共查询到20条相似文献，搜索用时 31 毫秒
1.
A growing body of research examines the role of extreme weather experience—as one of the most personal, visceral (and increasingly frequent and severe) impacts of climate change—in shaping views on climate change. A remaining question is whether the experience of an extreme weather event increases climate change concern via experiential learning or reinforces existing views via motivated reasoning. Building on this work, we explore the relationship between personal experience and climate change policy preferences using surveys in 10 communities that experienced extreme weather events (3 tornadoes, 3 floods, 2 wildfires, 1 hurricane and 1 landslide). We find that self-reported personal harm aligns with objective measures of event impacts and that personal harm (i.e., experience) is associated with higher levels of policy support. However, we do not find that objective measures of event impacts are related to policy support. Though political ideology (i.e., motivated reasoning) dominates our model of policy support in predictable ways, personal harm moderates this relationship suggesting that conservatives reporting higher levels of personal harm from the event are, on average, more likely to express support for climate policy than those reporting lower levels of harm. We postulate that while extreme weather events may serve as teachable moments on climate change, their lessons may only reach conservatives who feel personally harmed, even in the communities most affected. 相似文献
2.
The literature suggests that extreme weather experiences have potential to increase climate change engagement by influencing the way people perceive the proximity and implications of climate change. Yet, limited attention has been directed at investigating how individual differences in the subjective interpretation of extreme weather events as indications of climate change moderate the link between extreme weather experiences and climate change attitudes. This article contends that subjective attribution of extreme weather events to climate change is a necessary condition for extreme weather experiences to be translated into climate change mitigation responses, and that subjective attribution of extreme weather to climate change is influenced by the psychological and social contexts in which individuals appraise their experiences with extreme weather. Using survey data gathered in the aftermath of severe flooding across the UK in winter 2013/2014, personal experience of this flooding event is shown to only directly predict perceived threat from climate change, and indirectly predict climate change mitigation responses, among individuals who subjectively attributed the floods to climate change. Additionally, subjective attribution of the floods to climate change is significantly predicted by pre-existing climate change belief, political affiliation and perceived normative cues. Attempts to harness extreme weather experiences as a route to engaging the public must be attentive to the heterogeneity of opinion on the attributability of extreme weather events to climate change. 相似文献
3.
This paper examines whether experience of extreme weather events—such as excessive heat, droughts, flooding, and hurricanes—increases an individual’s level concern about climate change. We bring together micro-level geospatial data on extreme weather events from NOAA’s Storm Events Database with public opinion data from multiple years of the Cooperative Congressional Election Study to study this question. We find evidence of a modest, but discernible positive relationship between experiencing extreme weather activity and expressions of concern about climate change. However, the effect only materializes for recent extreme weather activity; activity that occurred over longer periods of time does not affect public opinion. These results are generally robust to various measurement strategies and model specifications. Our findings contribute to the public opinion literature on the importance of local environmental conditions on attitude formation. 相似文献
4.
On the relation between weather-related disaster impacts,vulnerability and climate change 总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1
Disasters such as floods, storms, heatwaves and droughts can have enormous implications for health, the environment and economic development. In this article, we address the question of how climate change might have influenced the impact of weather-related disasters. This relation is not straightforward, since disaster burden is not influenced by weather and climate events alone—other drivers are growth in population and wealth, and changes in vulnerability. We normalized disaster impacts, analyzed trends in the data and compared them with trends in extreme weather and climate events and vulnerability, following a 3 by 4 by 3 set-up, with three disaster burden categories, four regions and three extreme weather event categories. The trends in normalized disaster impacts show large differences between regions and weather event categories. Despite these variations, our overall conclusion is that the increasing exposure of people and economic assets is the major cause of increasing trends in disaster impacts. This holds for long-term trends in economic losses as well as the number of people affected. We also found similar, though more qualitative, results for the number of people killed; in all three cases, the role played by climate change cannot be excluded. Furthermore, we found that trends in historic vulnerability tend to be stable over time, despite adaptation measures taken by countries. Based on these findings, we derived disaster impact projections for the coming decades. We argue that projections beyond 2030 are too uncertain, not only due to unknown changes in vulnerability, but also due to increasing non-stationarities in normalization relations. 相似文献
5.
