scholarly journals The role of anticipatory humanitarian action to reduce disaster displacement

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Thalheimer ◽  
Ezekiel Simperingham ◽  
Eddie Wasswa Jjemba
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Adverse Effects ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Early Warning Systems ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
Warning Systems ◽  
Humanitarian Action ◽  
Weather Events ◽  
Weather And Climate

Abstract Displacement due to weather and climate-related events (disaster displacement), including the adverse effects of climate change, is one of the greatest humanitarian challenges of the 21st century. Even though the forecasting of extreme events and early warning systems has improved globally, less attention has been given to translating anticipatory humanitarian action into the disaster displacement context with the aim to minimise forced displacement from extreme weather events through pre-allocated funds for the readiness, pre-positioning and activation costs. In this analysis, we assess the opportunities and challenges associated with utilising forecast-based financing (FbF) to expand anticipatory and early humanitarian action, based on the structured judgements of experts. These multi-disciplinary experts agree that FbF can reduce displacement risks and address the humanitarian impacts of disaster displacement early, or before a hazard materialises. We propose four action steps along the stages of disaster displacement to provide practical intervention points for researchers and practitioners. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings and outline next steps. By integrating cross-disciplinary expert judgement, this paper provides a much-needed pathway to transform humanitarian action to be more anticipatory and adaptable to change, and help minimize disaster displacement in climate change vulnerable regions.

scholarly journals RUSSIAN AND INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF ACTION PLANS FOR THE PROTECTION OF HUMAN HEALTH FROM CLIMATE RISKS

2020 ◽  
Vol 99 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-181
Author(s):  
Boris A. Revich ◽  
V. V. Maleev ◽  
M. D. Smirnova ◽  
N. Yu. Pshenichnaya
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Climate Change ◽  
Early Warning ◽  
Early Warning Systems ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
Warning Systems ◽  
Action Plans ◽  
Weather Events ◽  
Excess Deaths ◽  
Dependent Mortality

The Paris climate agreement confirmed that climate change continues to pose a global concern and required all Parties to put forward their best efforts to protect public health. In the conditions of global warming, climate-induced risks gained importance as a public health hazard and confirmed the need to develop national action plans. Such plans shall be developed locally, taking into account the requirements of the National Action Plan for adaptation to health risks induced by changing climate. This manuscript presents the data on climate-dependent mortality. The global annual burden of excess deaths attributed to climate change is over 150,000 cases, which leads to a loss of 5.5 million years of productive life per year. Early warning systems have been adopted in many countries, with the goal to prevent heat-related deaths. If such a system were implemented in Moscow, eleven thousand excess deaths could have been avoided during the extremely hot summer of 2010. Heat watch warning systems are based on scientific data on heat thresholds. On the days with temperatures above such thresholds, climate-dependent mortality increases. Such thresholds have been established in the environmental epidemiology studies conducted in Moscow, Northern and Southern cities, the cities with continental and monsoon climates. The experience of implementation of early warning systems during extreme weather events was analyzed. The relative powers of bioclimatic indices as predictors of daily mortality rates during extreme weather events were compared. To prevent complications of cardiovascular diseases, a set of protective measures was proposed which included cardiology medications, recommendations on personal behavior and drinking habits during extreme heat, and other measures. The risks and examples of occurrence and northward propagation of climate-dependent infectious diseases such as Siberian anthrax, West Nile fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and dirofilariasis, were described.

scholarly journals On the Attribution of a Single Event to Climate Change

2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (22) ◽  
pp. 8297-8301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerrit Hansen ◽  
Maximilian Auffhammer ◽  
Andrew R. Solow
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Confidence Interval ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Extreme Weather ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Attributable Risk ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
Single Event ◽  
Weather Events

Abstract There is growing interest in assessing the role of climate change in observed extreme weather events. Recent work in this area has focused on estimating a measure called attributable risk. A statistical formulation of this problem is described and used to construct a confidence interval for attributable risk. The resulting confidence is shown to be surprisingly wide even in the case where the event of interest is unprecedented in the historical record.

scholarly journals Four key reasons why climate change adaptation and mitigation need a gendered approach

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla Sarrouy ◽  
Carla Sarrouy
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Climate Change Mitigation ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
Mitigation And Adaptation ◽  
Weather Events ◽  
Global Food ◽  
Change Mitigation ◽  
Adaptation And Mitigation

Climate change is having a growing impact on every human activity, especially on agriculture with altered rainfall patterns and an increased number and intensity of extreme weather events. This article argues that efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change must consider whole food systems – rather than the sole production of food – whilst embracing a conscious gendered approach. Women are the main victims of hunger, but they are also the main actors of global food systems, they greatly contribute to their household’s and community’s wellbeing and detain a rich and often untapped knowledge of food systems. Promoting the role of women in our global food systems enhances the inclusion of criteria mainly valued by women such as resilience, diversity and nutrition, which are paramount for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Photo credit: By OxFam East Africa [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

scholarly journals Unravelling resilience mechanisms in forests: role of non-structural carbohydrates in responding to extreme weather events

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ettore D’Andrea ◽  
Andrea Scartazza ◽  
Alberto Battistelli ◽  
Alessio Collalti ◽  
Simona Proietti ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Radial Growth ◽  
Extreme Weather ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
Summer Drought ◽  
Drought Event ◽  
List Type ◽  
Weather Events ◽  
Late Frost

