Co-developing a data and knowledge portal to support stakeholder risk assessments with uncertain, global, multi-model based information on hydrological hazards of climate change

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabian Kneier ◽  
Denise Cáceres ◽  
Stephan Dietrich ◽  
Dirk Schwanenberg ◽  
Harald Köthe ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Regional Scale ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Risk Assessments ◽  
Adaptation To Climate Change ◽  
Climate Services ◽  
Climate Change Risk ◽  
Hydrological Hazards ◽  
Knowledge Portal

<p>Successful adaptation to climate change worldwide will require many local climate change risk assessments. However, appropriate and tailored climate services and information tools are lacking, particularly in developing countries. Co-produced, user-driven climate services are a recognized means for effective generation and provisioning of relevant climate information and support the utilization by decision-makers, enabling them to account for climate change in their risk portfolios. In the CO-MICC project (ERA4CS), a data and knowledge portal is co-developed with stakeholders based on global-scale multi-model simulations of hydrological variables. In a participatory manner, we focussed on (1) eliciting the relevant hydrological hazard indicators, (2) representing their uncertainty quantitatively in a way that is both scientifically correct and utilizable to the diverse users of the hazard information, and (3) creating guidance on how to integrate the uncertain global information into regional-scale assessments of water-related climate change risk and adaptation assessments. Adapting the tandem framework of the Swedish Environmental Institute (SEI), participatory stakeholder dialogues including seven workshops with stakeholders from focus regions in Europe and Northern Africa, and finally with globally-acting companies serve to integrate the various experiences, needs and expectations of various regions and users. Participants included local researchers, experts from meteorological services and decision-makers from regional and national hydrological agencies. Together, we co-produced relevant model output variables and appropriate end-user products encompassing static and dynamically generated information in a web portal. The global-scale information products include interactive maps, diagrams, time series graphs, and suitably co-developed statistics, with appropriate visualization of uncertainty. In complement, the knowledge tool provides transparent meta-information, tutorials and handbook guidelines to utilize the provided information in models of local participatory risk assessments. While CO-MICC enables access to this information to a broad range of stakeholders from around the world (policy makers, NGOs, the private sector, the research community, the public in general) for their region of interest, it additionally sheds light on the optimal design and methods of co-development processes.</p>

scholarly journals Global Potato Yields Increase Under Climate Change With Adaptation and CO2 Fertilisation

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stewart A. Jennings ◽  
Ann-Kristin Koehler ◽  
Kathryn J. Nicklin ◽  
Chetan Deva ◽  
Steven M. Sait ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Global Climate Models ◽  
Adaptation To Climate Change ◽  
National Scale ◽  
Modeling Studies ◽  
Potato Yields

The contribution of potatoes to the global food supply is increasing—consumption more than doubled in developing countries between 1960 and 2005. Understanding climate change impacts on global potato yields is therefore important for future food security. Analyses of climate change impacts on potato compared to other major crops are rare, especially at the global scale. Of two global gridded potato modeling studies published at the time of this analysis, one simulated the impacts of temperature increases on potential potato yields; the other did not simulate the impacts of farmer adaptation to climate change, which may offset negative climate change impacts on yield. These studies may therefore overestimate negative climate change impacts on yields as they do not simultaneously include CO2 fertilisation and adaptation to climate change. Here we simulate the abiotic impacts of climate change on potato to 2050 using the GLAM crop model and the ISI-MIP ensemble of global climate models. Simulations include adaptations to climate change through varying planting windows and varieties and CO2 fertilisation, unlike previous global potato modeling studies. Results show significant skill in reproducing observed national scale yields in Europe. Elsewhere, correlations are generally positive but low, primarily due to poor relationships between national scale observed yields and climate. Future climate simulations including adaptation to climate change through changing planting windows and crop varieties show that yields are expected to increase in most cases as a result of longer growing seasons and CO2 fertilisation. Average global yield increases range from 9 to 20% when including adaptation. The global average yield benefits of adaptation to climate change range from 10 to 17% across climate models. Potato agriculture is associated with lower green house gas emissions relative to other major crops and therefore can be seen as a climate smart option given projected yield increases with adaptation.

The Challenge of Climate Change

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mario J. Molina ◽  
Adolfo Plasencia
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Nobel Prize Winner ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Ozone Layer ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
The Public ◽  
Continuous Release ◽  
It Education ◽  
Industrial Compounds ◽  
And Training

In this conversation, Nobel Prize winner Mario J. Molina reflects on the ethical side of science. He explains how several decades ago, together with the scientist F. Sherwood Rowland, he predicted that human activity was endangering the ozone layer. They discovered the mechanisms which could bring about the destruction of the layer due to the continuous release of industrial compounds, such as the so-called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), into the atmosphere. Professor Molina relates how the issue with the ozone layer was the first example of a problem on a truly global scale for science and, as such, had to be tackled, because without the ozone layer, life on our planet would not have evolved as we know it. Education and training are proving a great help with how the present challenge of stopping or mitigating the daunting problem of global warming should be approached. In the dialogue, different courses of action for persuading both decision-makers and the public are proposed. It is however proving rather difficult to achieve and something which, according to Professor Molina, is also related to education.

