Education on Global Climate and Environmental Change in University of China

2013 ◽  
Vol 838-841 ◽  
pp. 3195-3198
Author(s):  
Jian Cheng Kang ◽  
Xiaochen Su
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Change ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Ecological Civilization ◽  
Environment Change ◽  
Climate And Environmental Change ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Normal University

Global Climate and Environmental Change is an international hot field. To enhance native awareness on climate change is one mission of "State Policy and Action on Climate Change 2009 in China". As an implement, a course on Global Climate and Environmental Change has been opened in Shanghai Normal University since 2005. The course includes three fields. In the first field, it is introduced on which problems and harms have been caused from Global Climate and Environmental Changes according to UNEP Year Books 2003~2013. In the second field, to introduce the Earth System and Climate-Environment Change. In the third part, the hot climate-environmental issues are analyzed and discussed. By joining this course, the students have understanding earth system science and global change. It helped students to set up the view of ecological civilization of the harmonious development between human and nature, inspire students responsibility to protect the earth. During past 8 year, there were 4 to 5 classes opening for different levels in Shanghai Normal University for each year, more than 1000 students joined the study in the course.

Environmental Security and Climate Change

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Dalby
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Change ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Growth Failure ◽  
Environmental Security ◽  
Peace Building ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
Fragile States ◽  
Earth System ◽  
The Earth

Environmental security focuses on the ecological conditions necessary for sustainable development. It encompasses discussions of the relationships between environmental change and conflict as well as the larger global policy issues linking resources and international relations to the necessity for doing both development and security differently. Climate change has become an increasingly important part of the discussion as its consequences have become increasingly clear. What is not at all clear is in what circumstances climate change may turn out to be threat multiplier leading to conflict. Earth system science findings and the recognition of the scale of human transformations of nature in what is understood in the 21st century to be a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, now require environmental security to be thought of in terms of preventing the worst dangers of fragile states being unable to cope with the stresses caused by rapid environmental change or perhaps the economic disruptions caused by necessary transitions to a post fossil fueled economic system. But so far, at least, this focus on avoiding the worst consequences of future climate change has not displaced traditional policies of energy security that primarily ensure supplies of fossil fuels to power economic growth. Failure to make this transition will lead to further rapid disruptions of climate and add impetus to proposals to artificially intervene in the earth system using geoengineering techniques, which might in turn generate further conflicts from states with different interests in how the earth system is shaped in future. While the Paris Agreement on Climate Change recognized the urgency of tackling climate change, the topic has not become security policy priority for most states, nor yet for the United Nations, despite numerous policy efforts to securitize climate change and instigate emergency responses to deal with the issue. More optimistic interpretations of the future suggest possibilities of using environmental actions to facilitate peace building and a more constructive approach to shaping earth’s future.

The Politics of Climate Change Is More Than the Politics of Capitalism

2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 25-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dipesh Chakrabarty
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Climate Change ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Dominant Species ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Capitalist System ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Common ◽  
Developed World

Discussion of global climate change is shaped by the intellectual categories developed to address capitalism and globalization. Yet climate change is only one manifestation of humanity’s varied and accelerating impact on the Earth System. The common predicament that may be anticipated in the Anthropocene raises difficult questions of distributive justice – between rich and poor, developed and developing countries, the living and the yet unborn, and even the human and the non-human – and may pose a challenge to the categories on which our traditions of political thought are based. Awareness of the Anthropocene encourages us to think of humans on different scales and in different contexts – as parts of a global capitalist system and as members of a now-dominant species – although the debate is, for now, still structured by the experiences and concepts of the developed world.

Possible impact of climate and environmental change on ticks and tick-borne disease in England.

2021 ◽  
pp. 518-527
Author(s):  
Jolyon Medlock ◽  
Kayleigh Hansford
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Climate Change ◽  
Health Risk ◽  
Environmental Change ◽  
Indirect Effects ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
The Public ◽  
Climate And Environmental Change ◽  
Tick Borne Disease ◽  
Survival Density

Abstract The survival, density and distribution of ticks are determined by three key elements: microclimate, habitat and host, all of which can be impacted by climate change. The public health risk from ticks is further influenced by human behaviour and the way in which we access and manage the environment where ticks or key tick hosts are found. This expert opinion considers how these factors influence tick-borne disease (TBD) transmission in a changing climate, first by discussing direct effects of climate change on ticks and TBD, and second the indirect effects and environmental changes that make direct comparisons of climate and ticks so challenging.

