CHAPTER NINE. Addressing Climate Change: Does the IMF Have a Role?

Small States Resilience to Natural Disasters and Climate Change - Role for the IMF

Policy Papers ◽

10.5089/9781498345095.007 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 16 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Natural Disasters ◽

Annual Cost ◽

Gdp Per Capita ◽

Small States ◽

Land Area ◽

Macroeconomic Effects ◽

Per Capita ◽

The Imf

Small developing states are disproportionately vulnerable to natural disasters. On average, the annual cost of disasters for small states is nearly 2 percent of GDP—more than four times that for larger countries. This reflects a higher frequency of disasters, adjusted for land area, as well as greater vulnerability to severe disasters. About 9 percent of disasters in small states involve damage of more than 30 percent of GDP, compared to less than 1 percent for larger states. Greater exposure to disasters has important macroeconomic effects on small states, resulting in lower investment, lower GDP per capita, higher poverty, and a more volatile revenue base.

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Complexity Analysis of Precipitation and Runoff Series Based on Approximate Entropy and Extreme-Point Symmetric Mode Decomposition

Water ◽

10.3390/w10101388 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 10 (10) ◽

pp. 1388 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Dongyong Sun ◽

Hongbo Zhang ◽

Zhihui Guo

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Correlation Coefficient ◽

Extreme Point ◽

Time Scales ◽

Approximate Entropy ◽

Monthly Precipitation ◽

Symmetric Mode ◽

Mode Decomposition ◽

Different Time Scales ◽

The Imf

Many regional hydrological regime changes are complex under the influences of climate change and human activities, which make it difficult to understand the regional or basin al hydrological status. To investigate the complexity of precipitation and the runoff time series from 1960 to 2012 in the Jing River Basin on different time scales, approximate entropy, a Bayesian approach and extreme-point symmetric mode decomposition were employed. The results show that the complexity of annual precipitation and runoff has decreased since the 1990sand that the change occurred in 1995. The Intrinsic Mode Function (IMF)-6 component decomposed by extreme-point symmetric mode decomposition of monthly precipitation and runoff was consistent with precipitation and runoff. The IMF-6 component of monthly precipitation closely followed the 10-year cycle of change, and it has an obvious correlation with sunspots. The correlation coefficient is 0.6, representing a positive correlation before 1995 and a negative correlation after 1995. However, the IMF-6 component of monthly runoff does not have a significant correlation with sunspots, and the correlation coefficient is only 0.41, which indicates that climate change is not the dominant factor of runoff change. Approximate entropy is an effective analytical method for complexity, and furthermore, it can be decomposed by extreme-point symmetric mode decomposition to obtain the physical process of the sequences at different time scales, which helps us to understand the background of climate change and human activity in the process of precipitation and runoff.

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Averting robo-bees: why free-flying robotic bees are a bad idea

Emerging Topics in Life Sciences ◽

10.1042/etls20190063 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 3 (6) ◽

pp. 723-729

Author(s):

Roslyn Gleadow ◽

Jim Hanan ◽

Alan Dorin

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Computer Simulation ◽

Food Security ◽

European Countries ◽

Plant Interactions ◽

Plant Insect Interactions ◽

Native Habitat ◽

Insect Pollinators ◽

Insect Interactions

Food security and the sustainability of native ecosystems depends on plant-insect interactions in countless ways. Recently reported rapid and immense declines in insect numbers due to climate change, the use of pesticides and herbicides, the introduction of agricultural monocultures, and the destruction of insect native habitat, are all potential contributors to this grave situation. Some researchers are working towards a future where natural insect pollinators might be replaced with free-flying robotic bees, an ecologically problematic proposal. We argue instead that creating environments that are friendly to bees and exploring the use of other species for pollination and bio-control, particularly in non-European countries, are more ecologically sound approaches. The computer simulation of insect-plant interactions is a far more measured application of technology that may assist in managing, or averting, ‘Insect Armageddon' from both practical and ethical viewpoints.

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Modelling ecosystem adaptation and dangerous rates of global warming

Emerging Topics in Life Sciences ◽

10.1042/etls20180113 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 3 (2) ◽

pp. 221-231 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Rebecca Millington ◽

Peter M. Cox ◽

Jonathan R. Moore ◽

Gabriel Yvon-Durocher

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Global Warming ◽

Diffusion Rate ◽

Individual Species ◽

Genetic Evolution ◽

Rates Of Change ◽

Rapid Climate Change ◽

Warming Climate ◽

Intraspecies Competition ◽

High Trait

Abstract We are in a period of relatively rapid climate change. This poses challenges for individual species and threatens the ecosystem services that humanity relies upon. Temperature is a key stressor. In a warming climate, individual organisms may be able to shift their thermal optima through phenotypic plasticity. However, such plasticity is unlikely to be sufficient over the coming centuries. Resilience to warming will also depend on how fast the distribution of traits that define a species can adapt through other methods, in particular through redistribution of the abundance of variants within the population and through genetic evolution. In this paper, we use a simple theoretical ‘trait diffusion’ model to explore how the resilience of a given species to climate change depends on the initial trait diversity (biodiversity), the trait diffusion rate (mutation rate), and the lifetime of the organism. We estimate theoretical dangerous rates of continuous global warming that would exceed the ability of a species to adapt through trait diffusion, and therefore lead to a collapse in the overall productivity of the species. As the rate of adaptation through intraspecies competition and genetic evolution decreases with species lifetime, we find critical rates of change that also depend fundamentally on lifetime. Dangerous rates of warming vary from 1°C per lifetime (at low trait diffusion rate) to 8°C per lifetime (at high trait diffusion rate). We conclude that rapid climate change is liable to favour short-lived organisms (e.g. microbes) rather than longer-lived organisms (e.g. trees).

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