negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change could take several different approaches to advance future mitigation commitments. Options range from trying to reach consensus on specific long-term atmospheric concentration targets (e.g. 550 ppmv) to simply ignoring this contentious issue and focusing instead on what can be done in the nearer term. This paper argues for a strategy that lies between these two extremes. Internationally agreed threshold levels for certain categories of impacts or of risks posed by climate change could be translated into acceptable levels of atmospheric concentrations. This could help to establish a range of upper limits for global emissions in the medium term that could set the ambition level for negotiations on expanded GHG mitigation commitments. The paper thus considers how physical and socio-economic indicators of climate change impacts might be used to guide the setting of such targets. In an effort to explore the feasibility and implications of low levels of stabilisation, it also quantifies an intermediate global emission target for 2020 that keeps open the option to stabilise at 450 ppmv CO₂ If new efforts to reduce emissions are not forthcoming (e.g. the Kyoto Protocol or similar mitigation efforts fail), there is a significant chance that the option of 450 ppmv CO₂ is out of reach as of 2020. Regardless of the preferred approach to shaping new international commitments on climate change, progress will require improved information on the avoided impacts climate change at different levels of mitigation and careful assessment of mitigation costs.     

Climate change: changing means and changing extremes

Ongoing global warming not only involves changes in temperature and the global mean; it affects more or less every part of the climate. Regional temperature changes are often greater or smaller than corresponding changes in the global mean. In some cases the direction of change may also be different. For example, temperature changes are higher over land than over the ocean. Precipitation increases in some regions but decreases in others. Changes in extreme events may differ from changes in the corresponding mean. Present scientific knowledge clearly indicates that the already observed global trend towards warmer conditions will continue and that it will be accompanied by changes in yet other aspects of climate. This paper highlights, as a brief review, aspects of our changing climate from the available scientific knowledge with a bearing on the energy sector. Its focus is on temperature and precipitation, with some consideration of wind and sea level, among others. While uncertainties remain as far as the magnitude of future global-scale changes is concerned, and even more so their many regional patterns, significant changes are foreseen in, for example, global and regional temperature and precipitation, sea level rise, and in the characteristics of various extreme events.