When extreme weather events occur, people often turn to social media platforms to share information, opinions and experiences. One of the topics commonly discussed is the role climate change may or may not have played in influencing an event. Here, we examine Twitter posts that mentioned climate change in the context of three high-magnitude extreme weather events – Hurricane Irene, Hurricane Sandy and Snowstorm Jonas – in order to assess how the framing of the topic and the attention paid to it can vary between events. We also examine the role that contextual factors can play in shaping climate change coverage on the platform. We find that criticism of climate change denial dominated during Irene, while political and ideological struggle frames dominated during Sandy. Discourse during Jonas was, in contrast, more divided between posts about the scientific links between climate change and the events, and posts contesting climate science in general. The focus on political and ideological struggle frames during Sandy reflects the event’s occurrence at a time when the Occupy movement was active and the 2012 US Presidential Election was nearing. These factors, we suggest, could also contribute to climate change being a more prominent discussion point during Sandy than during Irene or Jonas. The Jonas frames, meanwhile, hint at lesser public understanding of how climate change may influence cold weather events when compared with tropical storms. Overall, our findings demonstrate how event characteristics and short-term socio-political context can play a critical role in determining the lenses through which climate change is viewed. 相似文献
6.
Public perceptions of rainfall change in India 总被引：1，自引：1，他引：0
People’s perceptions of changes in local weather patterns are an important precursor to proactive adaptation to climate change. In this paper, we consider public perceptions of changes in average rainfall in India, analyzing the relationship between perceptions and the instrumental record. Using data from a national sample survey, we find that local instrumental records of precipitation are a strong predictor of perceived declines in rainfall. Perceptions of decreasing rainfall were also associated with perceptions of changes in extreme weather events, such as decreasing frequency of floods and severe storms, increasing frequency of droughts, and decreasing predictability of the monsoon. Higher social vulnerability—including low perceived adaptive capacity and greater food and livelihood dependence on local weather—was also associated with perceptions of decreasing rainfall. While both urban and rural respondents were likely to perceive local changes in precipitation, we show that rural respondents in general were more sensitive to actual changes in precipitation. Individual perceptions of changes in local climate may play an important role in shaping vulnerability to global climate change, adaptive behavior, and support for adaptation and mitigation policies. Awareness of local climate change is therefore particularly important in regions where much of the population is highly exposed and sensitive to the impacts of climate change. 相似文献
7.
Charles A. Ogunbode Gisela Böhm Stuart B. Capstick Christina Demski Alexa Spence Nicole Tausch 《Climate Policy》2019,19(6):703-715
Climate change is projected to increase the frequency, intensity and unpredictability of extreme weather events across the globe and these events are likely to have significant mental health implications. The mental health literature broadly characterises negative emotional reactions to extreme weather experiences as undesirable impacts on wellbeing. Yet, other research in psychology suggests that negative emotional responses to extreme weather are an important motivation for personal action on climate change. This article addresses the intersection of mental health and functional perspectives on negative emotions, with a specific focus on the potential that reduced negative emotional responses to extreme weather may also translate to diminished motivation to undertake climate change mitigation actions – which we term the ‘resilience paradox’. Using survey data gathered in the aftermath of severe flooding across the UK in winter 2013/2014, we present new evidence indicating that self-appraised coping ability moderates the link between flooding experience and negative emotions and thereby attenuates the indirect link between flooding experience and climate change mitigation intentions. We conclude that support for flood victims should extend beyond addressing emotional, physical and financial stresses to include acknowledgement of the involvement of climate change and communication of the need for action to combat future climate risks.
Key policy insights
Psychological resilience to flooding and other extreme weather events can translate to diminished motivation to mitigate climate change
Negative emotional reactions need to occur at an optimal level to enable people to respond appropriately to climate risks.
Flood victims’ subjective appraisal of their ability to cope does not necessarily encompass consideration of the role played by climate change. Therefore, support for victims of extreme weather should include explicit acknowledgement of the involvement of climate change and the need for action to mitigate future climate risks.
8.
As the severity and frequency of extreme weather events become more pronounced with climate change and the increased habitation of at-risk areas, it is important to understand people’s resilience to them. We quantify resilience by estimating how disasters in the US impacted individual wellbeing in the initial weeks and months post-disaster, and whether the effect sizes differed by individual- and county-level factors. The methodological approach contrasts changes in wellbeing in counties affected by disasters with that of residents in unaffected counties of the same state. We find that people’s hedonic wellbeing is reduced by approximately 6% of a standard deviation in the first two weeks following the event, with the effect diminishing rapidly thereafter. The negative effects are driven by White, older, and economically advantaged sub-populations, who exhibit less resilience. We find no evidence that existing indices of community resilience moderate impacts. Our conclusion is that most people in the US have a resilient response to extreme weather events. 相似文献
9.
