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Public attitudes about climate change reveal a contradiction. Surveys show most Americans believe climate change poses serious risks but also that reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions sufficient to stabilize atmospheric GHG concentrations can be deferred until there is greater evidence that climate change is harmful. US policymakers likewise argue it is prudent to wait and see whether climate change will cause substantial economic harm before undertaking policies to reduce emissions. Such wait-and-see policies erroneously presume climate change can be reversed quickly should harm become evident, underestimating substantial delays in the climate’s response to anthropogenic forcing. We report experiments with highly educated adults – graduate students at MIT – showing widespread misunderstanding of the fundamental stock and flow relationships, including mass balance principles, that lead to long response delays. GHG emissions are now about twice the rate of GHG removal from the atmosphere. GHG concentrations will therefore continue to rise even if emissions fall, stabilizing only when emissions equal removal. In contrast, most subjects believe atmospheric GHG concentrations can be stabilized while emissions into the atmosphere continuously exceed the removal of GHGs from it. These beliefs – analogous to arguing a bathtub filled faster than it drains will never overflow – support wait-and-see policies but violate conservation of matter. Low public support for mitigation policies may arise from misconceptions of climate dynamics rather than high discount rates or uncertainty about the impact of climate change. Implications for education and communication between scientists and nonscientists (the public and policymakers) are discussed.  相似文献   

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To date the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concerned itself with gathering a state of the art review of the science of climate change. While significant progress has been made in enhancing our integrated understanding of the climate system and the dynamics of the social systems that produce an array of potential greenhouse gases, it is also clear from the panel's reports how far the science community is from being able to present a dynamic and synoptic view of the climate system as a whole. Clear evidence of these complexities and uncertainties inherent in the climate system is evident in efforts aimed at designing robust policy interventions. In this paper, we argue that the adaptive management framework in ecosystem management may be a useful model for guiding how the IPCC can continue to be relevant both as a scientific establishment and as a policy-relevant scientific endeavor.  相似文献   

4.
The issue of climate change required the development of the Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES) by the IPCC. The complexity of the subject and the unique science-policy relation resulted in confusion and discussions appeared in popular media like The Economist. This paper reviews scenario literature and SRES, identifies the most vulnerable elements in the communication of SRES. In the communication of GHG emission scenarios through SRES, the weaknesses that have been identified by the authors of this paper are the normative character of climate change assessment, the plausibility of the scenarios, and the risk of simplification of complex messages. The causes of these communicative issues have been identified as the intrinsic difficulties of interdisciplinary science, the uniqueness of the science-policy relation, and the need for a high degree of transparency. This paper suggests improving future communication of complex messages from scientists to their audience by means of clear reasoning when communicating with non-scientists, explicitly normative emission scenarios, and increased stakeholder participation in scenario development. Based on a presentation at the “IIASA-YSSP uncertainty seminars,” 22 July 2004, and the discussions thereafter.  相似文献   

5.
IPCC第六次评估报告(AR6)第一工作组报告(简称报告)中提供了对气候系统和气候变化的最新物理解释,整合了来自古气候和仪器观测的多项证据、过程理解以及全球和区域的气候模拟,记录了气候科学的最新进展。报告旨在提供有关过去气候如何变化的事实,揭示人类活动在这些变化中所起的作用,并根据不同社会经济路径的排放情景对未来气候进行了预估。这些结果对于政策制定者来说很重要。它有助于减缓气候变化、根据灾害管理框架制定区域适应计划以及开展即将到来的2023年全球综合评估。本文聚焦该报告的背景、架构和方法,并介绍当前气候变化评估的主要进展。结果显示,与以前的评估报告相比,AR6提供了更综合实用的信息和认识,更加强调了区域气候变化,以及更好地约束了气候敏感度的估计。该报告最重要的结论之一是人类活动对气候变化的影响已从科学认知演变为不争的事实。  相似文献   

