scholarly journals Future of Freshwater Ecosystems in a 1.5°C Warmer World

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samantha J. Capon ◽  
Ben Stewart-Koster ◽  
Stuart E. Bunn
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Fresh Water ◽  
Freshwater Ecosystems ◽  
Climate Mitigation ◽  
Anthropogenic Pressures ◽  
Mitigation And Adaptation ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
The Many ◽  
And Function

Freshwater ecosystems are highly vulnerable to global warming because 1) their chief drivers, water quality and flow regimes, are highly sensitive to atmospheric warming, and 2) they are already extremely threatened by a wide range of interacting anthropogenic pressures. Even relatively modest global warming of 1.5°C poses a considerable threat to freshwater ecosystems and the many critical services these provide to people. Shifts in the composition and function of freshwater ecosystems are widely anticipated with adverse consequences for ecosystem services, including those underpinning water and food security. While the extent and severity of effects is likely to be significantly reduced if global warming is limited to 1.5°C, concerted efforts to implement widely recognised priorities for policy and management are required to mitigate unavoidable impacts and reduce the likelihood of perverse outcomes of climate mitigation and adaptation efforts in other sectors—all of which rely on fresh water supply. Freshwater ecosystems and their services, including provision of fresh water, must therefore be considered first and foremost when developing and implementing any climate action.

Climate Change Law: Encounters with Aesthetics and Art

Climate Law ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 279-319
Author(s):  
Benjamin J. Richardson
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Climate Mitigation ◽  
Mitigation And Adaptation ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Aesthetic Values

Climate change has multifaceted aesthetic dimensions of legal significance. Global warming alters the aesthetic properties of nature, and further aesthetic changes are precipitated by climate mitigation and adaptation responses of impacted societies. The social and political struggles to influence climate change law are also influenced by aesthetics, as environmental activists and artists collaborate to influence public opinion, while conversely the business sector through its marketing and other aesthetic communications tries to persuade consumers of its climate-friendly practices to forestall serious action on global warming. This article distils and analyses these patterns in forging a novel account of the role of aesthetics in climate change law and policy, and it makes conclusions on how this field of law should consider aesthetic values through ‘curatorial’ guidance.

scholarly journals The many faces of amyloid: Protein misfolding: failure or function?

2011 ◽  
Vol 33 (5) ◽  
pp. 6-9
Author(s):  
Elizabeth B. Sawyer ◽  
Sarah Perrett
Keyword(s):  
Protein Misfolding ◽  
Amyloid Fibrils ◽  
Prion Diseases ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Epigenetic Inheritance ◽  
Dimensional Structure ◽  
Spongiform Encephalopathy ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Many ◽  
And Function

The ability of proteins to recognize, bind and manipulate a wide range of other molecules lies at the heart of virtually every cellular process. In order to achieve this, proteins must fold into a precise three-dimensional structure. A failure to achieve this structure, and the associated loss of protein stability and function, results in diseases such as muscular dystrophy and cystic fibrosis. In addition, the misfolding and aggregation of proteins to form fibrillar species is associated with the progression of amyloid diseases such as Alzheimer's and Huntington's and prion diseases including Creutzfeldt– Jakob disease and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or ‘mad cow disease’). In this article, we consider advances in the study of protein folding and misfolding and their relevance to biological function. We also explore the issue of protein ‘misfolding’ to form functional aggregated structures, such as the mode of epigenetic inheritance mediated by fungal prions and the formation of amyloid fibrils with positive biological functions in bacteria.

scholarly journals A Research and Innovation Agenda for Zero-Emission European Cities

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 1692 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Fuso Nerini ◽  
Adriaan Slob ◽  
Rebecka Ericsdotter Engström ◽  
Evelina Trutnevyte
Keyword(s):  
Social Innovation ◽  
Ghg Emissions ◽  
Innovative Technology ◽  
Climate Mitigation ◽  
European Cities ◽  
Research And Innovation ◽  
Mitigation And Adaptation ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
Research And Education ◽  
Governance Innovation

