What do we know about UK household adaptation to climate change? A systematic review

The UK Government’s first National Adaptation Programme seeks to create a ‘climate-ready society’ capable of making well-informed and far-sighted decisions to address risks and opportunities posed by a changing climate, where individual households are expected to adapt when it is in their interest to do so. How, and to what extent, households are able to do this remains unclear. Like other developed countries, research on UK adaptation has focused predominately on public and private organisations. To fill that gap, a systematic literature review was conducted to understand what actions UK households have taken in response to, or in anticipation of, a changing climate; what drives or impedes these actions; and whether households will act autonomously. We found that UK households struggle to build long-term adaptive capacity and are reliant upon traditional reactive coping responses. Of concern is that these coping responses are less effective for some climate risks (e.g. flooding); cost more over the long-term; and fail to create household capacity to adapt to other stresses. While low-cost, low-skill coping responses were already being implemented, the adoption of more permanent physical measures, behavioural changes, and acceptance of new responsibilities are unlikely to happen autonomously without further financial or government support. If public policy on household adaptation to climate change is to be better informed than more high-quality empirical research is urgently needed.     

Paleogene carbon isotope excursions in the Bunkers Hill borehole: Hampshire Basin, UK

This study demonstrates that the Bunkers Hill borehole, which is located within the Hampshire Basin, contains a carbon isotope excursion (CIE) in the Upnor Formation followed by a positive recovery from another CIE within the overlying Reading Formation. This study has also shown that the CIE in the Upnor Formation predates the Paleocene/Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), while the carbon isotope recovery at the base of the Reading Formation is most likely related to it. The positive carbon isotope trend, before a return to more negative values, seen throughout the majority of the Reading Formation can also be seen in coeval deposits in the Jubilee 404T borehole in the London Basin and in the Tienen Formation in the Doel and Kallo boreholes from the Belgium Basin. This indicates that this post-PETM carbon isotope signal may, therefore, be regional if not global in nature.     

Can shells of freshwater mussels (Unionidae) be used to estimate low summer discharge of rivers and associated droughts?

This paper examines if shell oxygen isotope ratios (δ¹⁸O_ar) of Unio sp. can be used as a proxy of past discharge of the river Meuse. The proxy was developed from a modern dataset for the reference time interval 1997–2007, which showed a logarithmic relationship between discharge and measured water oxygen isotope ratios (δ¹⁸O_w). To test this relationship for past time intervals, δ¹⁸O_ar values were measured in the aragonite of the growth increments of four Unio sp. shells; two from a relatively wet period and two from a very dry time interval (1910–1918 and 1969–1977, respectively). Shell δ¹⁸O_ar records were converted into δ¹⁸O_w values using existing water temperature records. Summer δ¹⁸O_w values, reconstructed from δ¹⁸O_ar of 1910–1918, showed a similar range as the summer δ¹⁸O_w values for the reference time interval 1997–2007, whilst summer reconstructed δ¹⁸O_w values for the time interval 1969–1977 were anomalously high. These high δ¹⁸O_w values suggest that the river Meuse experienced severe summer droughts during the latter time interval. δ¹⁸O_w values were then applied to calculate discharge values. It was attempted to estimate discharge from the reconstructed δ¹⁸O_w values using the logarithmic relationship between δ¹⁸O_w and discharge. A comparison of the calculated summer discharge results with observed discharge data showed that Meuse low-discharge events below a threshold value of 6 m³/s can be detected in the reconstructed δ¹⁸O_w records, but true quantification remains problematic.     