6.
Mass media in the U.S. continue to suggest that scientific consensus estimates of global climate disruption, such as those from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), are “exaggerated” and overly pessimistic. By contrast, work on the Asymmetry of Scientific Challenge (ASC) suggests that such consensus assessments are likely to understate climate disruptions. This paper offers an initial test of the competing expectations, making use of the tendency for science to be self-correcting, over time. Rather than relying in any way on the IPCC process, the paper draws evidence about emerging science from four newspapers that have been found in past work to be biased against reporting IPCC findings, consistently reporting instead that scientific findings are “in dispute.” The analysis considers two time periods — one during the time when the papers were found to be overstating challenges to then-prevailing scientific consensus, and the other focusing on 2008, after the IPCC and former Vice-President Gore shared the Nobel Prize for their work on climate disruption, and before opinion polls showed the U.S. public to be growing more skeptical toward climate science once again. During both periods, new scientific findings were more than twenty times as likely to support the ASC perspective than the usual framing of the issue in the U.S. mass media. The findings indicate that supposed challenges to the scientific consensus on global warming need to be subjected to greater scrutiny, as well as showing that, if reporters wish to discuss “both sides” of the climate issue, the scientifically legitimate “other side” is that, if anything, global climate disruption may prove to be significantly worse than has been suggested in scientific consensus estimates to date.  相似文献   

7.
Based on issues recently raised on the future of climate science, I present here a critical discussion which embraces the crucial aspects of the communication between climate scientists and laypersons, of the role confusing statements may exert on possible advancements in climate research, and of scientific priorities in climate science. I start distinguishing between different applications of climate models and identifying confusing uses of the words ??prediction?? and ??projection?? in recent discussions on climate modeling. Numerical models like those used in climate simulations are not assimilable to truly theories, nor can obtained results be considered as truly experimental evidences. Hence, it is hard to envisage the feasibility of crucial experiments through climate models. Increasing model resolution and complexity, although undoubtedly helpful for many applications related to a deeper understanding of the complex climate system and to substantial improvement of short-term forecasts, is not destined to change this fundamental limitation, to tackle the impossibility of predicting prominent climate forcings and to facilitate result comparisons against observations. Finally, as an example describing possible alternative resource allocations, I propose to devote more energy to strengthen the observational part of climate research, to focus on midterm forecasts, and to implement a new employment policy for climate scientists. In particular, through an increased and truly global in situ and remote sensing climate observing network, crucial experiments could emerge to challenge the fundamental basis of the conjecture of a great anthropogenic climate change, which, as known, is largely based on high climate sensitivities simulated by numerical models.  相似文献   

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2014年9月,IPCC联合世界气候研究计划(WCRP),在瑞士伯尔尼大学召开了一次特别的研讨会,总结过去几年气候变化科学研究中所取得的经验教训。此次会议针对IPCC最新评估报告中的关键不确定性,梳理并总结了未来气候变化研究的主要科学方向和面临的主要挑战,讨论了如何与WCRP计划结合并解决这些问题,以期在未来更好地应对这些挑战。在此次会议上,与会专家提出,未来气候变化科学研究的重大挑战应包括如下8个主题。云、环流与气候敏感度;理解和预测极端天气气候事件;冰冻圈变化;区域气候信息;区域海平面上升及其对沿海地区的影响;水资源可利用量;生物地球化学、气溶胶和大气化学;理解年代际变化:归因与预测。这些主题涵盖了WCRP计划的六大挑战和其他被认为具有挑战性的主题。本文将在此次会议报告的基础上,对相关内容进行介绍,以供当前的气候变化工作参考。  相似文献   