The Paris Agreement and SDG13 on Climate Action require a global drop in Green House Gases (GHG) emissions to stay within a “well below 2 degrees” climate change trajectory. Cities will play a key role in achieving this, being responsible for 60 to 80% of the global GHG emissions depending on the estimate. This paper describes how Research and Innovation (R&I) can play a key role in decarbonizing European cities, and the role that research and education institutions can play in that regard. The paper highlights critical R&I actions in cities based on three pillars: (1) innovative technology and integration, (2) governance innovation, and (3) social innovation. Further, the research needed to harmonize climate mitigation and adaptation in cities are investigated.

scholarly journals Extreme sea levels at different global warming levels

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 746-751
Author(s):  
Claudia Tebaldi ◽  
Roshanka Ranasinghe ◽  
Michalis Vousdoukas ◽  
D. J. Rasmussen ◽  
Ben Vega-Westhoff ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Sea Level ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Climate Mitigation ◽  
Frequency Change ◽  
Sea Levels ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Extreme Sea Levels ◽  
Multimethod Approach ◽  
The Tropics

AbstractThe Paris agreement focused global climate mitigation policy on limiting global warming to 1.5 or 2 °C above pre-industrial levels. Consequently, projections of hazards and risk are increasingly framed in terms of global warming levels rather than emission scenarios. Here, we use a multimethod approach to describe changes in extreme sea levels driven by changes in mean sea level associated with a wide range of global warming levels, from 1.5 to 5 °C, and for a large number of locations, providing uniform coverage over most of the world’s coastlines. We estimate that by 2100 ~50% of the 7,000+ locations considered will experience the present-day 100-yr extreme-sea-level event at least once a year, even under 1.5 °C of warming, and often well before the end of the century. The tropics appear more sensitive than the Northern high latitudes, where some locations do not see this frequency change even for the highest global warming levels.

scholarly journals Project RESCCCUE: “REminding Slovenian authorities Climate Change Crisis requires Urgent Effort”

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Žiga Zaplotnik ◽  
Lina Boljka ◽  
Nina Črnivec ◽  
Aljoša Slameršak
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Climate Change Mitigation ◽  
Climate Mitigation ◽  
Open Letter ◽  
Mutual Help ◽  
Mitigation And Adaptation ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
Summer Schools ◽  
Change Mitigation

<p>The project RESCCCUE aims at addressing the climate change action in Slovenia. We started the project in the autumn of 2019 when we have brought together over 100 leading Slovenian scientists, comprising meteorologists, climatologists, oceanographers, physicists, biologists, chemists, geographers, and others. Together we wrote an open letter to the Slovenian government: “A request of Slovenian researchers to take immediate action on improving the climate change mitigation and adaptation policy”. The open letter received extensive media coverage, as well as provoked a reaction from the political authorities and served as a kick-off for various subsequent climate change communication activities. We therefore continued with multiple media outreach and communication events, both jointly as a team and individually. This included appearances on the radio and television, interviews for newspapers and magazines, social media platforms, and popular scientific talks. We have thereby demonstrated that values such as a team spirit, mutual help and collaboration are crucial for far-reaching actions. All in all, the project strives to advance climate literacy and science-based policy making in Slovenia. Additionally, we also promote research in meteorology and climatology to the Slovenian youth (public talks for schools, summer schools, seminars). Although the project has already proved successful in igniting nationwide debate on  climate mitigation, RESCCCUE is a continuing, ongoing project. We are currently establishing an online platform called “Podnebnik” that will track climate action in Slovenia and allow an exchange of science-based views on climate change mitigation and adaptation. To do this, we have established connections with data scientists behind the very successful Slovenian Covid-19 tracker “Sledilnik” (sledilnik.org), and many other Slovenian agencies from the relevant fields, as well as other Slovenian scientists from across the globe. We firmly believe that this platform will help decision makers and the general public to understand the diversity of the climate change challenge and take meaningful climate action. Throughout the project we have developed valuable skills and experience in scientific communication. We hope that our project will inspire more scientists to engage in communication of climate change science and in debates on societal impacts of climate change.</p>

