Climate justice and global cities: Mapping the emerging discourses

Ever since climate change came to be a matter of political concern, questions of justice have been at the forefront of academic and policy debates in the international arena. Curiously, as attention has shifted to other sites and scales of climate change politics matters of justice have tended to be neglected. In this paper, we examine how discourses of justice are emerging within urban responses to climate change. Drawing on a database of initiatives taking place in 100 global cities and qualitative case-study research in Philadelphia, Quito and Toronto, we examine how notions of distributive and procedural justice are articulated in climate change projects and plans in relation to both adaptation and mitigation. We find that there is limited explicit concern with justice at the urban level. However, where discourses of justice are evident there are important differences emerging between urban responses to adaptation and mitigation, and between those in the north and in the south. Adaptation responses tend to stress the distribution of ‘rights’ to protection, although those in the South also stress the importance of procedural justice. Mitigation responses also stress ‘rights’ to the benefits of responding to climate change, with limited concern for ‘responsibilities’ or for procedural justice. Intriguingly, while adaptation responses tend to stress the rights of individuals, we also find discourses of collective rights emerging in relation to mitigation.     

Anomalous induction across Europe

Summary Using real induction vector data, collected at 958 European observation sites, together with our data from the Bohemian Massif and the West Carpathians, we have generated a contour map of the transfer function TF1 (corresponding to transfer function A in Wiese's relation). Only the zero contour is retained and shown on the map. It clearly marks the main anomalous induction zones, related to internal structural inhomogeneities, across Europe.     

Modifications of the dispersion relations for surface waves in a layer on a half-space

Summary Dispersion relations for Love and Rayleigh waves in a layer on a half-space are modified by introducing quadratic slownesses instead of velocities. The advantages of this approach are demonstrated on analytical formulae for computing the group velocity.     

Study of the induction arrow at budkov (Czechoslovakia)

u¶rt;m mam u¶rt;au m ¶rt;a u¶rt;u ma u n aau anu mauaum n amuu ¶rt; a nu¶rt; 1967–1970. aamua ma auum m u¶rt;uu m nu¶rt;a u u am ¶rt;am a¶rt;a m mu ¶rt;¶rt;m -3 amu aua.

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Dedicated to Academician Alois Zátopek on His 65th Birthday     

Daily Weather Observations in Sixteenth-Century Europe

Thirty-two weather diaries written in astronomical calendars in central Europe in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are presented and discussed. Systematic weather observations were promoted by the rise of planetary astronomy and its application in astro-meteorology. The practice of keeping weather diaries spread from Cracow (Poland) to Ingolstadt (Germany) and from there to other universities. The data obtained from these sources provided the backbone for setting up series of precipitation indices for Poland, Germany and Switzerland. Monthly statistics of days with precipitation, snowfall and frost were computed by counting the relevant entries in the most important diaries. The results were compared with either those obtained from instrumental measurements in the same place or with those from modern instrumental measurements in a neighbouring place. The final results show that autumn was considerably colder in the early sixteenth century. April was considerably drier and July was wetter during the period 1508-1531 than during 1901-1960. In order to highlight the impact of weather patterns on grain prices in a year of crisis, the timing of wet and dry spells in southern Poland and southern Germany is compared for the year 1529. Winters became 1.7°C colder from 1564 to 1576 and the month of July tended to be wetter than in 1901-1960. Details noted in the diaries kept between 1585 and 1600 by the astronomers Brahe (near Copenhagen) and Fabricius (in the Ostfriesland region of northwestern Germany) closely agree. It rained more often in June and July and temperatures dropped. The winter months were more frequently dominated by winds from easterly directions, the frequency of snowfall was higher and a deficit occurred in precipitation. This points to a higher frequency of high pressure in the Fennoscandian area with cold air advection from the east or northeast.