Climate change adaptation in Australian mining communities: comparing mining company and local government views and activities 总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1
Effective climate change adaptation in mining communities is reliant on action by both local authorities and mining operations. This article reports the findings of two surveys conducted in late 2010, with Australian mining companies and local government authorities respectively, investigating their perceptions and activities related to climate change adaptation. The research identified the main types of weather and climate-related impacts experienced in the past and expected under future climate conditions for the two groups. There were significantly differing levels of concern about weather and climate-related impacts between the two types of organisations. Mining company respondents reported lower levels of severity of impact from both past and (expected) future weather events, as well as lower levels of belief in climate change and of adaptation activities to prepare for it. Interestingly, mining companies generally reported less concern about future impacts than those experienced in the past, suggesting discounting of risks due to climate change scepticism. The article reports on a range of factors relevant to adaptation in mining communities, including perceived barriers, collaboration and further information needs. The research findings are discussed in the context of other recent research on climate change adaptation by Australian organisations and studies of mining industry adaptation in other countries. 相似文献
10.
Global warming is expected to affect both the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, though projections of the response of these events to climate warming remain highly uncertain. The range of changes reported in the climate modelling literature is very large, sometimes leading to contradictory results for a given extreme weather event. Much of this uncertainty stems from the incomplete understanding of the physics of extreme weather processes, the lack of representation of mesoscale processes in coarse-resolution climate models, and the effect of natural climate variability at multi-decadal time scales. However, some of the spread in results originates simply from the variety of scenarios for future climate change used to drive climate model simulations, which hampers the ability to make generalizations about predicted changes in extreme weather events. In this study, we present a meta-analysis of the literature on projected future extreme weather events in order to quantify expected changes in weather extremes as a function of a common metric of global mean temperature increases. We find that many extreme weather events are likely to be significantly affected by global warming. In particular, our analysis indicates that the overall frequency of global tropical cyclones could decrease with global warming but that the intensity of these storms, as well as the frequency of the most intense cyclones could increase, particularly in the northwestern Pacific basin. We also found increases in the intensity of South Asian monsoonal rainfall, the frequency of global heavy precipitation events, the number of North American severe thunderstorm days, North American drought conditions, and European heatwaves, with rising global mean temperatures. In addition, the periodicity of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation may decrease, which could, in itself, influence extreme weather frequency in many areas of the climate system. 相似文献
11.
Synoptic weather typing and regression-based downscaling approaches have become popular in evaluating the impacts of climate change on a variety of environmental problems, particularly those involving extreme impacts. One of the reasons for the popularity of these approaches is their ability to categorize a complex set of meteorological variables into a coherent index, facilitating the projection of changes in frequency and intensity of future daily extreme weather events and/or their impacts. This paper illustrated the capability of the synoptic weather typing and regression methods to analyze climatic change impacts on a number of extreme weather events and environmental problems for south–central Canada, such as freezing rain, heavy rainfall, high-/low-streamflow events, air pollution, and human health. These statistical approaches are helpful in analyzing extreme events and projecting their impacts into the future through three major steps or analysis procedures: (1) historical simulation modeling to identify extreme weather events or their impacts, (2) statistical downscaling to provide station-scale future hourly/daily climate data, and (3) projecting changes in the frequency and intensity of future extreme weather events and their impacts under a changing climate. To realize these steps, it is first necessary to conceptualize the modeling of the meteorology, hydrology and impacts model variables of significance and to apply a number of linear/nonlinear regression techniques. Because the climate/weather validation process is critical, a formal model result verification process has been built into each of these three steps. With carefully chosen physically consistent and relevant variables, the results of the verification, based on historical observations of the outcome variables simulated by the models, show a very good agreement in all applications and extremes tested to date. Overall, the modeled results from climate change studies indicate that the frequency and intensity of future extreme weather events and their impacts are generally projected to significantly increase late this century over south–central Canada under a changing climate. The implications of these increases need be taken into consideration and integrated into policies and planning for adaptation strategies, including measures to incorporate climate change into engineering infrastructure design standards and disaster risk reduction measures. This paper briefly summarized these climate change research projects, focusing on the modeling methodologies and results, and attempted to use plain language to make the results more accessible and interesting to the broader informed audience. These research projects have been used to support decision-makers in south–central Canada when dealing with future extreme weather events under climate change. 相似文献
12.
13.
