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Resources: Climate Digest

Climate Digest for September 2009

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Climate science
Climate impacts
Adaptation
Risk, uncertainty & decision-making

Climate science

1. Decline in Arctic Sea Ice thickness from submarine and ICESat records; 1958–2008

In this paper, the Ice Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) data covering the period 2003 to 2008 is reviewed and placed in the context of estimates from 42 years of submarine records running between 1958 and 2000. These consist of declassified submarine sonar measurements which represent about 38% of the Arctic Ocean.

Analysis of this combined data series shows a long-term trend of sea ice thinning spanning 50 years. This was characterised in the early years of the record by thinning of multiyear (perennial) ice. In later years thinning was linked to dramatic drops in summer sea ice extent, such as occurred in 2005 and 2007, leading to replacement of perennial ice with thinner seasonal ice.

Source: Kwock, R. & Rothrick, A. (1999) Decline in Arctic Sea Ice thickness from submarine and ICESat records; 1958-2008, Geophysical Research Letters, 36, LI5501, doi: 10.1029/2009GL039035

Climate impacts

2. The UK Environmental Change Network: emerging trends in the composition of plant and animal communities and the physical environment

This paper analyses trends in physical, chemical and biological data recorded between 1993 and 2007 from 12 sites in the UK Environmental Change Network (ECN) and assesses the effectiveness of the programme. Analysis of data from these ECN sites reveals the following changes.

All sites show a significant warming trend of around 0.9 oC over the past 15 years, with upland sites warming more than lowland sites. This rise is faster than that reported by Jenkins et al for the Central England Temperature record (which showed 1ºC over 25 years, from 1980–2006) and is substantially faster than the global average increase of 0.2ºC per decade in the past 25 years, as reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007.

The number of hot days (with a mean temperature >20ºC) increased across all sites.

Total annual precipitation increased significantly by 170mm, despite substantial inter-annual variability.

Sulphur levels have decreased across the UK. The authors explain the de-acidification of sites as reflecting the effect of emission controls introduced in the mid-1970s.

There is evidence that the observed warming is starting to affect organisms. Some warm-adapted butterfly species are tending to increase and spread northwards, while some beetles typical of cooler northern and upland areas are declining. The most widespread affect on plant communities is a decline in ruderals in the lowlands, possibly a result of increased precipitation. A general shift in the composition of plant communities, however, is not yet evident.

Source: Morecroft, M.D., Bealey, C.E., Beaumont, D.A., Benham, S., Brooks, D.R., Burt, T.P., Critchley, C.N.R., Dick, J., Littlewood, N.A., Monteith, D.T., Scott, W.A., Smith, R.I., Walmsley, C. and Watson, H. (2009, in press) The UK Environmental Change Network: Emerging trends in the composition of plant and animal communities and the physical environment. Biological Conservation. Doi: 10.1016/j.biocon.2009.07.004.

Adaptation

3. Urban form and climate change: balancing adaptation and mitigation in the U.S. and Australia

It is widely accepted that mitigation and adaptation actions are both required to tackle the challenges of climate change: neither approach can, on its own, avoid all climate change impacts. Although adaptation and mitigation strategies can be complementary, their goals and methods may differ, resulting in potential conflicts between them. Adaptation strategies, for example, seek to protect local communities from sudden and immediate dangers, while mitigation strategies seek to reduce global warming over the long term. Potential conflict between land-use policy options developed to address adaptation and mitigation presents a key challenge to achieving the dual goals of climate change planning.

A wide range of urban planning policy responses are now emerging at local and regional levels to both adapt to climate change, and mitigate further change. But surprisingly little research has been conducted to examine the types of conflicts that might arise in practice. This research attempts to fill that gap. Leading examples of land-use plans and policies designed to address climate change in coastal amenity communities in the US and Australia were analysed to determine whether they addressed adaptation, mitigation, or both, and if the latter, whether they put mitigation and adaptation in potential conflict with one another. The authors found that 22 of the 50 adaptation and mitigation actions identified in these policies contain potential conflicts to achieving adaptation and mitigation objectives. Mitigation, for instance, favours more high density urban land-use patterns in order to reduce car travel and building energy use. But adaptation goals in this context require space, eg. areas of open space for flood water management and green spaces to treat heat island effects. Urban forms must clearly be sought that minimise these conflicts. The paper concludes with a useful list of mitigation and adaptation actions identified in the literature, and an assessment of whether these goals are complementary or in potential conflict.