Climate change, sustainability and the need for a new industrial revolution in Scotland

2012 ◽  
Vol 103 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Sugden ◽  
Janette Webb ◽  
Andrew Kerr
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Energy Production ◽  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Regional Scale ◽  
Sustainable Use ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Use Of Resources ◽  
Reduce Emissions ◽  
Major Commitment

ABSTRACTThis paper sets the wider global and Scottish context for this Special Issue of EESTRSE. Climate change is inextricably linked to wellbeing, security and sustainability. It poses a fundamental challenge to the way we organise society and our relationship to the exploitation of the Earth's resources. Rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, linked to burning fossil fuels and land use, present a major risk of climate change, with serious but uncertain impacts emerging at a regional scale. A new industrial revolution is needed to achieve energy security and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with energy efficiency and energy production emitting low or no CO2 at its heart. At present, on a global scale, there is a mismatch between the emphasis on economic growth and the need to reduce emissions and achieve a sustainable use of resources. A more sustainable blueprint for the future is emerging in Europe and Scotland has much to gain economically and socially from this change. Scotland's ambitious emission reduction targets (42% cut by 2020 and 80% by 2050) are achievable, but require major commitment and investment. Despite success in cutting emissions from activities within Scotland, Scotland's consumption-based emissions rose by 11% in 1996–2004.

scholarly journals Bridging Gaps: Connecting Climate Change Risk Assessments with Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation Agendas

2021 ◽  
pp. 65-80
Author(s):  
Shona K. Paterson ◽  
Kristen Guida
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Risk Reduction ◽  
Ecosystem Functioning ◽  
Disaster Risk Reduction ◽  
Climate Adaptation ◽  
Disaster Risk ◽  
Risk Assessments ◽  
Climate Change Risk ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
Climate Adaptation Planning

AbstractChanging climates and increasing variability, in combination with maladaptive societal responses, present many threats and risks to both social and biophysical systems. The outcomes of such changes will progressively affect all aspects of ecosystem functioning including social, political, and economic landscapes. Coordination between the three frameworks that govern risk at national and subnational scales, climate change risk assessments, climate adaptation planning and disaster risk reduction (DRR), is often lacking or limited. This has resulted in a siloed and fragmented approach to climate action. By examining risk as a dynamic social construction that is reimagined and reinvented by society over time, this chapter explores how a greater degree of cohesion between these three frameworks might be achieved.

scholarly journals Urban adaptation to climate change: Climate services for supporting collaborative planning

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 100100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raffaele Giordano ◽  
Karoliina Pilli-Sihvola ◽  
Irene Pluchinotta ◽  
Raffaella Matarrese ◽  
Adriaan Perrels
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Collaborative Planning ◽  
Adaptation To Climate Change ◽  
Climate Services ◽  
Change Climate ◽  
Urban Adaptation

scholarly journals Just Societal Transformation: Perspectives of Pastoralists in the Lower Omo Valley in Ethiopia

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Sabine Troeger
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Climate Change Adaptation ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Regional Scale ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Development Project ◽  
The Face ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
Sugar Development

AbstractPastoralists’ livelihoods in Africa are highly endangered by adverse forces – the climate change being one among those. Against this background, climate change adaptation is conceptualized as strategic agency in the field of risk-laden livelihood environments, that is, agency in the face of risky options and non-calculable uncertainties.The chapter conceptualizes pastoralists’ livelihoods exposed to a four-fold hierarchy of environmental risks and forces defining the actors’ arena of strategic decision making: From the global scale of ever extending impacts by the climate change imperative, to the national scale of government policies in terms of decentralization, challenging people to govern and define their communal efforts in terms of climate change adaptation, and down to the regional scale, which in the presented case is dominated by a large-scale investment, the Kuraz Sugar Development Project, which again confronts local actors with adverse forces toward villagization and eviction from pasture grounds. Right at the end of this hierarchy and in accordance with discourses on “climate services,” the end-users and local actors, the pastoralists, are confronted with and offered a product that they can input into their decision making: cattle feed from the residues of the irrigated sugar cane. The question remains whether substantive aspects of processes turning into true environmental and social justice in terms of recognition, procedures, and distribution will be paid attention to.

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