scholarly journals Beyond the Tipping Point: Understanding Perceptions of Abrupt Climate Change and Their Implications

2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rob Bellamy ◽  
Mike Hulme
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Changes ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Abrupt Climate Change ◽  
East Anglia ◽  
Values And Beliefs ◽  
Qualitative Focus Groups ◽  
Earth’S Climate ◽  
The University ◽  
Ways Of Life

Abstract This article explores the influence of personal values and ontological beliefs on people’s perceptions of possible abrupt changes in the Earth’s climate system and on their climate change mitigation preferences. The authors focus on four key areas of risk perception: concern about abrupt climate change as distinct to climate change in general, the likelihood of abrupt climate changes, fears of abrupt climate changes, and preferences in how to mitigate abrupt climate changes. Using cultural theory as an interpretative framework, a multimethodological approach was adopted in exploring these areas: 287 respondents at the University of East Anglia (UK) completed a three-part quantitative questionnaire, with 15 returning to participate in qualitative focus groups to discuss the issues raised in more depth. Supporting the predictions of cultural theory, egalitarians’ values and beliefs were consistently associated with heightened perceptions of the risks posed by abrupt climate change. Yet many believed abrupt climate change to be capricious, irrespective of their psychometrically attributed worldviews or “ways of life.” Mitigation preferences—across all ways of life—were consistent with the “hegemonic myth” dominating climate policy, with many advocating conventional regulatory or market-based approaches. Moreover, a strong fatalistic narrative emerged from within abrupt climate change discourses, with frequent referrals to helplessness, societal collapse, and catastrophe.

Global climate changes during the most recent two millennia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah S. Eggleston ◽  
Oliver Bothe ◽  
Nerilie Abram ◽  
Bronwen Konecky ◽  
Hans Linderholm ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Changes ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
High Temporal Resolution ◽  
Past Climate ◽  
Global Climate Changes ◽  
The Past ◽  
Earth’S Climate

<p>The past two thousand years is a key interval for climate science because this period encompasses both the era of human-induced global warming and a much longer interval when changes in Earth's climate were governed principally by natural drivers. This earlier 'pre-industrial' period is particularly important for two reasons. Firstly, we now have a growing number of well-dated, climate sensitive proxy data with high temporal resolution that spans the full period. Secondly, the pre-industrial climate provides context for present-day climate change, sets real-world targets against which to evaluate the performance of climate models, and allows us to address other questions of Earth sciences that cannot be answered using only a century and a half of observational data. </p><p>Here, we first provide several perspectives on the concept of a 'pre-industrial climate'. Then, we highlight the activities of the PAGES 2k Network, an international collaborative effort focused on global climate change during the past two thousand years. We highlight those aspects of pre-industrial conditions (including both past climate changes and past climate drivers) that are not yet well constrained, and suggest potential areas for research during this period that would be relevant to the evolution of Earth's future climate.</p>

scholarly journals Understanding Abrupt Climate Change in the Late Quaternary

Eos ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond Bradley ◽  
Henry Diaz
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Ocean Circulation ◽  
Climate Changes ◽  
Late Quaternary ◽  
Abrupt Climate Change ◽  
Quaternary Period ◽  
Late Quaternary Period ◽  
The Tropics

During the late Quaternary period, a series of abrupt climate changes in the tropics and sub-tropics driven by changes in ocean circulation were both dramatic and disruptive.

Remaking lives and community in the gooseless goose capital of the world

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Braden Thomas Leap
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
Migration Patterns ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
The World ◽  
In Trans ◽  
The University ◽  
Ways Of Life

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] Climate change is disrupting and will continue to disrupt peoples' lives and communities all over the world. Nevertheless, a vast majority of research has focused on the environmental and/oreconomic consequences of the phenomena, while relatively little attention has been granted to how people manage to refashion their identities, cultures, and communities. This is a dramatic oversight precisely because selves and ways of life will have to be refashioned in response to environmental transformations associated with climate change if communities are to be sustained. Accordingly, in this dissertation I utilize data from over a year and a half of ethnographic fieldwork in Sumner, Missouri to analyze how people had been and were remaking their identities, culture, and community in response to a shift in trans-national goose migration patterns that was facilitated, at least in part, by climate change. I make the following three arguments. First, lives and communities will be remade through coconstitutive interactions between multiple (non)human things, beings, and institutions across scales of space and time. Second, absences and uncertainties will be crucially important to how people reconstruct their lives and communities. Third, inequalities inform and are remade through adaptations to climate change. Combined, I argue the complexities of communities can provide vital resources for facilitating adaptations, but that these complexities can and do shape adaptations in ways that can facilitate the reproduction, or even intensification, of inequalities.

scholarly journals Transition process of abrupt climate change based on global sea surface temperature over the past century

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 115-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pengcheng Yan ◽  
Wei Hou ◽  
Guolin Feng
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Changes ◽  
Transition Process ◽  
Sea Surface ◽  
Abrupt Climate Change ◽  
Past Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Global Sea Surface Temperature ◽  
State Moment

