scholarly journals Asymmetric Emergence of Low-to-No Snow in the American Cordillera

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Rhoades ◽  
Benjamin Hatchett ◽  
Mark Risser ◽  
William Collins ◽  
Nicolas Bambach ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Southern Hemisphere ◽  
Anthropogenic Climate Change ◽  
Mountain Range ◽  
Water Demands ◽  
Local Warming ◽  
Snow Conditions

Abstract Societies and ecosystems within and downstream of mountains rely on seasonal snowmelt to satisfy their water demands. Anthropogenic climate change has reduced mountain snowpacks worldwide, altering snowmelt magnitude and timing. Here, the global warming level leading to widespread and persistent mountain snowpack decline, termed low-to-no snow, is estimated for the world's most latitudinally contiguous mountain range, the American Cordillera. We show a combination of dynamical, thermodynamical, and hypsometric factors results in an asymmetric emergence of low-to-no snow conditions within the midlatitudes of the American Cordillera. Low-to-no snow emergence occurs approximately 20 years earlier in the Southern Hemisphere, at a third of the local warming level, and coincides with runoff efficiency declines in both dry and wet years. Prevention of a low-to-no snow future in either hemisphere requires the level of global warming to be held to, at most, +2.5 °C.

Political Preferences, Personality Traits, and Environmentalism

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Soutter ◽  
René Mõttus
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Personality Traits ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Environmental Attitudes ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
Anthropogenic Climate Change ◽  
Political Preferences ◽  
Party Voting

Although the scientific evidence of anthropogenic climate change continues to grow, public discourse still reflects a high level of scepticism and political polarisation towards anthropogenic climate change. In this study (N = 499) we attempted to replicate and expand upon an earlier finding that environmental terminology (“climate change” versus “global warming”) could partly explain political polarisation in environmental scepticism (Schuldt, Konrath, & Schwarz, 2011). Participants completed a series of online questionnaires assessing personality traits, political preferences, belief in environmental phenomenon, and various pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours. Those with a Conservative political orientation and/or party voting believed less in both climate change and global warming compared to those with a Liberal orientation and/or party voting. Furthermore, there was an interaction between continuously measured political orientation, but not party voting, and question wording on beliefs in environmental phenomena. Personality traits did not confound these effects. Furthermore, continuously measured political orientation was associated with pro-environmental attitudes, after controlling for personality traits, age, gender, area lived in, income, and education. The personality domains of Openness, and Conscientiousness, were consistently associated with pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours, whereas Agreeableness was associated with pro-environmental attitudes but not with behaviours. This study highlights the importance of examining personality traits and political preferences together and suggests ways in which policy interventions can best be optimised to account for these individual differences.

The Challenge of Anthropogenic Climate Change for the Social Sciences

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 167-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Social Indicators ◽  
Anthropogenic Climate Change ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
The Social ◽  
Protective Strategy ◽  
Biophysical Indicators ◽  
Social Causes

Abstract: This paper argues that climate change throws down a challenge for the social sciences. They can no longer rely on exclusively social indicators and relative ones, but must include absolute biophysical indicators in their investigations. Accurate analyses of the social causes and consequences of anthropogenic climate change require that they capture the complexity of lay and scientific knowledge, and the nuances of uncertainty, of nature, and of language rather than relying on oversimplified notions. The paper examines whether resilience is a protective strategy under uncertainty and whether disasters are likely to impel mitigation of global warming. It assesses lofty post-carbon utopia discourse and suggests instead the comparative analysis of successful and unsuccessful societies in preventing anthropogenic global warming. To illustrate such an analysis, the paper sketches a study of the different developmental channels of Northern Europe and North America.

scholarly journals Not all biodiversity rich spots are climate refugia

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (24) ◽  
pp. 6567-6578
Author(s):  
Ádám T. Kocsis ◽  
Qianshuo Zhao ◽  
Mark J. Costello ◽  
Wolfgang Kiessling
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Absolute Temperature ◽  
Elevated Risk ◽  
Anthropogenic Climate Change ◽  
Range Shifts ◽  
Future Warming ◽  
Almost All

