clim 101 - fall 2008 adaptation to climate change clim 101: weather, climate and global society

CLIM 101 - Fall 2008

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Adaptation to Climate ChangeAdaptation to Climate Change

CLIM 101: Weather, Climate and Global Society


IPCC AR4 WG-II Report

• Chapter 17 - Assessment of adaptation practices, options, constraints and capacity

• Chapter 18 - Inter-relationships between adaptation and mitigation

• Chapter 19 - Assessing key vulnerabilities and the risk from climate change

• Chapter 20 - Perspectives on climate change and sustainability


Adaptation & Mitigation

• Adaptation: initiatives and measures to reduce the vulnerability of natural and human systems against actual or expected climate change effects

• Mitigation: actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to enhance sinks aimed at reducing the extent of climate change


Examples of Adaptation in Agriculture

Agriculture is strongly influenced by the availability of water. Climate change will modify rainfall, evaporation, runoff, and soil moisture storage, both seasonal mean and variability. Adaptive practices to the changes in water availability for agriculture include:

• Distribution networks • Drought tolerant crop varieties• More spending on irrigation• Rainwater storage• Weather control

– Cloud seeding – Replicating the urban heat island effect to increase rain downwind

• Damming glacial lakes– Protects communities at risk of sudden glacial dam bursts– Provides hydroelectric power


Tsho Rolpa Risk Reduction Project in Nepal as observed anticipatory adaptation

The Tsho Rolpa is a glacial lake located at an altitude of about4,580 m in Nepal. Glacier retreat and ice melt as a result ofwarmer temperature increased the size of the Tsho Rolpa from0.23 km² in 1957/58 to 1.65 km² in 1997 (Figure 17.1). The 90-100 million m³ of water, which the lake contained by this time,were only held by a moraine dam – a hazard that called forurgent action to reduce the risk of a catastrophic glacial lakeoutburst flood (GLOF).

If the dam were breached, one third or more of the water couldflood downstream. Among other considerations, this posed amajor risk to the Khimti hydropower plant, which was underconstruction downstream. These concerns spurred theGovernment of Nepal, with the support of international donors,to initiate a project in 1998 to lower the level of the lake throughdrainage. An expert group recommended that, to reduce therisk of a GLOF, the lake should be lowered three metres bycutting a channel in the moraine. A gate was constructed toallow for controlled release of water. Meanwhile, an earlywarning system was established in 19 villages downstream incase a Tsho Rolpa GLOF should occur despite these efforts.Local villagers were actively involved in the design of thesystem, and drills are carried out periodically. In 2002, the fouryear construction project was completed at a cost of US$3.2million. Clearly, reducing GLOF risks involves substantial costsand is time-consuming as complete prevention of a GLOFwould require further drainage to lower the lake level.


Tsho Rolpa Risk Reduction Project in Nepal as observed anticipatory adaptation

Tsho Rolpa hazard mitigation project site, October 2000

Engineers cut a notch in the moraine that holds back the lake; the notch was dammed and a sluice gate installed to allow controlled release of water. Sluice gate controlling flow notch cut in moraine bank of lake.

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Examples of Mitigation Programs

• Efficient vehicles• Reduced use of vehicles• Biomass fuel to replace use of oil• Efficient buildings• Replace coal power plants with natural gas, nuclear, or solar

power• Add wind turbines for power generation• Capture and store carbon from power plants• Capture and reuse hydrogen from power generation• Generate hydrogen using wind power• Stop deforestation; replant forests• Conservation tillage


Assessment of Adaptation Practices, Options, Constraints and Capacity

• Adaptation to climate change is already taking place, but on a limited basis

• Adaptation measures are seldom undertaken in response to climate change alone

• Many adaptations can be implemented at low cost, but comprehensive estimates of adaptation costs and benefits are currently lacking

• Adaptive capacity is uneven across and within societies

• There are substantial limits and barriers to adaptation


Inter-relationships Between Adaptation and Mitigation

• Effective climate policy aimed at reducing the risks of climate change to natural and human systems involves a portfolio of diverse adaptation and mitigation actions

• Decisions on adaptation and mitigation are taken at different governance levels and inter-relationships exist within and across each of these levels

• Creating synergies between adaptation and mitigation can increase the cost-effectiveness of actions and make them more attractive to stakeholders, including potential funding agencies

• It is not yet possible to answer the question as to whether or not investment in adaptation would buy time for mitigation

• People’s capacities to adapt and mitigate are driven by similar sets of factors


Assessing Key Vulnerabilities and the Risk From Climate Change

• Criteria to identify key vulnerabilities:– magnitude of impacts– timing of impacts– persistence and reversibility of impacts– likelihood (estimates of uncertainty) of impacts and

vulnerabilities and confidence in those estimates– potential for adaptation– distributional aspects of impacts and vulnerabilities– importance of the system(s) at risk


Mapping vulnerability of the agricultural sector to both climate change and trade liberalization at the district level in India