The role of vegetation feedbacks on Greenland glaciation

The role of vegetation feedbacks for the process of ice-sheet evolution could potentially be important in realistically modeling the past and future evolution of the Greenland ice-sheet. We use a fully coupled atmosphere–ocean model to assess the response of the climate when the Greenland ice-sheet is replaced with a number of fixed vegetation types (bare soil, broadleaf and needleleaf trees, C3 and C4 grasses and shrubs) in conjunction with loaded and unloaded bedrock orography. These sensitivity experiments show that albedo changes dominate the climate response during the summer months while temperature changes during winter are attributed to altitude change and changes in atmospheric circulation over Greenland. Snow-free summers occur for all fixed vegetation types, except for high altitude eastern regions for bare soil. We perform further simulations with dynamic vegetation resulting in dominant shrub coverage over central and southern Greenland with grasses supported in the north. Ice-sheet modeling shows significant regrowth of the Greenland ice-sheet can occur for a bare soil surface type, dependent on ice-sheet model parameters, while Greenland remains almost ice-free for needleleaf tree coverage. Furthermore, a realistically vegetated Greenland can only support a small amount of ice-sheet regrowth implying multi-stability of the Greenland ice-sheet under a preindustrial climate. This study highlights the importance of considering vegetation climate ice-sheet interactions, and uncertainty in ice-sheet model parameters.     

Drought and the future of rural communities: Opportunities and challenges for climate change adaptation in regional Victoria,Australia

Australia's vulnerability to climate variability and change has been highlighted by the recent drought (i.e. the Big Dry or Millennium Drought), and also recent flooding across much of eastern Australia during 2011 and 2012. There is also the possibility that the frequency, intensity and duration of droughts may increase due to anthropogenic climate change, stressing the need for robust drought adaptation strategies. This study investigates the socio-economic impacts of drought, past and present drought adaptation measures, and the future adaptation strategies required to deal with projected impacts of climate change. The qualitative analysis presented records the actual experiences of drought and other climatic extremes and helps advance knowledge of how best to respond and adapt to such conditions, and how this might vary between different locations, sectors and communities. It was found that more effort is needed to address the changing environment and climate, by shifting from notions of ‘drought-as-crisis’ towards acknowledging the variable availability of water and that multi-year droughts should not be unexpected, and may even become more frequent. Action should also be taken to revalue the farming enterprise as critical to our environmental, economic and cultural well-being and there was also strong consensus that the value of water should be recognised in a more meaningful way (i.e. not just in economic terms). Finally, across the diverse stakeholders involved in the research, one point was consistently reiterated: that ‘it's not just drought’. Exacerbating the issues of climate impacts on water security and supply is the complexity of the agriculture industry, global economics (in particular global markets and the recent/ongoing global financial crisis), and demographic changes (decreasing and ageing populations) which are currently occurring across most rural communities. The social and economic issues facing rural communities are not just a product of drought or climate change – to understand them as such would underestimate the extent of the problems and inhibit the ability to coordinate the holistic, cross-agency approach needed for successful climate change adaptation in rural communities.     

Variogram models for regional groundwater geochemical data

Four variogram models for regional groundwater geochemical data are presented. These models were developed from an empirical study of the sample variograms for more than 10 elements in groundwaters from two geologic regions in the Plainview quandrangle, Texas. A procedure is given for the estimation of the variogram in the isotropic and anisotropic case. The variograms were found useful for quantifying the differences in spatial variability for elements within a geologic unit and for elements in different geologic units. Additionally, the variogram analysis enables assessment of the assumption of statistical independence of regional samples which is commonly used in many statistical procedures. The estimated variograms are used in computation of kriged estimates for the Plainview quadrangle data. The results indicate that an inverse distance weighting model was superior for prediction than simple kriging with the particular variograms used.     

Nanometre-scale spheroids on sands, Vulcano, Sicily: possible nannobacterial alteration

ABSTRACT Spheroids in the size range of 30–200 nm coat sand grains on sediments around the island of Vulcano. They occur as single individuals, as ball-shaped clumps resembling biological colonies with radiating chains of bodies, and eventually merge into sheets in which the individual nannobacteria are no longer evident. Rarely, they appear to bore into the glass grains . Older rocks are composed mainly of closely packed nanospheroids. These spheroids are believed to be nannobacterial cells based on their resemblance to nannobacteria found in other surficial environments, and their occurrence in colony-like groups. If so, nannobacteria play a very important role in the destruction of volcanic materials on Vulcano.