Freva and ClimXtreme: a software framework for the evaluation of climate extremes

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Etor E. Lucio-Eceiza ◽  
Christopher Kadow ◽  
Martin Bergemann ◽  
Mahesh Ramadoss ◽  
Brian Lewis ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Extreme Events ◽  
Evaluation System ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Numerical Models ◽  
International Standards ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Earth System ◽  
System Framework ◽  
The Earth

<p>The number of damaging events caused by natural disasters are increasing because of climate change. Projects of public interest such as ClimXtreme (Climate Change and Extreme Events [1, 2]), aim to improve our knowledge of extreme events, the influence of environmental changes and their societal impacts.</p> <p>ClimXtreme takes a holistic approach this problem through different knowledge areas. For that, projects like this need a coordinate effort from many interdisciplinary groups. On the other hand, the continuous improvement of numerical models and increase on observational data availability provides researchers with a growing amount of data to analyze, and the need for greater resources to host, access, and evaluate them efficiently through High Performance Computing (HPC) infrastructures is growing more than ever. Finally, the emphasis these last years on FAIR data principles [3] and the easy reproducibility of evaluation workflows also requires a framework that facilitates these tasks. Freva (Free Evaluation System Framework [4, 5]) is an efficient solution to handle customizable evaluation systems of large research projects, institutes or universities in the Earth system community [6-8] over the HPC environment and in a centralized manner.</p> <p>Freva is a scientific software infrastructure for standardized data and analysis tools (plugins) that provides all its available features both in a shell and web environment. Written in python, is equipped with a standardized model database, an application-programming interface (API) and a history of evaluations, among others:</p> <ul> <li>An implemented metadata system in SOLR with its own search tool allows scientists and their plugins to retrieve the required information from a centralized database. The databrowser interface satisfies the international standards provided by the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF, e.g. [9]).</li> <li>An API allows scientific developers to connect their plugins with the evaluation system independently of the programming language. The connected plugins are able to access from and integrate their results back to the database, allowing for a concatenation of plugins as well. This ecosystem increases the number of scientists involved in the studies, boosting the interchange of results and ideas. It also fosters an active collaboration between plugin developers.</li> <li>The history and configuration sub-system stores every analysis performed with Freva in a MySQL database. Analysis configurations and results can be searched and shared among the scientists, offering transparency and reproducibility, and saving CPU hours, I/O, disk space and time.</li> </ul> <p>The usage of Freva in the context of ongoing large projects like ClimXtreme will be discussed. Additionally, major updates of the software, system deployment, and core functionalities will be presented.</p> <p><strong> </strong></p> <p><strong>References:</strong></p> <p>[1] https://www.fona.de/de/massnahmen/foerdermassnahmen/climxtreme.php</p> <p>[2] https://www.climxtreme.net/index.php/en/</p> <p>[3] https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/</p> <p>[4] Kadow, C. et al. , 2021. Introduction to Freva – A Free Evaluation System Framework for Earth System Modeling. <em>JORS</em>. http://doi.org/10.5334/jors.253</p> <p>[5] gitlab.dkrz.de/freva</p> <p>[6] freva.met.fu-berlin.de</p> <p>[7] https://www.xces.dkrz.de/</p> <p>[8] www-regiklim.dkrz.de</p> <p>[9] https://esgf-data.dkrz.de/projects/esgf-dkrz/</p>

scholarly journals Heat stored in the Earth system: where does the energy go?

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 2013-2041
Author(s):  
Karina von Schuckmann ◽  
Lijing Cheng ◽  
Matthew D. Palmer ◽  
James Hansen ◽  
Caterina Tassone ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Global Ocean ◽  
Heat Radiation ◽  
Quasi Equilibrium ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Heat Gain ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Earth’S System