Source: Hamin, E.M. & Gurran, N. (2009) Urban form and climate change: balancing adaptation and mitigation in the U.S. and Australia. Habitat International, 33, 238–245.

4. Sharing the burden of financing adaptation to climate change

The authors establish a conceptual framework for allocating responsibilities for international financing of adaptation efforts related to climate. This framework extends the ‘polluter pays’ principle to include the principle of the polluter bearing responsibility for compensating for the damage caused. They argue that a principle of strict liability cannot yet be applied to climate risk and propose a principle of responsibility, combined with an indicator related to the capacity to pay of different countries - Common But Differentiated Responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDR) approach. The institutional arrangements needed to support any such transfer are not discussed in this paper (major political challenge).

In an attempt to avoid some of the legal difficulties associated with this issue, the conceptual framework focuses on the responsibility of nation states for their greenhouse gas emissions as it avoids the problems of attributing emissions to consumers and producers. Within the proposed framework, the arguments related to the definition of dangerous climate change are less important. The simple notion adopted is that damages generated by anthropogenically forced climate change cannot be avoided and that all damage caused in this way is to some extent unacceptable. They argue that the proposed CBDR approach provides a balance in that it brings together historical responsibility for climate-related harm and capacity to pay within a single hybrid policy.The proposed approach results in a limited set of CBDR scenarios based on selection of parameters that define those scenarios – full/limited responsibility; producer-based causal attribution; CO2/all GHGs; GWP-weighted cumulative GHG/temperature increase; all anthropogenic emissions (including LULUCF)/energy and industry only; and attribution start , end and evaluation dates. Their analysis explored the sensitivity and quantitative consequences of alternative choices of a number of these parameters in terms of the relative contributions of various countries and groupings of countries (e.g. Annex 1 and non-Annex 1) and show among other things the implications of the growing importance of non-Annex 1 emissions over time (with respect to the choice of attribution start, end and evaluation dates). In terms of conclusions, assuming cost of climate adaptation is USD 100 billion per year, the total financial contribution by Annex 1 countries could range between USD 42-82 per capita per year and USD1-21 in non-Annex 1 countries (when capacity to pay is based on the UN scale of assessment).

Source: Dellink, R., et al., Sharing the burden of financing adaptation to climate change. Global Environmental Change (2009), doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2009.07.009

Risk, uncertainty and decision-making

5. Climate change scenarios and citizen-participation: mitigation and adaptation perspectives in constructing sustainable futures

This paper looks at future scenario generation by considering mitigation and adaptation solutions that relate to the issues of resilience, vulnerability and adaptive capacity. It also highlights tensions between the way the scenarios are generated, the involvement of participants and legitimacy of outputs.

Focusing on human settlements in urban areas, the paper examines methods for constructing climate scenarios that feature groups of partisan and non-partisan participants, experts and lay people. The study draws out conclusions relating to the ability to use the results as a means to form policy and to provide legitimate, meaningful scenarios to a broad range of stakeholders, learning and changes to participant’s behaviour. This is drawn together with discussion about the balance between providing sustainability content such as reduced climate impact and/or process values such as building trust and learning in creating scenarios to explore future sustainable urban development.

In relation to mitigation and adaptation, the paper discusses the concepts of vulnerability, resilience and robustness and how these affect the priority of environmental issues and the solutions to address them in scenario planning. The balance of these issues was reported as causing contention between both lay and expert participants of the exercises and resulted in different views on what sort and when climate measures should be undertaken.

Source: Larsen, K., & Gunnarsson-Östling, U. (2009) Climate change scenarios and citizen-participation: mitigation and adaptation perspectives in constructing sustainable futures. Habitat International, 33, 260–266.