9.
Women’s experiences as Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) authors, have been explored showing how gender, race, nationality, etc. increase barriers to participate in the production of climate science even for the best scientists. Recently, the IPCC Gender Task Force, conducted another survey exploring barriers to participation in the IPCC that included men as well as women. The Gender Task Force released a report on gendered barriers mostly focusing on quantitative responses. This paper presents a qualitative analysis of the fourteen open-ended questions in the survey. In addition to qualitative analysis, storytelling and the concept of feminist objectivity are useful approaches to convey the complicated web of responses of over 500 scientists about their experiences participating in the IPCC and in climate science more broadly. Gender, race and nationality continue to be barriers. I stress the connection between exclusions of underrepresented scientists in the IPCC with the persistent western belief that science is an objective and impartial practice. The paper brings attention to exclusionary structures that prevent participation in the IPCC and in science more broadly, but also provides stories of how these are resisted. These stories go beyond recognizing people as disadvantaged toward addressing the intersecting structures that exclude people from participating in science. As climate science becomes more diverse, and evidence points toward the benefit of diversity for superior science, understanding barriers and opportunities for scientists participating in multidisciplinary and international reports such as the IPCC becomes increasingly important. The stories provide a theoretical and methodological catalyst for international science institutions who seek to increase the influence and presence of underrepresented groups in science and produce superior science.  相似文献   

10.
The future climate change projections are essentially based on coupled general circulation model (CGCM) simulations, which give a distinct global warming pattern with arctic winter amplification, an equilibrium land-sea warming contrast and an inter-hemispheric warming gradient. While these simulations are the most important tool of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predictions, the conceptual understanding of these predicted structures of climate change and the causes of their uncertainties is very difficult to reach if only based on these highly complex CGCM simulations. In the study presented here we will introduce a very simple, globally resolved energy balance (GREB) model, which is capable of simulating the main characteristics of global warming. The model shall give a bridge between the strongly simplified energy balance models and the fully coupled 4-dimensional complex CGCMs. It provides a fast tool for the conceptual understanding and development of hypotheses for climate change studies, which shall build a basis or starting point for more detailed studies of observations and CGCM simulations. It is based on the surface energy balance by very simple representations of solar and thermal radiation, the atmospheric hydrological cycle, sensible turbulent heat flux, transport by the mean atmospheric circulation and heat exchange with the deeper ocean. Despite some limitations in the representations of the basic processes, the models climate sensitivity and the spatial structure of the warming pattern are within the uncertainties of the IPCC models simulations. It is capable of simulating aspects of the arctic winter amplification, the equilibrium land-sea warming contrast and the inter-hemispheric warming gradient with good agreement to the IPCC models in amplitude and structure. The results give some insight into the understanding of the land-sea contrast and the polar amplification. The GREB model suggests that the regional inhomogeneous distribution of atmospheric water vapor and the non-linear sensitivity of the downward thermal radiation to changes in the atmospheric water vapor concentration partly cause the land-sea contrast and may also contribute to the polar amplification. The combination of these characteristics causes, in general, dry and cold regions to warm more than other regions.  相似文献   

11.
解读政府间气候变化专门委员会(IPCC)第六次评估报告(AR6)粮食系统的影响与适应,对科学认识国际气候变化对农业影响学科前沿动态具有重要意义。最新发布的IPCC AR6在深化阐述粮食生产能力、种植布局、病虫害影响的基础上,高度确信人类活动导致的气候变暖对粮食系统产生了负面影响,论述了粮食运输及消费中的气候风险,解析了粮食生产-存储-运输-消费的全链条气候变化影响,延展了影响评估归因内容并丰富了农业环境影响等相关科学认识。对于粮食系统的适应能力,强调适应及减缓协同发展的气候恢复力发展路径,适应评估从适应能力、适应方式等理论逐步转向适应实施行动和成效评估,并注重适应行动的区域特异性和有效性。本次评估强调了气候变化对作物影响的检测和归因、关注了气候和农业环境变化复合影响、倡导基于生态系统的适应方案和技术,评估了现有适应技术的可行性和成效。报告内容对中国强化农业影响评估能力及把握国际学科动态具有参考价值。  相似文献   

