Laying the foundations for climate impacts research
This week, climate scientists and decision makers will meet to start joining the dots on predicting and preparing for the impacts of future climate change. Carbon Brief takes a look at what’s on the agenda.
Compared to other aspects of the science, identifying the consequences of climate change is a relatively new field of climate research. Existing studies are spread across many sectors, specific to certain regions and timescales – making it hard to get an overall sense of what the global impacts might be.
To improve the picture, the Impacts World 2013 conference in Potsdam this week will tackle some of the biggest challenges scientists and policymakers face when it comes to predicting climate change impacts. The conference is the first of its kind dedicated to piecing together what we already know, laying the groundwork for a more holistic approach to climate impacts in the future.
Avoiding the worst impacts
Policymakers need to know where to target their interventions to avoid the worst effects of climate change. To do this, they need to know where the biggest risks lie and how severe the consequences of climate change might be. Professor Nigel Arnell from Reading University says:
“We need to know what impacts are likely, which are plausible, and which are not.”
Decision makers rely on science to tell them how to deal with the effects of climate change. EU Climate Commissioner, Connie Hedegaard, explains:
“For evidence-based strategies and from a risk management perspective, policy-makers like us need sound information on potential climate impacts, and no one but science can deliver that.”
The problem is, research on the impacts of climate change is inherently uncertain. This is partly because climate change projections are themselves uncertain – we don’t know for sure how much things will change as global temperatures rise. Add to that the fact that it’s hard to predict how things – people and animals – will respond to change, and it’s even more difficult to say for sure what the future holds.
The body of impacts research so far is relatively sparse and disjointed. Some studies look at health impacts in one region of the world, others look at the consequences for agriculture in a specific country, others look at the very specific impacts like flooding along a particular coastline. This piecemeal approach doesn’t offer the clear global picture policymakers need to inform their decisions about dealing with climate change.
Impacts world 2013
This week’s conference is hosted by two major scientific institutions – the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA).
A quick glance at the programme reveals scientists spent this morning presenting the latest research on some of the biggest consequences of climate change. They discussed how climate change could affect ecosystems and whether droughts will increase. They assessed the risk of coastal flooding and looked at changes in water scarcity. They also considered whether more carbon dioxide will be good news for agriculture.
Later today, the Guardian journalist, Fiona Harvey, will open a debate looking at whether current climate impact research is relevant and useful for policymakers. And tomorrow scientist Alexander Otto, recently famed for a Nature Geoscience study on climate sensitivity, will chair a discussion on how to bring together modelling from different disciplines, like science and economics, to make climate impacts research more comprehensive.
Throughout the week scientists will use dedicated breakout sessions to think about some of the big questions in climate impact research – how certain are projections, is research useful for decision makers, how can research from different sectors and on different scales be brought together, and where do research gaps remain.
The conference’s organisers hope proceedings this week will mark the start of something new for the field of climate impacts research – but at this stage the hard work is really just beginning.