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Now showing 1 - 9 of 9
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    Reply to Burgess et al: Catastrophic climate risks are neglected, plausible, and safe to study
    (Washington, DC : National Acad. of Sciences, 2022) Kemp, Luke; Xu, Chi; Depledge, Joanna; Ebi, Kristie L.; Gibbins, Goodwin; Kohler, Timothy A.; Rockström, Johan; Scheffer, Marten; Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim; Steffen, Will; Lenton, Timothy M.
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    Assessing inter-sectoral climate change risks: The role of ISIMIP
    (Bristol : IOP Publishing, 2017) Rosenzweig, Cynthia; Arnell, Nigel W.; Ebi, Kristie L.; Lotze-Campen, Hermann; Raes, Frank; Rapley, Chris; Smith, Mark Stafford; Cramer, Wolfgang; Frieler, Katja; Reyer, Christopher P.O.; Schewe, Jacob; van Vuuren, Detlef; Warszawski, Lila
    The aims of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP) are to provide a framework for the intercomparison of global and regional-scale risk models within and across multiple sectors and to enable coordinated multi-sectoral assessments of different risks and their aggregated effects. The overarching goal is to use the knowledge gained to support adaptation and mitigation decisions that require regional or global perspectives within the context of facilitating transformations to enable sustainable development, despite inevitable climate shifts and disruptions. ISIMIP uses community-agreed sets of scenarios with standardized climate variables and socio-economic projections as inputs for projecting future risks and associated uncertainties, within and across sectors. The results are consistent multi-model assessments of sectoral risks and opportunities that enable studies that integrate across sectors, providing support for implementation of the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
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    Climate change impacts on agriculture in 2050 under a range of plausible socioeconomic and emissions scenarios
    (Bristol : IOP Publishing, 2015) Wiebe, Keith; Lotze-Campen, Hermann; Sands, Ronald; Tabeau, Andrzej; van der Mensbrugghe, Dominique; Biewald, Anne; Bodirsky, Benjamin; Islam, Shahnila; Kavallari, Aikaterini; Mason-D'Croz, Daniel; Müller, Christoph; Popp, Alexander; Robertson, Richard; Robinson, Sherman; van Meijl, Hans; Willenbockel, Dirk
    Previous studies have combined climate, crop and economic models to examine the impact of climate change on agricultural production and food security, but results have varied widely due to differences in models, scenarios and input data. Recent work has examined (and narrowed) these differences through systematic model intercomparison using a high-emissions pathway to highlight the differences. This paper extends that analysis to explore a range of plausible socioeconomic scenarios and emission pathways. Results from multiple climate and economic models are combined to examine the global and regional impacts of climate change on agricultural yields, area, production, consumption, prices and trade for coarse grains, rice, wheat, oilseeds and sugar crops to 2050. We find that climate impacts on global average yields, area, production and consumption are similar across shared socioeconomic pathways (SSP 1, 2 and 3, as we implement them based on population, income and productivity drivers), except when changes in trade policies are included. Impacts on trade and prices are higher for SSP 3 than SSP 2, and higher for SSP 2 than for SSP 1. Climate impacts for all variables are similar across low to moderate emissions pathways (RCP 4.5 and RCP 6.0), but increase for a higher emissions pathway (RCP 8.5). It is important to note that these global averages may hide regional variations. Projected reductions in agricultural yields due to climate change by 2050 are larger for some crops than those estimated for the past half century, but smaller than projected increases to 2050 due to rising demand and intrinsic productivity growth. Results illustrate the sensitivity of climate change impacts to differences in socioeconomic and emissions pathways. Yield impacts increase at high emissions levels and vary with changes in population, income and technology, but are reduced in all cases by endogenous changes in prices and other variables.
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    Simulating the Earth system response to negative emissions
    (Bristol : IOP Publishing, 2016) Jones, C.D.; Ciais, P.; Davis, S.J.; Friedlingstein, P.; Gasser, T.; Peters, G.P.; Rogelj, J.; van Vuuren, D.P.; Canadell, J.G.; Cowie, A.; Jackson, R.B.; Jonas, M.; Kriegler, E.; Littleton, E.; Lowe, J.A.; Milne, J.; Shrestha, G.; Smith, P.; Torvanger, A.; Wiltshire, A.
    Natural carbon sinks currently absorb approximately half of the anthropogenic CO2 emitted by fossil fuel burning, cement production and land-use change. However, this airborne fraction may change in the future depending on the emissions scenario. An important issue in developing carbon budgets to achieve climate stabilisation targets is the behaviour of natural carbon sinks, particularly under low emissions mitigation scenarios as required to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. A key requirement for low carbon pathways is to quantify the effectiveness of negative emissions technologies which will be strongly affected by carbon cycle feedbacks. Here we find that Earth system models suggest significant weakening, even potential reversal, of the ocean and land sinks under future low emission scenarios. For the RCP2.6 concentration pathway, models project land and ocean sinks to weaken to 0.8 ± 0.9 and 1.1 ± 0.3 GtC yr−1 respectively for the second half of the 21st century and to −0.4 ± 0.4 and 0.1 ± 0.2 GtC yr−1 respectively for the second half of the 23rd century. Weakening of natural carbon sinks will hinder the effectiveness of negative emissions technologies and therefore increase their required deployment to achieve a given climate stabilisation target. We introduce a new metric, the perturbation airborne fraction, to measure and assess the effectiveness of negative emissions.