The potential impacts of progressing climate change are alarming. Some adverse consequences are now unavoidable and adaptation measures are increasingly needful. This poses enormous challenges for emerging megacities in the Global South, which barely manage in current weather conditions. This paper introduces Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping as a new tool for structured, semi-quantitative assessments of climate change impacts and adaptation measures.Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping is used to evaluate differences in sensitivities to heatwaves and rainstorms across socio-economic groups and for the ranking of useful adaptation options, based on 188 individual interviews to the impacts of extreme weather events in Hyderabad, India. The results of this multi-stakeholder assessment indicate that rainstorms affect low-income residents more than heatwaves, while the opposite is true for medium-income respondents. The latter are also less seriously affected by extreme weather in general. Profession, though, not income determines the kind of impact that people feel most affected by. Individual characteristics like age and gender do not significantly explain differences in the data, but religion does. This is because, in Hyderabad, Muslims live in the older, less serviced and more affected parts of the city. However, semi-quantitative scenario analyses suggest that, under future climate change, many parts of the city will become increasingly exposed to the effects of extreme weather. Planned investments in urban infrastructure will be seriously challenged by climate change and preventive adaptation measures are urgently needed to at least maintain the current level of quality of life. Investments in the health infrastructure appear to be most effective in reducing the impact of heatwaves and investments in the traffic infrastructure most effective in reducing the impact of rainstorms. However, looking at heat and rain events together—which is realistic as they are both projected to increase and often occur in the same year—reveals that investments in water infrastructure and management have greatest potential to reduce impacts across all localities and on all social groups, particularly the lower-income classes. This is because first-order impacts caused by inadequate water infrastructure often give rise to second- or third-order impacts. Addressing the root cause is the most effective way to break cause-and-effect chains and prevent proliferation of negative consequences. Similar studies are suggested in other cities in order to support adaptation mainstreaming in complex urban environments. Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping proved a useful, semi-quantitative tool for climate change impact and adaptation assessments. 相似文献
14.
This paper reviews recent progress in climate change attribution studies. The focus is on the attribution of observed long-term changes in surface temperature, precipitation, circulation, and extremes, as well as that of specific extreme weather and climate events. Based on new methods and better models and observations, the latest studies further verify the conclusions on climate change attribution in the IPCC AR5, and enrich the evidence for anthropogenic influences on weather and climate variables and extremes. The uncertainty of global temperature change attributable to anthropogenic forcings lies in the considerable uncertainty of estimated total radiative forcing due to aerosols, while the uncertainty of precipitation change attribution arises from the limitations of observation and model simulations along with influences from large internal variability. In terms of extreme weather and climate events, it is clear that attribution studies have provided important new insights into the changes in the intensity or frequency of some of these events caused by anthropogenic climate change. The framing of the research question, the methods selected, and the model and statistical methods used all have influences on the results and conclusions drawn in an event attribution study. Overall, attribution studies in China remain inadequate because of limited research focus and the complexity of the monsoon climate in East Asia. Attribution research in China has focused mainly on changes or events related to temperature, such as the attribution of changes in mean and extreme temperature and individual heat wave events. Some progress has also been made regarding the pattern of changes in precipitation and individual extreme rainfall events in China. Nonetheless, gaps remain with respect to the attribution of changes in extreme precipitation, circulation, and drought, as well as to the event attribution such as those related to drought and tropical cyclones. It can be expected that, with the continual development of climate models, ongoing improvements to data, and the introduction of new methods in the future, climate change attribution research will develop accordingly. Additionally, further improvement in climate change attribution will facilitate the development of operational attribution systems for extreme events, as well as attribution studies of climate change impacts. 相似文献
15.
Sheldon Ungar 《Climatic change》1999,41(2):133-150
This paper asks whether extreme weather events are becoming more discernible. It uses the Vanderbilt University Television News Archives to determine if annual coverage given to heat waves, droughts, hurricanes and floods has increased on the network news between 1968 and 1996. An index of extreme weather events shows a clear trend toward increased coverage, especially since 1988. However, the different types of extreme events do not receive equal coverage: for example, annual peaks for droughts contain about twice as many stories as the peaks for heat waves. The data further reveal that there is no association between coverage of climate change and the overall coverage of extreme events. While extreme events have attracted more stories in the U.S., there has been no increase in the coverage devoted to extreme events in foreign countries. The possible effects of shifts in TV coverage on the public salience and understanding of climate change are discussed. 相似文献
16.