Nature-Based Solutions for Hydro-Meteorological Hazards: the OPERANDUM Database

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura S. Leo ◽  
Sisay Debele ◽  
Joy Ommer ◽  
Saša Vranić ◽  
Zahra Amirzada ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Economic Benefits ◽  
Climate Mitigation ◽  
Human Thermal Comfort ◽  
Mitigation And Adaptation ◽  
Spatial Coverage ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Meteorological Hazards ◽  
Principles And Standards

<p>Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) refer to the sustainable management, protection and use of nature to preserve the ecosystem and prevent the loss of biodiversity. Given the multiple environmental, social, and economic benefits they provide to society, NBS have been increasingly promoted and implemented in cities, especially for air pollution mitigation and the improving of human thermal comfort and well-being. Several databases and web platforms already exist, which document these beneficial impacts of NBS in our cities by collecting and exposing existing NBS case studies and projects from around globe. However, the effort of cataloging and storing NBS data according to common and harmonized principles and standards seems yet sporadic and uncoordinated at the global and European level, especially in the context of natural hazard-related disasters. Nature-based solutions have been indeed recently emerged as viable and effective measures to mitigate the impacts of hydro-meteorological phenomena such as floods, landslide, etc. in both urban and rural environments, an aspect not often emphasized in the existing databases.</p><p>Driven by the ambition of overcoming these two main gaps, an innovative geo-catalogue of existing NBS has been developed within the framework of GeoIKP, the NBS web-platform newly created by the EU H2020 project OPERANDUM.</p><p>The geo-catalogue represents a comprehensive, geo-referenced, database of NBS case studies which are specifically designed to mitigate the risk and impacts of hydro-meteorological hazards, under a variety of environmental setting and hazard categories. It therefore represents a novel and open-access data source to learn about, and explore, the usability of NBS in fulfilling climate mitigation and adaptation objectives over a wide range of hydro-meteorological hazards.</p><p>Case studies collected from various resources (NBS platforms, scientific literature, technical reports, OPERANDUM living labs, etc.) are revised, classified and harmonized according to internationally recognized standard and classification schemes (e.g., INSPIRE legislation, MAES classification, etc.) which allow to characterize each NBS through a comprehensive set of parameters, including the type of hazard and ecosystem, the societal challenges and driving policies linked to it, the type of intervention and its spatial coverage, among many others.</p><p>The highly structured and comprehensive data model adopted here enables to query the database and/or filter the results based on a multitude of individual parameters which encompass all different dimensions of NBS (e.g. geophysical, societal, environmental, etc.). This not only allows for a straightforward and automatic association to one or more thematic aspects of NBS, but also enhances standardization, discoverability and interoperability of NBS data.</p>

scholarly journals Signaling roles of phosphoinositides in the retina

2020 ◽  
pp. jlr.TR120000806 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raju V. S. Rajala
Keyword(s):  
Cell Types ◽  
Cellular Functions ◽  
Parent Molecule ◽  
Phosphoinositide Signaling ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Many ◽  
And Function ◽  
Different Cell Types

The field of phosphoinositide signaling has expanded significantly in recent years. Phosphoinositides (PIs) are universal signaling molecules that directly interact with membrane proteins or with cytosolic proteins containing domains that directly bind phosphoinositides and are recruited to cell membranes. Through the activities of PI kinases and PI phosphatases, seven distinct phosphoinositide lipid molecules are formed from the parent molecule phosphatidylinositol. PI signals regulate a wide range of cellular functions, including cytoskeletal assembly, membrane binding and fusion, ciliogenesis, vesicular transport, and signal transduction. Given the many excellent reviews on phosphoinositide kinases, phosphoinositide phosphatases, and PIs in general, in this review, we discuss recent studies and advances in PI lipid signaling in the retina. We specifically focus on PI lipids from vertebrate (e.g. bovine, rat, mice, toad, and zebrafish) and invertebrate (e.g. drosophila, horseshoe crab, and squid) retinas. We also discuss the importance of PIs revealed from animal models and human diseases, and methods to study PI levels both in vitro and in vivo. We propose that future studies should investigate the function and mechanism of activation of PI-modifying enzymes/phosphatases and further unravel PI regulation and function in the different cell types of the retina.

