Cities and Climate Change

This review paper considers the disjuncture between the rapid pace of climate change and the more sluggish ability of cities to fully implement effective strategies of climate change adaptation and mitigation. We will refer to this as the ‘slow city–quick climate change’ dilemma. Climate change is accelerating, quickly rendering obsolete previous urban forms inadequate, while structural adjustments to cities are slower moving. Cities around the world were largely built for previous climate regimes. In the short to medium term, there is a mismatch between the climate regime that cities were designed for and the climate regime they now inhabit. The paper is divided into four parts: a brief review of climate change in general; climate change in cities; a review of climate change adaptation and mitigation in cities; and finally, a discussion of urban futures in the time of climate regime change.

Might Cooperative Approaches Not Be So Cooperative? Exploring the Potential of Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement to Generate Legal Disputes

With Article 6.2, the Paris Agreement offers its parties the possibility to engage in cooperative approaches to import mitigation outcomes that have been generated on the territory of another party and use these international transferred mitigation outcomes (itmos) for compliance purposes. While this possibility seems to pave the way to more—and presumably new forms of—climate cooperation outside the UN climate regime, this paper asks whether Article 6.2 is also likely to spark disagreement among states. It is suggested that it bears as much a potential to generate cooperation as to generate conflict. To illustrate that point, the paper explains how Article 6.2 could lead to conflict between developed and developing states over the legality of unilateral restrictions on the admittance of itmos and discusses what such conflict may look like, as well as its possible legal and political implications.

SMOS L-VOD shows that post-fire recovery of dense forests is slower than what is depicted with X- and C-VOD and optical indices

Anthropogenic climate change is now considered to be one of the main factors causing an increase in both frequency and severity of wildfires. These fires are prone to release substantial quantities of CO2 in the atmosphere and to destroy natural ecosystems while reducing biodiversity. Depending on the ecosystem and climate regime, fires have distinct triggering factors and impacts. To better analyse and describe fire impact on different biomes, we investigated pre and post fire vegetation anomalies at global scale. The study was performed using several remotely sensed quantities ranging from optical vegetation indices (the enhanced vegetation index (EVI)) to vegetation opacities obtained at several microwave wavelengths (X-band, C-band, and L-band vegetation optical depth (X-VOD, C-VOD, and L-VOD)), ranging from 2 to 20 cm. It was found that C- and X-VOD are mostly sensitive to fire over low vegetation areas (grass and small bushes) or over tree leaves; while L-VOD depicts better the fire impact on tree trunks and branches. As a consequence, L-VOD is probably a better way of assessing fire impact on biomass. The study shows that L-VOD can be used to monitor fire affected areas as well as post-fire recovery, especially over densely vegetated areas.

Recent Trends in Oceanic Conditions in the Western Part of East/Japan Sea: An Analysis of Climate Regime Shift That Occurred after the Late 1990s

The western part of East/Japan Sea (WES) is an important area for understanding climate change processes and interactions between atmospheric and oceanic conditions. We analyzed the trends in recent oceanic conditions in the WES after the recent climate regime shift (CRS) that occurred in the late 1990s in the North Pacific. We explored the most important climate factors that affect oceanic conditions and determined their responses to changes in climate change. In the CRS that occurred in the late 1980s, changes in oceanic conditions in the WES were influenced by intensity changes in climate factors, and, in the late 1990s, it was by spatial changes in climate factors. The latitudinal shift of the Aleutian low (AL) pressure influences recent changes in oceanic and atmospheric conditions in the WES. The intensity of the Kuroshio Current and the sea level pressure in the Kuroshio extension region associated with the latitudinal shift of the AL pressure affects the volume of transport of the warm and saline water mass that flows into the WES and its atmospheric conditions. In addition, the fluctuations in the oceanic conditions of the WES affect various regions and depth layers differently, and these variations are evident even within the WES.

Setting Up Optimal Meteorological Networks: An Example From Italy

A permanent assessment of climate regime in forest sites has a key role in forest resource conservation and preservation of ecosystem services, biodiversity and landscape multi-functionality, informing sustainable forest management. In this view, time-series of meteorological data relative to several monitoring sites from the ICP-Forest network in Italy, were analyzed with the aim to define the number of site-specific observations, which can be considered adequate for further analysis on forest resource management. The relative importance of each factor accounted in our analysis (season, year, variable, plot, sampling proportion) was investigated comparing results through the use of descriptive statistics.

Grand Challenges of Hydrologic Modeling for Food-Energy-Water Nexus Security in High Mountain Asia

Climate-influenced changes in hydrology affect water-food-energy security that may impact up to two billion people downstream of the High Mountain Asia (HMA) region. Changes in water supply affect energy, industry, transportation, and ecosystems (agriculture, fisheries) and as a result, also affect the region's social, environmental, and economic fabrics. Sustaining the highly interconnected food-energy-water nexus (FEWN) will be a fundamental and increasing challenge under a changing climate regime. High variability in topography and distribution of glaciated and snow-covered areas in the HMA region, and scarcity of high resolution (in-situ) data make it difficult to model and project climate change impacts on individual watersheds. We lack basic understanding of the spatial and temporal variations in climate, surface impurities in snow and ice such as black carbon and dust that alter surface albedo, and glacier mass balance and dynamics. These knowledge gaps create challenges in predicting where and when the impact of changes in river flow will be the most significant economically and ecologically. In response to these challenges, the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) established the High Mountain Asia Team (HiMAT) in 2016 to conduct research to address knowledge gaps. This paper summarizes some of the advances HiMAT made over the past 5 years, highlights the scientific challenges in improving our understanding of the hydrology of the HMA region, and introduces an integrated assessment framework to assess the impacts of climate changes on the FEWN for the HMA region. The framework, developed under a NASA HMA project, links climate models, hydrology, hydropower, fish biology, and economic analysis. The framework could be applied to develop scientific understanding of spatio-temporal variability in water availability and the resultant downstream impacts on the FEWN to support water resource management under a changing climate regime.

Part VIII Compliance, Implementation, and Effectiveness, Ch.57 Effectiveness

This chapter introduces some key concepts: what international regimes are; how to measure their effectiveness (the dependent variable); how this can be explained (independent variable); and the severe methodological challenges associated with answering these questions. Two main explanatory perspectives are introduced: the nature of the problem dealt with by the regime and its problem-solving ability. The chapter then surveys some key general findings that have emerged from the study of the effectiveness of international environmental regimes. Perhaps the most important finding is that although most international regimes that have been studied have had some effect on the problems they address, they have very rarely been able—if at all—to solve them fully. Another important observation is the sizeable variation among regimes in their problem-solving ability. The chapter presents empirical examples to illustrate how effectiveness can be measured and explained in practice. Most attention is given to the global climate regime, given its prominence on the international agenda. Viewed from a problem-solving perspective, however, the climate regime emerges as a low-effectiveness regime. This is briefly contrasted with the highly successful international ozone regime, as well as a regime that is very hard to measure in terms of effectiveness due to the deep and divisive conflicts over values, namely, the international whaling regime.