scholarly journals Managing the Carbon Cycle Requires Strong Science

Eos ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Galen McKinley ◽  
Craig Carlson ◽  
Arlyn Andrews ◽  
Daniel Brown ◽  
Paty Romero-Lankao ◽  
...  

For future climate change mitigation strategies to be effective, carbon cycle science must receive a major boost.

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 305-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qianqian Zhou ◽  
Guoyong Leng ◽  
Maoyi Huang

Abstract. As China becomes increasingly urbanised, flooding has become a regular occurrence in its major cities. Assessing the effects of future climate change on urban flood volumes is crucial to informing better management of such disasters given the severity of the devastating impacts of flooding (e.g. the 2016 flooding events across China). Although recent studies have investigated the impacts of future climate change on urban flooding, the effects of both climate change mitigation and adaptation have rarely been accounted for together in a consistent framework. In this study, we assess the benefits of mitigating climate change by reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and locally adapting to climate change by modifying drainage systems to reduce urban flooding under various climate change scenarios through a case study conducted in northern China. The urban drainage model – Storm Water Management Model – was used to simulate urban flood volumes using current and two adapted drainage systems (i.e. pipe enlargement and low-impact development, LID), driven by bias-corrected meteorological forcing from five general circulation models in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 archive. Results indicate that urban flood volume is projected to increase by 52 % over 2020–2040 compared to the volume in 1971–2000 under the business-as-usual scenario (i.e. Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5). The magnitudes of urban flood volumes are found to increase nonlinearly with changes in precipitation intensity. On average, the projected flood volume under RCP 2.6 is 13 % less than that under RCP 8.5, demonstrating the benefits of global-scale climate change mitigation efforts in reducing local urban flood volumes. Comparison of reduced flood volumes between climate change mitigation and local adaptation (by improving drainage systems) scenarios suggests that local adaptation is more effective than climate change mitigation in reducing future flood volumes. This has broad implications for the research community relative to drainage system design and modelling in a changing environment. This study highlights the importance of accounting for local adaptation when coping with future urban floods.


2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (6) ◽  
pp. 3526-3533 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matteo Muratori ◽  
Steven J. Smith ◽  
Page Kyle ◽  
Robert Link ◽  
Bryan K. Mignone ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 3170
Author(s):  
Avri Eitan

Evidence shows that global climate change is increasing over time, and requires the adoption of a variety of coping methods. As an alternative for conventional electricity systems, renewable energies are considered to be an important policy tool for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and therefore, they play an important role in climate change mitigation strategies. Renewable energies, however, may also play a crucial role in climate change adaptation strategies because they can reduce the vulnerability of energy systems to extreme events. The paper examines whether policy-makers in Israel tend to focus on mitigation strategies or on adaptation strategies in renewable energy policy discourse. The results indicate that despite Israel’s minor impact on global greenhouse gas emissions, policy-makers focus more on promoting renewable energies as a climate change mitigation strategy rather than an adaptation strategy. These findings shed light on the important role of international influence—which tends to emphasize mitigation over adaptation—in motivating the domestic policy discourse on renewable energy as a coping method with climate change.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 2510
Author(s):  
Hubert Paluš ◽  
Ján Parobek ◽  
Martin Moravčík ◽  
Miroslav Kovalčík ◽  
Michal Dzian ◽  
...  

The forestry and forest-based sector play a significant role in climate change mitigation strategies and can contribute to the achievement of a climate-neutral economy. In this context, the ability of harvested wood products (HWP) to sequester carbon is of significant importance. The objective of this work is to make a projection of climate change mitigation potential of HWP, under different scenarios of wood utilization in Slovakia. This study builds on the comparison of different scenarios of industrial wood utilization till 2035 and presents the resulting impacts on the national carbon balance. The results suggest that the development of timber supplies after 2020 in Slovakia will be influenced, in particular, by the future changes in the age distribution and tree species composition as well as the extent of future accidental felling. Consequently, a predicted structure and availability of wood resources in Slovakia will be reflected in a higher share of the production of products with shorter life cycle and thus will negatively affect the carbon pool in HWP. By comparing the results of the four designed scenarios, it follows that the scenario with the greatest mitigation potential, is the one assuming the optimal use of wood assortments and limitation of industrial roundwood foreign trade.


Author(s):  
Hung Ho ◽  
Sawaid Abbas ◽  
Jinxin Yang ◽  
Rui Zhu ◽  
Man Wong

Climate variability has been documented as being key to influencing human wellbeing across cities as it is linked to mortality and illness due to changes in the perceived weather cycle. Many studies have investigated the impact of summer temperature on human health and have proposed mitigation strategies for summer heat waves. However, sub-tropical cities are still experiencing winter temperature variations. Increasing winter perceived temperature through the decades may soon affect city wellbeing, due to a larger temperature change between normal winter days and extreme cold events, which may cause higher health risk due to lack of adaptation and self-preparedness. Therefore, winter perceived temperature should also be considered and integrated in urban sustainable planning. This study has integrated the increasing winter perceived temperature as a factor for developing spatiotemporal protocols for mitigating the adverse impact of climate change. Land surface temperature (LST) derived from satellite images and building data extracted from aerial photographs were used to simulate the adjusted wind chill equivalent temperature (AWCET) particularly for sub-tropical scenarios between 1990 and 2010 of the Kowloon Peninsula, Hong Kong. Compared with perceived temperature based on the representative station located at the headquarters of the Hong Kong Observatory, the temperature of half the study area in the Kowloon Peninsula has raised by 1.5 °C. The areas with less green space and less public open space in 2010 show higher relative temperatures. Socioeconomically deprived areas (e.g., areas with lower median monthly income) may suffer more from this scenario, but not all types of socioeconomic disparities are associated with poor sustainable planning. Based on our results and the “no-one left behind” guideline from the United Nations, climate change mitigation should be conducted by targeting socioeconomic neighborhoods more than just aging communities.


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