Research needs: vulnerability, impacts, adaptation and mitigation

1
Research needs vulnerability, impacts,
adaptation and mitigation

• Jean Palutikof
• Technical Support Unit, IPCC Working Group II
• Hadley Centre, UK Met Office

2
Research needs from the WGII TAR SPM

• Quantitative assessments, with emphasis on
  extremes, range of climate variation
• Thresholds at which strongly discontinuous
  responses triggered
• Understanding dynamic responses of ecosystems to
  multiple stresses at a range of scales
• Adaptation estimation of effectiveness and costs
  of options, opportunities, obstacles, by region,
  nation, population
• Assessment of impacts in multiple metrics, with
  consistent treatment of uncertainties, taking
  into account stabilization and other policy
  scenarios
• Tools integrated assessment, risk assessment
• Opportunities to include scientific information
  in decision making
• Improvement of systems and methods for long-term
  monitoring

3
How is WGII AR4 0rganized?

• Observed changes (1)
• New assessment methodologies (2)
• Sectoral chapters (3, 4, 5, 7, 8)
• Regional chapters
• Location (9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14)
• Typology (6, 15, 16)
• Synthesising chapters
• Adaptation (17)
• Adaptation and mitigation (18)
• Key vulnerabilities and risks (19)
• Climate change and sustainable development (20)

4
Cross-cutting themes

• Important in defining research needs and
  incorporating them into the assessment
• Uncertainties (Maynooth, May 2004)
• Article 2 and key vulnerabilities (Buenos Aires,
  May 2004)
• Adaptation mitigation (Amsterdam, September
  2004)
• Regional integration (Llubljana, September 2004)

5
1. Quantitative assessment, extremes

• This is a message to be taken into account
  throughout the assessment
• Extremes
• May lie beyond current experience and hence the
  capacity of impact models
• Need to explore literature on present-day
  responses to extremes and their management flood
  studies, windstorm impact, heat stress
• Abrupt climate change (Chapter 2). The
  literature on the impacts of the collapse of the
  thermohaline circulation
• Change in range of climate variation

6
Change in climate variation generally the
emphasis until now has been on changes in the
mean climate. We need to understand the impacts
of changes in climate variability at a range of
scales decadal, inter-annual, seasonal, daily,
and taking into account large-scale atmospheric
regimes such as ENSO and the NAO.
7
2. Thresholds

• Strongly discontinuous responses to projected
  climate change

Change in related response rate
Step change in response variable
Climate change
Ecosystems species extinctions Health arrival
of malaria
Time
8
3. Dynamic ecosystem response to multiple
stresses

• Will be addressed primarily in Chapter 4,
  Ecosystems and their Services
• CLAs Fischlin and Midgley
• But should also be taken into account in the
  regional suite of chapters
• Stresses will include climate, direct effects of
  CO2, pollutants

9
4. Adaptation

• CLAs Adger, Agrawala, Mirza
• Topics
• Methods and concepts
• Assessment of current adaptation practices
• Assessment of adaptation capacity
• Enhancing adaptation opportunities, transfer of
  technologies, constraints, adaptive learning
• Important role for practitioners
• WGII also has a chapter on Adaptation
  Mitigation (CLAs Huq, Klein)
• Mitigation strategies (top-down) and adaptation
  (bottom-up) strategies mixes, synergies
• Issues of scale and timing

10
5. Impacts metrics, consistent treatment of
uncertainties

• These are issues threading throughout the WGII
  Assessment, and concern not only Impacts but
  Chapters 17 and 18 also.
• Metrics If we seek for a more quantitative
  assessment
• How do we measure impacts, numeraires for valuing
  impacts. In monetary, non-monetary terms?
  Issues of equity, justice, rights-based
  frameworks.
• How do we achieve it in sectors such as
  ecosystems?
• Uncertainties
• The need for precision in language this is not
  new to the AR4 but remains a vital issue, related
  to credibility. What is meant by likely, very
  likely, probable etc.
• The need to state confidence/uncertainty, using
  standard errors, confidence limits.

11

• Tools integrated assessment, risk assessment to
  investigate
• Natural/human system interactions
• Consequences of policy decisions
• Chapter 2, New assessment methodologies, CLAs
  Carter (Finland), Lu (UK/China), Jones
  (Australia)
• Assessment of opportunities to include scientific
  information in decision making
• Improvement of systems and methods for long-term
  monitoring
• Recommendations likely to emerge from Chapter 1
  (CLAs Casassa (Chile), Rosenzweig (USA))

12
Role of the cross-cutting themes
13
Key vulnerabilities (Article 2)

• Chapter 19 (Patwardhan, Schneider, Semenov)
• Concepts and methods, taking into account the
  broad framework of past IPCC activities,
  Millenium Ecosystem Assessment, WEHAB framework
  developed at World Summit on Sustainable
  Development
• Identification and assessment of key
  vulnerabilities
• Role of adaptation in reducing vulnerabilities
• Climate scenarios likely to lead to the
  exceedance of thresholds, and their associated
  probabilities
• Role of mitigation in achieving stabilization and
  avoiding/delaying key vulnerabilities

14
Regional Integration

• Plan to develop regional case studies which will
  thread as a series of chapter boxes throughout
  the WGII assessment
• Starting point
• Information on regional climate changes/SLR from
  WGI
• Information on technological, economic, social
  futures from WGIII
• End point feeding into and informing Chapter 20
  (Climate change and sustainability)
• For example
• Southern Africa , drought, causes, role of
  seasonal forecasting
• Western Europe, role of NAO, abrupt climate
  change

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The writing processwhere we stand

• Author list is nearly complete but reveals itself
  to be a strongly asymptotic process
• 47 Co-ordinating Lead Authors
• 134 Lead Authors
• 40 Review Editors
• First Lead Author meeting is to be held September
  20 -23 204 in Vienna