Chapter 4. From the Buenos Aires Action Plan to the Year 2007 (1998–2007): EU Influence on the Consolidation of the Global Climate Regime

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Buenos Aires ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Action Plan ◽  
Climate Regime

Building a More Effective Global Climate Regime Bottom-Up

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard B. Stewart ◽  
Michael Oppenheimer ◽  
Bryce Rudyk
Keyword(s):  
Global Climate ◽  
Climate Regime ◽  
Bottom Up

Constraining Neoproterozoic subtropical low-level clouds to assess the plausibility of near-Snowball Earth states

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Braun ◽  
Aiko Voigt ◽  
Johannes Hörner ◽  
Joaquim G. Pinto
Keyword(s):  
Sea Ice ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Global Climate Models ◽  
Mixed Phase ◽  
Snowball Earth ◽  
Stable Range ◽  
Climate Regime ◽  
Low Level ◽  
Mixed Phase Clouds

<p>Stable waterbelt climate states with close to global ice cover challenge the classical Snowball Earth hypothesis because they provide a robust explanation for the survival of advanced marine species during the Neoproterozoic glaciations (1000 – 541 Million years ago). Whether Earth’s climate stabilizes in a waterbelt state or rushes towards a Snowball state is determined by the magnitude of the ice-albedo feedback in the subtropics, where dark, bare sea ice instead of snow-covered sea ice prevails. For a given bare sea-ice albedo, the subtropical ice-albedo feedback and thus the stable range of the waterbelt climate regime is sensitive to the albedo over ice-free ocean, which is largely determined by shortwave cloud-radiative effects (CRE). In the present-day climate, CRE are known to dominate the spread of climate sensitivity across global climate models. We here study the impact of uncertainty associated with CRE on the existence of geologically relevant waterbelt climate regimes using two global climate models and an idealized energy balance model. We find that the stable range of the waterbelt climate regime is very sensitive to the abundance of subtropical low-level mixed-phase clouds. If subtropical cloud cover is low, climate sensitivity becomes so high as to inhibit stable waterbelt states.</p><p>The treatment of mixed-phase clouds is highly uncertain in global climate models. Therefore we aim to constrain the uncertainty associated with their CRE by means of a hierarchy of global and regional simulations that span horizontal grid resolutions from 160 km to 300m, and in particular include large eddy simulations of subtropical mixed-phase clouds located over a low-latitude ice edge. In the cold waterbelt climate subtropical CRE arise from convective events caused by strong meridional temperature gradients and stratocumulus decks located in areas of large-scale descending motion. We identify the latter to dominate subtropical CRE and therefore focus our large eddy simulations on subtropical stratocumulus clouds. By conducting simulations with two extreme scenarios for the abundance of atmospheric mineral dust, which serves as ice-nucleating particles and therefore can control mixed-phase cloud physics, we aim to estimate the possible spread of CRE associated with subtropical mixed-phase clouds. From this estimate we may assess whether Neoproterozoic low-level cloud abundance may have been high enough to sustain a stable waterbelt climate regime.</p>

EU Climate and Energy Policy: A Hesitant Supranational Turn?

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 67-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jørgen Wettestad ◽  
Per Ove Eikeland ◽  
Måns Nilsson
Keyword(s):  
European Commission ◽  
Energy Policy ◽  
Vertical Integration ◽  
Energy Security ◽  
Emissions Trading ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Energy Market ◽  
Climate Regime ◽  
Regional Energy ◽  
Climate And Energy Policy

This article examines the recent changes of three central EU climate and energy policies: the revised Emissions Trading Directive (ETS); the Renewables Directive (RES); and internal energy market (IEM) policy. An increasing transference of competence to EU level institutions, and hence “vertical integration,” has taken place, most clearly in the case of the ETS. The main reasons for the differing increase in vertical integration are, first, that more member states were dissatisfied with the pre-existing system in the case of the ETS than in the two other cases. Second, the European Commission and Parliament were comparatively more united in pushing for changes in the case of the ETS. And, third, although RES and IEM policies were influenced by regional energy security concerns, they were less structurally linked to and influenced by the global climate regime than the ETS.

The Climate Change Regime Complex

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 476-498
Author(s):  
Gorana Draguljić
Keyword(s):  
Global Climate ◽  
Institutional Development ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Forum Shopping ◽  
Dependent Manner ◽  
Climate Regime ◽  
Regime Complex ◽  
The Status ◽  
Path Dependent ◽  
Governance Arrangements

Abstract In an era defined by forum shopping, institutional proliferation, and regime complexity, why do global governance arrangements remain relatively stable? This article combines the insights of regime complexity scholarship with historical institutionalism to address this question. It argues that the establishment of international regimes creates winners and losers. States dissatisfied with these arrangements push for institutional change. Regimes nonetheless tend to develop in a path-dependent manner because institutions are resistant to change and the winners under the status quo seek to protect it. Thus, existing governance arrangements exert a centripetal pull, even when states engage in forum shopping and institutional proliferation to generate regime complexity. An examination of path-dependent institutional development in the global climate regime supports the argument.

Filling in for Governments? The Role of the Private Actors in the International Climate Regime

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-28
Author(s):  
Charlotte Streck
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Paris Agreement ◽  
Climate Regime ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
State Actor ◽  
International Climate ◽  
Private Actors

The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change abandons the Kyoto Protocol’s paradigm of binding emissions targets and relies instead on countries’ voluntary contributions. However, the Paris Agreement encourages not only governments but also sub-national governments, corporations and civil society to contribute to reaching ambitious climate goals. In a transition from the regulated architecture of the Kyoto Protocol to the open system of the Paris Agreement, the Agreement seeks to integrate non-state actors into the treaty-based climate regime. In 2014 the secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Peru and France created the Non-State Actor Zone for Climate Action (and launched the Global Climate Action portal). In December 2019, this portal recorded more than twenty thousand climate-commitments of private and public non-state entities, making the non-state venues of international climate meetings decisively more exciting than the formal negotiation space. This level engagement and governments’ response to it raises a flurry of questions in relation to the evolving nature of the climate regime and climate change governance, including the role of private actors as standard setters and the lack of accountability mechanisms for non-state actions. This paper takes these developments as occasion to discuss the changing role of private actors in the climate regime.

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