Abstract. Human-induced atmospheric composition changes cause a radiative imbalance at the top of the atmosphere which is driving global warming. This Earth energy imbalance (EEI) is the most critical number defining the prospects for continued global warming and climate change. Understanding the heat gain of the Earth system – and particularly how much and where the heat is distributed – is fundamental to understanding how this affects warming ocean, atmosphere and land; rising surface temperature; sea level; and loss of grounded and floating ice, which are fundamental concerns for society. This study is a Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) concerted international effort to update the Earth heat inventory and presents an updated assessment of ocean warming estimates as well as new and updated estimates of heat gain in the atmosphere, cryosphere and land over the period 1960–2018. The study obtains a consistent long-term Earth system heat gain over the period 1971–2018, with a total heat gain of 358±37 ZJ, which is equivalent to a global heating rate of 0.47±0.1 W m−2. Over the period 1971–2018 (2010–2018), the majority of heat gain is reported for the global ocean with 89 % (90 %), with 52 % for both periods in the upper 700 m depth, 28 % (30 %) for the 700–2000 m depth layer and 9 % (8 %) below 2000 m depth. Heat gain over land amounts to 6 % (5 %) over these periods, 4 % (3 %) is available for the melting of grounded and floating ice, and 1 % (2 %) is available for atmospheric warming. Our results also show that EEI is not only continuing, but also increasing: the EEI amounts to 0.87±0.12 W m−2 during 2010–2018. Stabilization of climate, the goal of the universally agreed United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992 and the Paris Agreement in 2015, requires that EEI be reduced to approximately zero to achieve Earth's system quasi-equilibrium. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere would need to be reduced from 410 to 353 ppm to increase heat radiation to space by 0.87 W m−2, bringing Earth back towards energy balance. This simple number, EEI, is the most fundamental metric that the scientific community and public must be aware of as the measure of how well the world is doing in the task of bringing climate change under control, and we call for an implementation of the EEI into the global stocktake based on best available science. Continued quantification and reduced uncertainties in the Earth heat inventory can be best achieved through the maintenance of the current global climate observing system, its extension into areas of gaps in the sampling, and the establishment of an international framework for concerted multidisciplinary research of the Earth heat inventory as presented in this study. This Earth heat inventory is published at the German Climate Computing Centre (DKRZ, https://www.dkrz.de/, last access: 7 August 2020) under the DOI https://doi.org/10.26050/WDCC/GCOS_EHI_EXP_v2 (von Schuckmann et al., 2020).

The Question Concerning Geo-Engineering

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Byron Williston ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Species Level ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Anthropogenic Climate Change ◽  
Earth System ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The One ◽  
Climate Crisis

The Anthropocene, as we encounter it now, is the age in which we can no longer avoid postnaturalism, that is, a view of the ‘environment’ as largely ‘built.’ This means that we exist in a highly technologically mediated relationship to the rest of the earth system. But because the Anthropocene has barely emerged this time is best thought of as a transition phase between two epochs, i.e., it is ‘the end-Holocene.’ The end-Holocene is essentially a period of ecological crisis, the most salient manifestation of which is anthropogenic climate change. Given our political inertia, some have suggested that we should we respond to the climate crisis through technological manipulation of the global climate: geoengineering. The proposal raises many questions. The one I am interested in here is whether or not geoengineering represents an objectionable species-level narcissism. Will deployment of these technologies effectively cut us off from contact with anything non-human? This is what I’m calling ‘the question concerning geoengineering.’ I show how Heidegger’s philosophy of technology, especially his concept of ‘enframing,’ can help us think about the issue with the seriousness it demands.

Data quality in different paleo archives and covering different time scales: a key issue in studying tipping elements.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denis-Didier Rousseau ◽  
Susanna Barbosa ◽  
Witold Bagniewski ◽  
Niklas Boers ◽  
Eliza Cook ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Data Quality ◽  
Forest Fires ◽  
Time Scale ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Earth System ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Spatial Coverage

<p>Although the Earth system is described to react relatively abruptly to present anthropogenic forcings, the notion of abruptness remains questionable as it refers to a time scale that is difficult to constrain properly. Recognizing this issue, the tipping elements as listed in Lenton et al. (2008) rely on long-term observations under controlled conditions, which enabled the associated tipping points to be identified. For example, there is evidence nowadays that if the rate of deforestation from forest fires and the climate change does not decrease, the Amazonian forest will reach a tipping point towards savanna (Nobre, 2019), which would impact the regional and global climate systems as well as various other ecosystems, directly or indirectly (Magalhães et al., 2020). However, if the present tipping elements, which are now evidenced, are mostly related to the present climate change and thus directly or indirectly related to anthropogenic forcing, their interpretation must still rely on former cases detected in the past, and especially from studies of abrupt climatic transitions evidenced in paleoclimate proxy records. Moreover, recent studies of past changes have shown that addressing abrupt transitions in the past raises the issue of data quality of individual records, including the precision of the time scale and the quantification of associated uncertainties. Investigating past abrupt transitions and the mechanisms involved requires the best data quality possible. This can be a serious limitation when considering the sparse spatial coverage of high resolution paleo-records where dating is critical and corresponding errors often challenging to control. In theory, this would therefore almost limit our investigations to ice-core records of the last climate cycle, because they offer the best possible time resolution. However, evidence shows that abrupt transitions can also be identified in deeper time with lower resolution records, but still revealing changes or transitions that have impacted the dynamics of the Earth system globally. TiPES Work Package 1 will address these issues and collect paleorecords permitting to evidence the temporal behavior of tipping elements in past climates, including several examples.</p><p>Lenton T. et al. (2008). PNAS 105, 1786-1793.</p><p>Nobre C. (2019). Nature 574, 455.</p><p>Magalhães N.d. et al. (2020). Sci. Rep. 16914 (2019) doi:10.1038/s41598-019-53284-1</p><p>This work is performed under the TiPES project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement # 820970 <https://tipes.sites.ku.dk/></p>