Climate change justice

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Idil Boran ◽  
Corey Katz
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Global Climate Change ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Ghg Emissions ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
Political Communities

Climate change justice is a branch of philosophical inquiry concerned with fair terms of cooperation for addressing global climate change. Global climate change refers to the adverse effects of rising average global temperature on meteorological, environmental, and societal systems due to human activities. Independent observations show a rising trend in average global surface temperature since 1880, with most of the relevant global warming occurring since the 1980s. These climatic changes are the outcome of heightened concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs) – e.g., carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide – in the atmosphere. These gases are produced by a wide range of human activities, from the burning of fossil fuels for energy at both the industrial and the consumer level to overall land use. The fundamental relation between concentrations of GHGs in the atmosphere and global warming is well understood. And yet, achieving effective and fair international coordination to respond to the problem of global climate change has been far more challenging than expected. One of the reasons for this is that any attempt to address global climate change raises complex problems of justice. First, those communities that are most vulnerable to the risks and harms of climate change have contributed the least to the problem. Second, economic capacity to address the problem is not distributed equally around the globe. Third, political communities and generations have clashing interest claims in relation to the burdens of addressing climate change. These circumstances raise pressing questions about how to coordinate global and intergenerational cooperation. The debate over climate change justice has been primarily concerned with what counts as a just allocation of burdens and benefits in the global response to the problem of climate change. To a large extent, philosophical interest in these questions developed against the backdrop of the international effort to reach a global agreement. A prominent discussion within this debate is concerned with the allocation of duties and rights with regard to climate action. Broadly speaking, there are two distinct categories of climate change action. One is mitigation, which refers to efforts to reduce GHG emissions; the other is adaptation and refers to a wide range of actions to help adjust social systems to a changing climate. Much of the philosophical debate has revolved around the allocation of mitigation duties. More recently, questions of justice for adaptation along with alternative perspectives that challenge the allocative framework have been attracting interest.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Janis Sarra
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Financial Institutions ◽  
Carbon Intensity ◽  
Climate Mitigation ◽  
Effective Governance ◽  
Mitigation And Adaptation ◽  
Climate Resilience ◽  
Net Zero ◽  
Zero Carbon

Chapter 1 introduces the need for effective climate governance in businesses and financial institutions. A variety of concurrent strategies are required to tackle global warming through mitigation and adaptation internationally and domestically. The chapter introduces how the best of current scholarly and business literature on effective governance can guide this transition and offer a coherent normative and practical framework for moving forward. It offers some essential definitions so that readers understand how the terms are used throughout the book, including the Anthropocene, global warming and climate change, greenhouse gas emissions and carbon intensity, systemic risk, climate mitigation and adaptation, net zero carbon emissions, climate resilience, and the circular economy. It provides an overview of the book’s structure and objectives.

Adaptation strategies can offset rising river flood risk in Europe

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Dottori ◽  
Lorenzo Mentaschi ◽  
Alessandra Bianchi ◽  
Lorenzo Alfieri ◽  
Luc Feyen
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Flood Risk ◽  
Adaptation Strategies ◽  
Climate Mitigation ◽  
River Flooding ◽  
Risk Levels ◽  
Flood Impacts ◽  
Mitigation And Adaptation ◽  
River Flood ◽  
Cost Efficient

<p>River flooding is the costliest natural disaster in Europe. Global warming and continued development in flood prone areas will progressively increase river flood risk. Direct damages from flooding could become six times present losses by the end of the century in case of no climate mitigation and adaptation. Keeping global warming well below 2°C would halve these impacts. Adequate adaptation strategies can further substantially reduce future flood impacts. In particular, implementing building-based damage reduction measures and reducing flood peaks using retention areas can lower impacts in a cost-efficient way in most EU countries, even to flood risk levels that are lower than today. Restoring natural wetlands and floodplains to retain excess water also improves the state of water and ecosystems.</p>

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document