Climate Uncertainty and Optimal Groundwater Augmentation

2021 ◽  
Vol 57 (9) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dat Q. Tran ◽  
Kent F. Kovacs
Keyword(s):  
2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 452-477
Author(s):  
Xiao-Bing Zhang ◽  
Magnus Hennlock

AbstractThis paper investigates the benefits of international cooperation under uncertainty about global warming through a stochastic dynamic game. We analyze the benefits of cooperation both for the case of symmetric and asymmetric players. It is shown that the players’ combined expected payoffs decrease as climate uncertainty becomes larger, whether or not they cooperate. However, the benefits from cooperation increase with climate uncertainty. In other words, it is more important to cooperate when facing higher uncertainty. At the same time, more transfers will be needed to ensure stable cooperation among asymmetric players.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saeid Ashraf Vaghefi ◽  
Veruska Muccione ◽  
Kees C.H. van Ginkel ◽  
Marjolijn Haasnoot

<p>The future of ski resorts in the Swiss Alps is highly uncertain. Being dependent on snow cover conditions, winter sport tourism is highly susceptible to changes in temperature and precipitation. With the observed warming of the European Alps being well above global average warming, snow cover in Switzerland is projected to shrink at a rapid pace. Climate uncertainty originates from greenhouse gas emission trajectories (RCPs) and differences between climate models. Beyond climate uncertainty, the snow conditions are strongly subject to intra-annual variability. Series of unfavorable years have already led to the financial collapse of several low-altitude ski resorts. Such abrupt collapses with a large impact on the regional economy can be referred to as climate change induced socio-economic tipping points. To some degree, tipping points may be avoided by adaptation measures such as artificial snowmaking, although these measures are also subject to physical and economical constraints. In this study, we use a variety of exploratory modeling techniques to identify tipping points in a coupled physical-economic model applied to six representative ski resorts in the Swiss Alps. New high-resolution climate projections (CH2018) are used to represent climate uncertainty. To improve the coverage of the uncertainty space and accounting for the intra-annual variability of the climate models, a resampling technique was used to produce new climate realizations. A snow process model is used to simulate daily snow-cover in each of the ski resorts. The likelihood of survival of each resort is evaluated from the number of days with good snow conditions for skiing compared to the minimum thresholds obtained from the literature. Economically, the good snow days are translated into the total profit of ski resorts per season of operation. Multiple unfavorable years of total profit may lead to a tipping point. We use scenario discovery to identify the conditions under which these tipping points occur, and reflect on their implications for the future of snow tourism in the Swiss Alps.</p>


2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 10461-10494 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Steffens ◽  
M. Larsbo ◽  
J. Moeys ◽  
E. Kjellström ◽  
N. Jarvis ◽  
...  

Abstract. The assessment of climate change impacts on the risk for pesticide leaching needs careful consideration of different sources of uncertainty. We investigated the uncertainty related to climate scenario input and its importance relative to parameter uncertainty of the pesticide leaching model. The pesticide fate model MACRO was calibrated against a comprehensive one-year field data set for a well-structured clay soil in south-west Sweden. We obtained an ensemble of 56 acceptable parameter sets that represented the parameter uncertainty. Nine different climate model projections of the regional climate model RCA3 were available as driven by different combinations of global climate models (GCM), greenhouse gas emission scenarios and initial states of the GCM. The future time series of weather data used to drive the MACRO-model were generated by scaling a reference climate data set (1970–1999) for an important agricultural production area in south-west Sweden based on monthly change factors for 2070–2099. 30 yr simulations were performed for different combinations of pesticide properties and application seasons. Our analysis showed that both the magnitude and the direction of predicted change in pesticide leaching from present to future depended strongly on the particular climate scenario. The effect of parameter uncertainty was of major importance for simulating absolute pesticide losses, whereas the climate uncertainty was relatively more important for predictions of changes of pesticide losses from present to future. The climate uncertainty should be accounted for by applying an ensemble of different climate scenarios. The aggregated ensemble prediction based on both acceptable parameterizations and different climate scenarios could provide robust probabilistic estimates of future pesticide losses and assessments of changes in pesticide leaching risks.


Author(s):  
Beatrice Dittes ◽  
Olga Špačková ◽  
Lukas Schoppa ◽  
Daniel Straub

Author(s):  
Jeroen Hopster

While the foundations of climate science and ethics are well established, fine-grained climate predictions, as well as policy-decisions, are beset with uncertainties. This chapter maps climate uncertainties and classifies them as to their ground, extent and location. A typology of uncertainty is presented, centered along the axes of scientific and moral uncertainty. This typology is illustrated with paradigmatic examples of uncertainty in climate science, climate ethics and climate economics. Subsequently, the chapter discusses the IPCC’s preferred way of representing uncertainties and evaluates its strengths and weaknesses from a risk management perspective. Three general strategies for decision-makers to cope with climate uncertainty are outlined, the usefulness of which largely depends on whether or not decision-makers find themselves in a context of deep uncertainty. The chapter concludes by offering two recommendations to ease the work of policymakers, faced with the various uncertainties engrained in climate discourse.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
George A. Backus ◽  
Thomas Stephen Lowry ◽  
Shannon M. Jones ◽  
La Tonya Nicole Walker ◽  
Barry L. Roberts ◽  
...  

2018 ◽  
Vol 77 ◽  
pp. 392-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jianhong E. Mu ◽  
Bruce A. McCarl ◽  
Benjamin Sleeter ◽  
John T. Abatzoglou ◽  
Hongliang Zhang

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