The capacity to adapt to climate change is not evenly distributed within nations. O’Brien et al. (2004) considered adaptive capacity as a key factor that influences outcomes. Districts in India that rank highest in terms of vulnerability to: (a) climate change and (b) import competition associated with economic globalization, are considered to be double exposed (depicted with hatching).A combination of biophysical, socio-economic and technological conditions were considered to influence the capacity to adapt to changing environmental and economic conditions. The biophysical factors included soil quality and depth, and groundwater availability, whereas socio-economic factors consisted of measures of literacy, gender equity, and the percentage of farmers and agricultural wage laborers in a district. Technological factors were captured by the availability of irrigation and the quality of infrastructure. Together, these factors provide an indication of which districts are most and least able to adapt to drier conditions and variability in the Indian monsoons, as well as to respond to import competition resulting from liberalised agricultural trade. The results of this vulnerability mapping show the districts that have ‘double exposure’ to both processes. It is notable that districts located along the Indo-Gangetic Plains are less vulnerable to both processes, relative to the interior parts of the country.


Assessing Key Vulnerabilities and the Risk From Climate

Change• Some observed key impacts have been at least partly attributed to

anthropogenic climate change. Among these are increases in human mortality, loss of glaciers, and increases in the frequency and/or intensity of extreme events.

• Global mean temperature changes above 1990- 2000 levels – Up to 2°C: would exacerbate current key impacts, such as those listed above , and

trigger others, such as reduced food security in many low- latitude nations. At the same time, some systems, such as global agricultural productivity, could benefit

– 2 to 4°C would result in an increasing number of key impacts at all scales, such as widespread loss of biodiversity, decreasing global agricultural productivity and commitment to widespread deglaciation of Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets.

– Greater than 4°C would lead to major increases in vulnerability, exceeding the adaptive capacity of many systems

• Regions that are already at high risk from observed climate variability and climate change are more likely to be adversely affected in the near future by projected changes in climate and increases in the magnitude and/or frequency of already damaging extreme events



Change: TAR AR4• There is new and stronger evidence of observed impacts of climate change

on unique and vulnerable systems (such as polar and high-mountain communities and ecosystems), with increasing levels of adverse impacts as temperatures increase

• There is new evidence that observed climate change is likely to have already increased the risk of certain extreme events such as heat waves, and it is more likely than not that warming has contributed to the intensification of some tropical cyclones, with increasing levels of adverse impacts as temperatures increase

• The distribution of impacts and vulnerabilities is still considered to be uneven, and low-latitude, less-developed areas are generally at greatest risk due to both higher sensitivity and lower adaptive capacity; but there is new evidence that vulnerability to climate change is also highly variable within countries, including developed countries.

• There is some evidence that initial net market benefits from climate change will peak at a lower magnitude and sooner than was assumed for the TAR, and it is likely that there will be higher damages for larger magnitudes of global mean temperature increases.

• There is now more specific guidance on possible thresholds for initiating partial or near-complete deglaciation of Greenland & W. Antarctic ice sheets.



Change - Adaptation• Adaptation can significantly reduce many potentially

dangerous impacts of climate change and reduce the risk of many key vulnerabilities.

• However, the technical, financial and institutional capacity, and the actual planning and implementation of effective adaptation, is currently quite limited in many regions.

• In addition, the risk-reducing potential of planned adaptation is either very limited or very costly for some key vulnerabilities, such as loss of biodiversity, melting of mountain glaciers and disintegration of major ice sheets.


Perspectives on Climate Change and Sustainability - I

• Vulnerability to specific impacts of climate change will be most severe when and where they are felt together with stresses from other sources

• Efforts to cope with the impacts of climate change and attempts to promote sustainable development share common goals and determinants, including access to resources (including information and technology), equity in the distribution of resources, stocks of human and social capital, access to risk-sharing mechanisms and abilities of decision-support mechanisms to cope with uncertainty

• Nonetheless, some development activities exacerbate climate-related vulnerabilities

• Climate change will result in net costs into the future, aggregated across the globe and discounted to today; these costs will grow over time


Perspectives on Climate Change and Sustainability - II

• Reducing vulnerability to the hazards associated with current and future climate variability and extremes through specific policies and programs, individual initiatives, participatory planning processes and other community approaches can reduce vulnerability to climate change

• Efforts to reduce vulnerability will be not be sufficient to eliminate all damages associated with climate change

• Climate change will impede nations’ abilities to achieve sustainable development pathways as measured, for example, by long-term progress towards the Millennium Development Goals

• Synergies between adaptation and mitigation measures will be effective until the middle of this century, but even a combination of aggressive mitigation and significant investment in adaptive capacity could be overwhelmed by the end of the century along a likely development scenario


Geographical distribution of vulnerability in 2050 with and without mitigation along an SRES A2 emissions scenario with a climate sensitivity of 5.5°C.


Geographical distribution of vulnerability in 2100 with and without mitigation along an SRES A2 emissions scenario with a climate sensitivity of 5.5°C.

clim 101 - fall 2008 adaptation to climate change clim 101: weather, climate and global society

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