Abstract. A new detection method has been proposed to study the transition process of abrupt climate change. With this method, the climate system transiting from one stable state to another can be verified clearly. By applying this method to the global sea surface temperature over the past century, several climate changes and their processes are detected, including the start state (moment), persist time, and end state (moment). According to the spatial distribution, the locations of climate changes mainly have occurred in the Indian Ocean and western Pacific before the middle twentieth century, in the 1970s in the equatorial middle-eastern Pacific, and in the middle and southern Pacific since the end of the twentieth century. In addition, the quantitative relationship between the transition process parameters is verified in theory and practice: (1) the relationship between the rate and stability parameters is linear, and (2) the relationship between the rate and change amplitude parameters is quadratic.

scholarly journals Global warming and other climate change phenomena on the geological time scale

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (Suppl. 5) ◽  
pp. 1435-1455
Author(s):  
Miodrag Mesarovic
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Time Scale ◽  
Climate Changes ◽  
Geological Time ◽  
Geological Time Scale ◽  
The Future ◽  
Entire History ◽  
Past Climate Change ◽  
Earth’S Climate

Global warming and other climate change phenomena became a worldwide exploited subject over recent decades. World science has made enormous progress in understanding past climate change and its causes, and continues to study current and potential impacts that will affect people in the future. All scientists agree that the Earth's climate is changing due to natural phenomena, and most of them argue that human activities are increasing the greenhouse effect, while some scientists attribute climate changes exclusively to the natural causes. Though there still is, and always will be, need for multiple lines of research on an extremely complex system like Earth's climate is, an immediate consensus is crucial for decision-makers to place climate change in the context of other large challenges facing the world today. This paper discusses the existing body of evidence on climate changes in the past, and uncertainties that prevent scientists to reach full consensus on how climate might change in the future. It extends the time scale of climate changes over the entire history of Earth to help better understanding of hypothetical changes and their consequences that could be expected both in the near and in a very distant future.

DO GLOBAL WARMING AND CLIMATE CHANGE REPRESENT A SERIOUS THREAT TO OUR WELFARE AND ENVIRONMENT?

2009 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael E. Mann
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Climate Change Mitigation ◽  
Climate Changes ◽  
Economic Security ◽  
Ethical Considerations ◽  
Warming Climate ◽  
Dangerous Anthropogenic Interference ◽  
Earth’S Climate ◽  
Change Mitigation

The science underlying global warming, climate change, and the connections between these phenomena are reviewed. Projected future climate changes under various plausible scenarios of future human behavior are explored, as are the potential impacts of projected climate changes on society, ecosystems, and our environment. The economic, security, and ethical considerations relevant to determining the threat posed by climate change are subsequently assessed. The article then discusses the various means available for climate change mitigation, focusing on the relative strengths and weaknesses of various societal alternatives including ‘geoengineering’ and transitioning to less carbon intensive energy sources. The article concludes with the author's views as to what steps might most profitably be taken to avert dangerous anthropogenic interference with Earth's climate, and the ramifications if such steps are not taken.

6. Our future atmosphere

2017 ◽  
pp. 113-120
Author(s):  
Paul I. Palmer
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Climate Changes ◽  
The Future ◽  
Scientific Technical ◽  
Global Economic Growth ◽  
Earth’S Climate ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Binding Agreement

There is still much about Earth’s atmosphere we do not fully understand, which limits our ability to predict large-scale changes to the atmosphere. As Earth’s climate changes new scientific challenges will emerge that need to be addressed with new measurements and models. These challenges have implications for assessing the impact of future global economic growth and mitigating humanitarian risks. ‘Our future atmosphere’ outlines some of the future scientific, technical, and philosophical challenges we face. These include our responses to the changes in natural and anthropogenic-driven climate change, facing future unknown challenges, using improvements in technology to address the scientific challenges, and aiming for an international legally binding agreement on atmosphere policy.

scholarly journals Transition process of abrupt climate change based on global sea surface temperature over the past century

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pengcheng Yan ◽  
Wei Hou ◽  
Guolin Feng
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Changes ◽  
Transition Process ◽  
Sea Surface ◽  
Abrupt Climate Change ◽  
Past Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Global Sea Surface Temperature ◽  
State Moment

Abstract. We propose a new concept of abrupt climate change transition and create a novel detection method to identify the transition process. With this method, how the climate system transits from one stable state to another could be verified clearly. By applying this method to the global sea surface temperature data over the past century, several climate change processes are detected, including their starting state (moment), persist time, and ending state (moment) etc. According to the spatial distributions, the locations of climate changes mainly occurred in Indian ocean and western Pacific before the middle twentieth century, while the climate changes in 1970s located in equatorial middle-eastern Pacific, and the climate changes happened in the middle and southern Pacific since the end twentieth century. In addition, an quantitative relationship among the transition process parameters has been exposed in theory and practice, which the relationship between the rate and stability parameters is linear, and the relationship between the rate and change amplitude parameters is quadratic.

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