Influence of climate and environmental change in Nigeria: a review on vulnerability and adaptation to climate change

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 441-447
Author(s):  
Emmanuel Alepu Odey ◽  
Bodjui Olivier Abo ◽  
Zifu Li ◽  
Xiaoqin Zhou ◽  
Abdulmoseen Segun Giwa
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Change ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Renewable Energy Sources ◽  
Global Environmental Change ◽  
Information Structures ◽  
Adaptation To Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Threats ◽  
Climate And Environmental Change

Abstract This paper reviews the current issues that involve environmental changes in Nigeria and environmental threats within the country. The fundamental aim of scientific knowledge in environmental studies is to reconcile climate change and environmental sustainability with developmental goals. Therefore, information on impact adaptation to climate change and vulnerability research is required to develop specific, action-oriented, interdisciplinary, successful, sociopolitical and democratic reform for the entire population of a country. This condition requires large inclusion of environmental researchers, institutions, re-inventing of research structures and ideas to dominate the global environmental change research and the critical analysis of present decision making, power, structure and related information structures. This review presents the effect of climate change in Nigeria and encourages adaptation research with challenging innovation, such as the use of energy-efficient renewable energy sources to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This paper also highlighted the need for researchers to become detailed, action oriented and multiscalar and to attend communications structure problems in enhancing the environmental activity.

scholarly journals Impacts of Climate and Environmental Change on Bean Cultivation in China

Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 1591
Author(s):  
Sidan Li ◽  
Shibing You ◽  
Ze Song ◽  
Li Zhang ◽  
Yixuan Liu
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Supply And Demand ◽  
Economic Market ◽  
Spatial Error ◽  
Climate And Environmental Change ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Mixed Blessing ◽  
The Impact

The impact of human-caused environmental pollution and global climate change on the economy and society can no longer be underestimated. Agriculture is the most directly and vulnerably affected sector by climate change. This study used beans, the food crop with the largest supply and demand gap in China, as the research object and established a panel spatial error model consisting of multiple indicators of four factors: climate environment, economic market, human planting behavior and technical development level of 25 provinces in China from 2005 to 2019 to explore the impact of climate environmental changes on the yields of beans. The study shows that: (1) The increase in precipitation has a significant positive effect on bean yields; however, the increase in temperature year by year has a significant negative effect on bean yields; (2) carbon emissions do not directly affect bean production at present but may have an indirect impact on bean production; (3) artificial irrigation and fertilization behavior on bean production has basically reached saturation, making it difficult to continue to increase bean yields and (4) the development of technology and human activity is a mixed blessing, and the consequent inhibiting effects on bean production are currently unable to offset their promoting effects. Thus, when it comes to bean cultivation, China should focus mainly on the overall impact of environmental changes on its production, rather than technical enhancements such as irrigation and fertilization.

scholarly journals A Clear Past and a Murky Future: Life in the Anthropocene on the Pampana River, Sierra Leone

Land ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Marcantonio ◽  
Agustin Fuentes
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Complex Adaptive Systems ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Adaptive Systems ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Sierra Leonean ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Complex Adaptive

The impacts of human activities on ecosystems are significantly increasing the rate of environmental change in the earth system, reshaping the global landscape. The rapid rate of environmental change is disrupting the ability of millions of people around the globe to live their everyday lives and maintain their human niche. Evidence suggests that we have entered (or created) a new epoch, the Anthropocene, which is defined as the period in which humans and human activities are the primary drivers of planetary change. The Anthropocene denotes a global shift, but it is the collective of local processes. This is our frame for investigating local accounts of human-caused disruptive environmental change in the Pampana River in Tonkolili District, Northern Province, Sierra Leone. Since the end of the Sierra Leonean civil war in 2002, the country has experienced a rapid increase in extractive industries, namely mining. We explored the effects of this development by working with communities along the Pampana River in Tonkolili, with a specific focus given to engaging local fishermen through ethnographic interviews (N = 21 fishermen and 33 non-fishermen), focus group discussions (N = 21 fishermen), and participant observation. We deployed theoretical and methodological frameworks from human niche construction theory, complex adaptive systems, and ethnography to track disruptive environmental change in and on the Pampana from upstream activities and the concomitant shifts in the local human niche. We highlight the value of integrating ethnographic methods with human evolutionary theory, produce important insights about local human coping processes with disruptive environmental change, and help to further account for and understand the ongoing global process of human modification of the earth system in the Anthropocene.

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