Abstract. Anthropogenic climate change is increasingly threatening biodiversity on a global scale. Rich spots of biodiversity, regions with exceptionally high endemism and/or number of species, are a top priority for nature conservation. Terrestrial studies have hypothesized that rich spots occur in places where long-term climate change was dampened relative to other regions. Here we tested whether biodiversity rich spots are likely to provide refugia for organisms during anthropogenic climate change. We assessed the spatial distribution of both historic (absolute temperature change and climate change velocities) and projected climate change in terrestrial, freshwater, and marine rich spots. Our analyses confirm the general consensus that global warming will impact almost all rich spots of all three realms and suggest that their characteristic biota is expected to witness similar forcing to other areas, including range shifts and elevated risk of extinction. Marine rich spots seem to be particularly sensitive to global warming: they have warmed more, have higher climate velocities, and are projected to experience higher future warming than non-rich-spot areas. However, our results also suggest that terrestrial and freshwater rich spots will be somewhat less affected than other areas. These findings emphasize the urgency of protecting a comprehensive and representative network of biodiversity-rich areas that accommodate species range shifts under climate change.

Analysis and prediction of hydrological extreme conditions for a small headwater catchment in a German lower mountain range

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Hennig ◽  
Sven Frei
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Mountain Range ◽  
Droughts And Floods ◽  
Recurrence Intervals ◽  
Hydrological Extreme ◽  
Snow Conditions ◽  
Discharge Patterns

<p>Headwater catchments with wetlands represent important buffer areas by decreasing peak discharges and providing water in meteorological droughts. Wetlands act also as key feature of the riverine carbon cycle and are able to store significant amounts of carbon. Therefore, understanding and predicting discharge generating processes in the context of climate change is essential for such catchments. We use a Regional Climate Model (RCM) Ensemble to study possible changes in discharge patterns due to climate change at the Lehstenbach catchment, located in the Fichtelgebirge Mountains. Our aim is to quantitatively estimate periods of hydrological droughts and floods, their temporal length and intensity, their recurrence intervals as well as possible connections to snow melt. In order to achieve this goal, we use the process-based model HydroGeoSphere to simulate discharge until 2100 based on the RCM Ensemble. Statistical Analysis, including Trend and Wavelet Analysis aids us in detecting changing discharge conditions. Discharge seems to follow an increasingly variable pattern making droughts and floods more likely in the future. Since the overall length of drought conditions increases although precipitation amounts remain fairly stable, we identified evapotranspiration and altered precipitation patterns as main driving forces of droughts in this headwater. Snow conditions and subsequent spring floods seem to decrease in likelihood until 2100.</p>

High-impact marine heatwaves attributable to human-induced global warming

Science ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 369 (6511) ◽  
pp. 1621-1625
Author(s):  
Charlotte Laufkötter ◽  
Jakob Zscheischler ◽  
Thomas L. Frölicher
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
High Impact ◽  
Marine Organisms ◽  
Anthropogenic Climate Change ◽  
The Past ◽  
Climate Targets ◽  
Negative Impacts

Marine heatwaves (MHWs)—periods of extremely high ocean temperatures in specific regions—have occurred in all of Earth’s ocean basins over the past two decades, with severe negative impacts on marine organisms and ecosystems. However, for most individual MHWs, it is unclear to what extent they have been altered by human-induced climate change. We show that the occurrence probabilities of the duration, intensity, and cumulative intensity of most documented, large, and impactful MHWs have increased more than 20-fold as a result of anthropogenic climate change. MHWs that occurred only once every hundreds to thousands of years in the preindustrial climate are projected to become decadal to centennial events under 1.5°C warming conditions and annual to decadal events under 3°C warming conditions. Thus, ambitious climate targets are indispensable to reduce the risks of substantial MHW impacts.