A changing climate and more frequent extreme weather events pose challenges to the oil and gas sector. Identifying how these changes will affect oil and gas extraction, transportation, processing, and delivery, and how these industries can adapt to or mitigate any adverse impacts will be vital to this sector’s supply security. This work presents an overview of the sector’s vulnerability to a changing climate. It addresses the potential for Natech hazards and proposes risk reduction measures, including mitigation and adaptation options. Assessment frameworks to ensure the safety of people, the environment, and investments in the oil and gas sector in the face of climate change are presented and their limitations discussed. It is argued that a comprehensive and systemic analysis framework for risk assessment is needed. The paper concludes that climate change and extreme weather events represent a real physical threat to the oil and gas sector, particularly in low-lying coastal areas and areas exposed to extreme weather events. The sector needs to take climate change seriously, assess its own vulnerability, and take appropriate measures to prevent or mitigate any potentially negative effects. 相似文献
17.
Policy efforts to address climate change are increasingly focused on adaptation, understood as adjustments in human systems to moderate the harm, or exploit beneficial opportunities, related to actual or expected climate impacts. We examine individual-level determinants of support for climate adaptation policies, focusing on whether individuals’ exposure to extreme weather events is associated with their support for climate adaptation policies. Using novel public opinion data on support for a range of adaptation policies, coupled with high resolution geographic data on extreme weather events, we find that individuals experiencing recent extreme weather activity are more likely to support climate change adaptation policy in general, but that the relationship is modest, inconsistent across specific adaptation policies, and diminishes with time. The data thus suggest that experiencing more severe weather may not appreciably increase support for climate adaptation policies. 相似文献
18.
Karen Akerlof Edward W. Maibach Dennis Fitzgerald Andrew Y. Cedeno Amanda Neuman 《Global Environmental Change》2013,23(1):81-91
For most people, the direct and personally observable signals of climate change should be difficult to detect amid the variability of everyday weather. Yet, previous research has shown that some people believe they have personally experienced global warming. Through four related studies, our paper sheds light on what signals of global warming some people believe they are detecting, why, and whether or not it matters. These studies were conducted using population survey and climatic data from a single county in Michigan. Study 1 found that 27% of the county's adult residents felt that they had personally experienced global warming. Study 2 – based on content analysis of people's open-ended responses – found that the most frequently described personal experiences of global warming were changes in seasons (36%), weather (25%), lake levels (24%), animals and plants (20%), and snowfall (19%). Study 3 – based on NOAA climatic data – found that most, but not all, of these detected signals are borne out in the climatic record. Study 4 – using the survey data – found that personal experience of global warming matters in that it predicts perceptions of local risk of global warming, controlling for demographics, political affiliation, and cultural beliefs about national policy outcomes. We conclude that perceived personal experience of global warming appears to heighten people's perception of the risks, likely through some combination of direct experience, vicarious experience (e.g., news media stories), and social construction. 相似文献
19.
It has been argued that public doubts about climate change have been exacerbated by cold weather events seen as a form of disconfirming evidence for anticipated ‘warming’. Although a link between perceptions of climate and weather is well-established, such assumptions have not been empirically tested. Here we show, using nationally representative data, that directly following a period of severe cold weather in the UK, three times as many people saw these events as pointing towards the reality of climate change, than as disconfirming it. This we argue was a consequence of these cold winters being incorporated into a conceptualisation of extreme or ‘unnatural’ weather resulting from climate change. We also show that the way in which people interpret cold weather is associated with levels of pre-existing scepticism about climate change, which is in turn related to more general worldviews. Drawing attention to ‘extreme’ weather as a consequence of climate change can be a useful communication device, however this is problematic in the case of seasonal cold. 相似文献
20.
Corey Lang 《Climatic change》2014,125(3-4):291-303
Learning about the causes and consequences of climate change can be an important avenue for supporting mitigation policy and efficient adaptation. This paper uses internet search activity data, a distinctly revealed preference approach, to examine if local weather fluctuations cause people to seek information about climate change. The results suggest that weather fluctuations do have an effect on climate change related search behavior, however not always in ways that are consistent with the projected impacts of climate change. While search activity increases with extreme heat in summer and extended periods of no rainfall and declines in extreme cold in winter, search activity also increases with colder winter and spring average temperatures. Some of the surprising results are magnified when heterogeneity by political ideology and educational attainment in responsiveness is modeled, which could suggest that different people have different perceptions about what types of weather define climate change or that climate science deniers seek information through Google. However, the results also indicate that for all groups in the political and educational spectrum, there exist weather events consistent with the predicted impacts of climate change that elicit increased information seeking. 相似文献