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    Bayesian Data Analysis for Revealing Causes of the Middle Pleistocene Transition
    ([London] : Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature, 2019) Mukhin, Dmitry; Gavrilov, Andrey; Loskutov, Evgeny; Kurths, Juergen; Feigin, Alexander
    Currently, causes of the middle Pleistocene transition (MPT) – the onset of large-amplitude glacial variability with 100 kyr time scale instead of regular 41 kyr cycles before – are a challenging puzzle in Paleoclimatology. Here we show how a Bayesian data analysis based on machine learning approaches can help to reveal the main mechanisms underlying the Pleistocene variability, which most likely explain proxy records and can be used for testing existing theories. We construct a Bayesian data-driven model from benthic δ18O records (LR04 stack) accounting for the main factors which may potentially impact climate of the Pleistocene: internal climate dynamics, gradual trends, variations of insolation, and millennial variability. In contrast to some theories, we uncover that under long-term trends in climate, the strong glacial cycles have appeared due to internal nonlinear oscillations induced by millennial noise. We find that while the orbital Milankovitch forcing does not matter for the MPT onset, the obliquity oscillation phase-locks the climate cycles through the meridional gradient of insolation.
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    Reply to Bhowmik et al.: Democratic climate action and studying extreme climate risks are not in tension
    (Washington, DC : National Acad. of Sciences, 2022) Kemp, Luke; Xu, Chi; Depledge, Joanna; Ebi, Kristie L.; Gibbins, Goodwin; Kohler, Timothy A.; Rockström, Johan; Scheffer, Marten; Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim; Steffen, Will; Lenton, Timothy M.
    [no abstract available]
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    Reply to Kelman: The foundations for studying catastrophic climate risks
    (Washington, DC : National Acad. of Sciences, 2022) Kemp, Luke; Xu, Chi; Depledge, Joanna; Ebi, Kristie L.; Gibbins, Goodwin; Kohler, Timothy A.; Rockström, Johan; Scheffer, Marten; Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim; Steffen, Will; Lenton, Timothy M.
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    Decay radius of climate decision for solar panels in the city of Fresno, USA
    ([London] : Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature, 2021) Barton-Henry, Kelsey; Wenz, Leonie; Levermann, Anders
    To design incentives towards achieving climate mitigation targets, it is important to understand the mechanisms that affect individual climate decisions such as solar panel installation. It has been shown that peer effects are important in determining the uptake and spread of household photovoltaic installations. Due to coarse geographical data, it remains unclear whether this effect is generated through geographical proximity or within groups exhibiting similar characteristics. Here we show that geographical proximity is the most important predictor of solar panel implementation, and that peer effects diminish with distance. Using satellite imagery, we build a unique geo-located dataset for the city of Fresno to specify the importance of small distances. Employing machine learning techniques, we find the density of solar panels within the shortest measured radius of an address is the most important factor in determining the likelihood of that address having a solar panel. The importance of geographical proximity decreases with distance following an exponential curve with a decay radius of 210 meters. The dependence is slightly more pronounced in low-income groups. These findings support the model of distance-related social diffusion, and suggest priority should be given to seeding panels in areas where few exist.
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    Monsoon forced evolution of savanna and the spread of agro-pastoralism in peninsular India
    ([London] : Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature, 2021) Riedel, Nils; Fuller, Dorian Q.; Marwan, Norbert; Poretschkin, Constantin; Basavaiah, Nathani; Menzel, Philip; Ratnam, Jayashree; Prasad, Sushma; Sachse, Dirk; Sankaran, Mahesh; Sarkar, Saswati; Stebich, Martina
    An unresolved issue in the vegetation ecology of the Indian subcontinent is whether its savannas, characterized by relatively open formations of deciduous trees in C4-grass dominated understories, are natural or anthropogenic. Historically, these ecosystems have widely been regarded as anthropogenic-derived, degraded descendants of deciduous forests. Despite recent work showing that modern savannas in the subcontinent fall within established bioclimatic envelopes of extant savannas elsewhere, the debate persists, at least in part because the regions where savannas occur also have a long history of human presence and habitat modification. Here we show for the first time, using multiple proxies for vegetation, climate and disturbances from high-resolution, well-dated lake sediments from Lonar Crater in peninsular India, that neither anthropogenic impact nor fire regime shifts, but monsoon weakening during the past ~ 6.0 kyr cal. BP, drove the expansion of savanna at the expense of forests in peninsular India. Our results provide unambiguous evidence for a climate-induced origin and spread of the modern savannas of peninsular India at around the mid-Holocene. We further propose that this savannization preceded and drove the introduction of agriculture and development of sedentism in this region, rather than vice-versa as has often been assumed.