How anthropogenic climate change prevailed: A case study of controversies around global warming on Portuguese Wikipedia

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (10) ◽  
pp. 2261-2282
Author(s):  
Bernardo Esteves Gonçalves da Costa ◽  
Henrique Luiz Cukierman
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Anthropogenic Climate Change ◽  
Human Influence ◽  
Average Temperature ◽  
Greenhouse Gases Emissions

Although the Earth’s surface average temperature is rising since 1850 due mostly to anthropogenic greenhouse gases emissions, the existence and the attribution of global warming are sometimes disputed outside the peer-reviewed literature. This article investigates whether climate skeptics’ claims are admitted in Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. We carried a case study involving 93 global warming–related articles in Portuguese Wikipedia, analyzing their revision history from the perspective of Actor–Network Theory in two moments (2014 and 2017). We found that while “Aquecimento global” and other highly accessed articles support thoroughly anthropogenic climate change, it was not the case until 2012, long after the question had been settled by scientists; claims disputing the human influence on the climate remain in some articles. The enforcement of Wikipedia policies was crucial to ensure that anthropogenic climate change would prevail and that the collaborative encyclopedia would become a spokesperson for climate science.

scholarly journals Increasing heat and rainfall extremes now far outside the historical climate

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Robinson ◽  
Jascha Lehmann ◽  
David Barriopedro ◽  
Stefan Rahmstorf ◽  
Dim Coumou
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Linear Trend ◽  
Anthropogenic Climate Change ◽  
Small Shift ◽  
Tropical Regions ◽  
Historical Climate ◽  
The World ◽  
Rainfall Extremes ◽  
Heat Extremes

AbstractOver the last decade, the world warmed by 0.25 °C, in-line with the roughly linear trend since the 1970s. Here we present updated analyses showing that this seemingly small shift has led to the emergence of heat extremes that would be virtually impossible without anthropogenic global warming. Also, record rainfall extremes have continued to increase worldwide and, on average, 1 in 4 rainfall records in the last decade can be attributed to climate change. Tropical regions, comprised of vulnerable countries that typically contributed least to anthropogenic climate change, continue to see the strongest increase in extremes.

Welcome to Venus?

World on Fire ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 41-64
Author(s):  
Mark Rowlands
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Human Activity ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Anthropogenic Climate Change ◽  
Anthropogenic Global Warming

This chapter examines the reasons for thinking that anthropogenic climate change—planetary-level warming caused by human activity—is real. The science underlying the idea of anthropogenic global warming is explained. Several different forms of skepticism about climate change are explained and ultimately found to be lacking. The idea of a tipping cascade, and the consequent possibility of runaway warming, is explained. The ability to predict the ultimate severity of global warming relies on knowledge that we do not yet possess. Nevertheless, it is argued that, even if we adopt relatively conservative assumptions, it is very likely that global warming is going to have grave consequences, both for humans and for the rest of the natural world.

Climate change and Lyme disease.

2021 ◽  
pp. 18-25
Author(s):  
Peter Cox ◽  
Chris Huntingford ◽  
Morgan Sparey ◽  
Pat Nuttall
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Lyme Disease ◽  
Life Cycles ◽  
Driving Factors ◽  
Anthropogenic Climate Change ◽  
Climate Change Projections ◽  
Global Pattern ◽  
Expert Opinions ◽  
Paris Climate Agreement

Abstract This chapter examines the key climatic driving factors for changes in the incidence of Lyme disease and explores how these depend on the level of global warming. It aims to provide some context for the more detailed expert opinions in this book as well as to show how the key climatic driving factors for Lyme disease relate to the Paris targets for climate stabilization. Section 3.1.2 summarizes some of the key findings in the literature concerning the sensitivity of Ixodes life cycles to climate. Section 3.1.3 offers a very brief summary of anthropogenic climate change and climate change projections. Section 3.1.4 tentatively suggests some simple climate thresholds that are broadly consistent with the current global pattern of Lyme disease hotspots. Lastly, Section 3.2 explores the implications for the distribution of Lyme disease under the 2°C limit of the Paris climate agreement.

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