12.
Using Specific Language to Describe Risk and Probability   总被引:3,自引:0,他引:3  
Good assessment of environmental issues, such as climate change, requires effective communication of the degree of uncertainty associated with numerous possible outcomes. One strategy that accomplishes this, while responding to people's difficulty understanding numeric probability estimates, is the use of specific language to describe probability ranges. This is the strategy adopted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in their Third Assessment Report. There is a problem with this strategy, however, in that it uses words differently from the way lay readers of the assessment typically do. An experiment conducted with undergraduate science students confirms this. The IPCC strategy could result in miscommunication, leading readers to under-estimate the probability of high-magnitude possible outcomes.  相似文献   

13.
全球变暖中的科学问题   总被引:5,自引:0,他引:5  
2013年各国政府间气候变化专门委员会(IPCC)第一工作组发布了第五次气候变化科学评估报告,以大量的观测分析和气候模式模拟证据,继续强调由于人类排放增加,全球正在变暖,未来将继续变暖的观点。本文综述研究全球变暖的几个深层次的科学问题,即多套全球气温观测资料的差异、不同标准气候态时段的作用、20世纪全球变暖的检测和归因及未来全球气温变化的走向,以此提出需进一步研究的科学问题。结果表明;需要进一步提高观测资料的质量;注意不同标准气候态时段对应的数值的不同;应进一步改善气候模式模拟年代际变率的能力及研究近15 a全球变暖减缓和停滞的原因,从而改善气候模式的模拟效果;造成预估未来全球气候变化的不确定性主要来自气候模式的差异、未来排放情景的差异及气候系统内部变率影响和自然外强迫的作用。  相似文献   

14.
The next generation of climate-driven, disease prediction models will most likely require a mechanistically based, dynamical framework that parameterizes key processes at a variety of locations. Over the next two decades, consensus climate predictions make it possible to produce forecasts for a number of important infectious diseases that are largely independent of the uncertainty of longer-term emissions scenarios. In particular, the role of climate in the modulation of seasonal disease transmission needs to be unravelled from the complex dynamics resulting from the interaction of transmission with herd immunity and intervention measures that depend upon previous burdens of infection. Progress is also needed to solve the mismatch between climate projections and disease projections at the scale of public health interventions. In the time horizon of seasons to years, early warning systems should benefit from current developments on multi-model ensemble climate prediction systems, particularly in areas where high skill levels of climate models coincide with regions where large epidemics take place. A better understanding of the role of climate extremes on infectious diseases is urgently needed.  相似文献   

15.
Climate Change Vulnerability Assessments: An Evolution of Conceptual Thinking   总被引:25,自引:8,他引:25  
Vulnerability is an emerging concept for climate science and policy. Over the past decade, efforts to assess vulnerability to climate change triggered a process of theory development and assessment practice, which is reflected in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This paper reviews the historical development of the conceptual ideas underpinning assessments of vulnerability to climate change. We distinguish climate impact assessment, first- and second-generation vulnerability assessment, and adaptation policy assessment. The different generations of assessments are described by means of a conceptual framework that defines key concepts of the assessment and their analytical relationships. The purpose of this conceptual framework is two-fold: first, to present a consistent visual glossary of the main concepts underlying the IPCC approach to vulnerability and its assessment; second, to show the evolution of vulnerability assessments. This evolution is characterized by the progressive inclusion of non-climatic determinants of vulnerability to climate change, including adaptive capacity, and the shift from estimating expected damages to attempting to reduce them. We hope that this paper improves the understanding of the main approaches to climate change vulnerability assessment and their evolution, not only within the climate change community but also among researchers from other scientific communities, who are sometimes puzzled by the unfamiliar use of technical terms in the context of climate change.  相似文献   