SummaryExtreme weather events are increasing in frequency and intensity due to global climate change. We hypothesized that these have a strong impact on the stem radial growth and the dynamic of non-structural carbohydrates (NSCs).In order to assess the effects on mature trees of a late frost occurred in spring 2016 and a drought event characterizing the summer 2017, we monitored the phenology, the radial growth and the dynamic of starch and soluble sugars in a Mediterranean beech forest.Growth was much more reduced by spring late frost than by summer drought, while NSCs dynamic was deeply involved in counteracting the negative effects of both events, supporting plant survival and buffering source-sink imbalances under such stressful conditions, resulting in a strong trade-off between growth and NSCs dynamic in trees.Overall, our results highlight the key role of NSCs on trees resilience to extreme weather events, confirming the relevant adaptability to stressful conditions. Such an insight is useful to assess how forests may respond to the potential impacts of climate change on ecosystem processes and to define how future management strategies can help adaptation of beech forests in the Mediterranean area.

scholarly journals Insurance Against Extreme Weather Events: An Overview

2021 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-95
Author(s):  
Kati Kraehnert ◽  
Daniel Osberghaus ◽  
Christian Hott ◽  
Lemlem Teklegiorgis Habtemariam ◽  
Frank Wätzold ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Extreme Weather ◽  
The State ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Weather Events ◽  
The World ◽  
Negative Side Effects ◽  
State Of Research

Abstract Extreme weather events increasingly threaten the economic situation of households and enterprises around the world. Insurance against extreme weather events is among the climate change adaptation instruments that are currently discussed by the policy community. This overview paper provides a synopsis of the state of research on insurance against extreme weather events, outlining advantages and limitations inherent in three main types of insurance: indemnity-based insurance, index-based insurance, and insurance-linked securities. The paper discusses issues related to insurance uptake, distributional effects, misleading incentives and potentially negative side effects, as well as the role of the state.

Lay Detection of Unusual Patterns in the Frequency of Hurricanes

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 597-609 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Dryden ◽  
M. Granger Morgan ◽  
Stephen Broomell
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Signal Detection Theory ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Extreme Weather ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
The Public ◽  
Weather Events ◽  
Hurricane Season ◽  
Future Work

AbstractAn increase in the severity of extreme weather is arguably one of the most important consequences of climate change with immediate and potentially devastating impacts. Recent events, like Hurricane Harvey, stimulated public discourse surrounding the role of climate change in amplifying, or otherwise modifying, the patterns of such events. Within the scientific community, recent years have witnessed considerable progress on “climate attribution”—the use of statistical techniques to assess the probability that climate change is influencing the character of some extreme weather events. Using a novel application of signal detection theory, this article assesses when, and to what extent, laypeople attribute changes in hurricanes to climate change and whether and how certain characteristics predict this decision. The results show that people attribute hurricanes to climate change based on their preexisting climate beliefs and numeracy. Respondents who were more dubious about the existence of climate change (and more numerate) required a greater degree of evidence (i.e., a more extreme world) before they were willing to suggest that an unusual hurricane season might be influenced by climate change. However, those who have doubts were still willing to make these attributions when hurricane behavior becomes sufficiently extreme. In general, members of the public who hold different prior views about climate change are not in complete disagreement about the evidence they perceive, which leaves the possibility for future work to explore ways to bring such judgments back into alignment.

The Extreme Weather Event Real-time Attribution Machine (EWERAM) – An Overview

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jordis Tradowsky ◽  
Greg Bodeker ◽  
Leroy Bird ◽  
Stefanie Kremser ◽  
Peter Kreft ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Extreme Weather ◽  
Extreme Weather Event ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
Weather Event ◽  
Business Innovation ◽  
Weather Events

<p>As greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in Earth’s atmosphere, the nature of extreme weather events (EWEs) has been changing and is expected to change in the future. EWEs have contributions from anthropogenic climate change as well as from natural variability, which complicates attribution statements. EWERAM is a project that has been funded through the New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment Smart Ideas programme to develop the capability to provide, within days of an EWE having occurred over New Zealand, and while public interest is still high, scientifically defensible statements about the role of climate change in both the severity and frequency of that event. This is expected to raise public awareness and understanding of the effects of climate change on EWEs.</p><p>A team of researchers from five institutions across New Zealand are participating in EWERAM. EWE attribution is a multi-faceted problem and different approaches are required to address different research aims. Although robustly assessing the contribution of changes in the thermodynamic state to an observed event can be more tractable than including changes in the dynamics of weather systems, for New Zealand, changes in dynamics have had a large impact on the frequency and location of EWEs. As such, we have initiated several lines of research to deliver metrics on EWE attribution, tailored to meet the needs of various stakeholders, that encompass the effects of both dynamical and thermodynamical changes in the atmosphere. This presentation will give an overview of EWERAM and present the methodologies and tools used in the project.</p>

Has the climate become more variable or extreme? Progress 1992-2006

2007 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neville Nicholls ◽  
Lisa Alexander
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Extreme Events ◽  
Climate Extremes ◽  
Extreme Weather ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Weather Events ◽  
Weather And Climate ◽  
Analyse Data ◽  
Climate Events

In 1990 and 1992 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in its first assessment of climate change and its supplement, did not consider whether extreme weather events had increased in frequency and/or intensity globally, because data were too sparse to make this a worthwhile exercise. In 1995 the IPCC, in its second assessment, did examine this question, but concluded that data and analyses of changes in extreme events were ‘not comprehensive’and thus the question could not be answered with any confidence. Since then, concerted multinational efforts have been undertaken to collate, quality control, and analyse data on weather and climate extremes. A comprehensive examination of the question of whether extreme events have changed in frequency or intensity is now more feasible than it was 15 years ago. The processes that have led to this position are described, along with current understanding of possible changes in some extreme weather and climate events.

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