16.
The latest iteration of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uncertainty guidance is simpler and easier to use than the previous version. However, its primary focus remains assessing “what is at risk” under climate change, thus is most suitable for dealing with the scientific uncertainties in Working Group I and part of Working Group II findings. I distinguish between tame and complex risks, arguing that the guidance is most suited to assessing tame risks. Climate change is a complex risk, and as such as can be divided into idealized, calculated and perceived risks. While science has claims to objectivity, risk has a specific value component: when measuring gain and loss, calculated risks compete with risky options to manage those risks. The IPCC is charged with calculating risk (IPCC 2007, p22) but the communication of key findings takes place in an environment of competing perceived risks. Recommendations for managing this complex environment include separating scientific and risk-based findings, treating uncertainties for each separately; strengthening the philosophical basis of uncertainty management; application of a methodical scientific research program; clearly communicating competing findings, especially in the social sciences; and application of multiple frame to policy-relevant findings as reflected in the literature.  相似文献   

17.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) completed its first round of assessments of the science, impacts and response to climate change in 1990. In 1992, the IPCC pulled together updates to the first round of reports (J. Houghton, G.J. Jenkins and J.J. Ephraums, eds, Climate Change: The IPCC Scientific Assessment, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990; W.J. McG. Tegart, G.W. Sheldon and D.C. Griffiths, eds, Climate Change: The IPCC Impacts Assessment, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1990). At the same time, the literature on the potential impacts of climate change has expanded enormously. Four volumes are reviewed here.  相似文献   

18.
Climate scientists have played a significant role in investigating global climate change. In the USA, a debate has swirled about whether a consensus on climate change exists among reputable scientists and this has entered the policy process. In order to better understand the views of US climate scientists, we conducted an empirical survey of US climate scientists (N?=?468) in 2005, and compared the results with the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) physical science report and policy summaries. Our results reveal that survey respondents generally agree about the nature, causes, and consequences of climate change, and are in agreement with IPCC findings. We also found that there is strong support for a variety of policy initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  相似文献   

19.
IPCC于2019年8月7日通过了《气候变化与土地特别报告》决策者摘要,报告第3章评估了气候变化与荒漠化的关系,取得了一些新认识,包括全球旱地(dryland)和荒漠化的范围、荒漠化过程与影响因素、荒漠化的检测与归因、荒漠化对自然和社会经济系统的影响、荒漠化对气候变化的反馈、未来气候变化对荒漠化的影响与风险,应对荒漠化与适应和减缓气候变化的联系。在估计荒漠化变化、荒漠化变化检测与归因、荒漠化对自然和社会经济系统的影响、荒漠化对气候变化的反馈、应对荒漠化与适应和减缓气候变化联系方面还存在不足。这些评估结果对我国认识旱地和荒漠化范围的变化、影响荒漠化因素、荒漠化过程、荒漠化变化检测与归因,荒漠化对自然和社会经济系统的影响、荒漠化对气候变化的反馈、未来气候变化对荒漠化的影响与风险,以及防治荒漠化与适应和减缓气候变化方面等都有重要的启示。  相似文献   

20.
US public awareness of the reality and risks of human-caused climate change remains limited, despite strong evidence presented in the IPCC and other major climate assessments. One contributing factor may be that the immense collective effort to produce periodic climate assessments is typically not well matched with public communication and outreach efforts for these reports, leaving a vacuum to be filled by less authoritative sources. Print and online media coverage provides one metric of the US public reach of selected climate assessments between 2000 and 2010. The number of Lexis-Nexis articles for the search terms “climate change” or “global warming” within 14 days of each report’s release varied significantly over time with a peak occurring in 2007. When compared to background “chatter” relating to climate change, each assessment had widely diverse penetration in the US media (~4% for US National Climate Assessment in 2000; ~17% for Arctic Climate Impacts Assessment in 2004; ~19% and ~10% for Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report Working Group I and Working Group II respectively in 2007; ~4% for the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) assessment report in 2009; and ~5% for US National Research Council’s America’s Climate Choices reports in 2010). We propose ways to improve the public reach of climate assessments, focusing in particular on approaches to more effectively characterize and communicate the role of uncertainty in human actions as distinct from other sources of uncertainty across the range of possible climate futures.  相似文献   

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