Roger Jones

An Environmental Risk Assessment/Management Framework for Climate Change Impact Assessments

This paper presents an environmental risk assessment/risk management framework to assess the impacts of climate change on individual exposure units identified as potentially vulnerable to climate change. This framework is designed specifically to manage the systematic uncertainties that accompany the propagation of climate change scenarios through a sequence of biophysical and socio-economic climate impacts. Risk analysis methods consistent with the IPCC Technical Guidelines for Assessing Climate Change Impacts and Adaptations are set within a larger framework that involves stakeholders in the identification, assessment and implementation of adaptation measures. Extensive consultation between parties occurs in a flexible structure that embeds scientific methods of risk analysis within a broad setting of social decision-making. This format is consistent with recent forms of environmental risk assessment/management frameworks. The risk analysis links key climatic variables expressed as projected ranges of climate change with an upper and lower limit, with impact thresholds identified collaboratively by researchers and stakeholders. The conditional probabilities of exceeding these thresholds are then assessed (probabilities using this method are conditional as the full range of uncertainty for the various drivers of climate change, and their probability distributions, remains unknown). An example based on exceeding irrigation demand limited by an annual farm cap is used to show how conditional probabilities for the exceedance of a critical threshold can be used to assess the need for adaptation. The time between the identification of an acceptable level of risk and its exceedance is identified as a window of adaptation.The treatment of risk consists of two complementary actions, adaptation to anticipated changes in climate and the mitigation of climate change through reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Both of these actions will reduce the risk of critical thresholds being exceeded. The potential of this framework for addressing specific requirements of the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change is discussed.

Managing Uncertainty in Climate Change Projections – Issues for Impact Assessment

Climate change projection is the term the IPCC Second Assessment Report (SAR) uses for model estimates of future climate. In that report, projections are presented in two forms: as single model scenarios and as projected ranges of uncertainty. In climate studies, scenarios are commonly regarded as being plausible, but have no further probability attached. Projected ranges of uncertainty can have probabilities attached to the range and within the range, so are more likely to occur than individual scenarios. However, as there is significant remaining uncertainty beyond the projected range, such projections cannot be regarded as forecasts. An appropriate terminology is required to communicate this distinction. The sources of uncertainty in projected ranges of global temperature to 2100 are analysed by Visser et al. (2000), who recommend that all major sources of uncertainty be incorporated into global warming projections. This will expand its projected range beyond that of the IPCC SAR. Further sources of uncertainties are contained within projections of regional climate. Several strategies that aim to manage that uncertainty are described. Uncertainty can also be managed where it is unquantifiable. An example is rapid climate change, where discarding the term climate ‘surprises’ in favour of more precise terminology to aid in identifying possible adaptation strategies, is recommended.

Enhancing the Relevance of Shared Socioeconomic Pathways for Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability Research

This paper discusses the role and relevance of the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) and the new scenarios that combine SSPs with representative concentration pathways (RCPs) for climate change impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability (IAV) research. It first provides an overview of uses of social–environmental scenarios in IAV studies and identifies the main shortcomings of earlier such scenarios. Second, the paper elaborates on two aspects of the SSPs and new scenarios that would improve their usefulness for IAV studies compared to earlier scenario sets: (i) enhancing their applicability while retaining coherence across spatial scales, and (ii) adding indicators of importance for projecting vulnerability. The paper therefore presents an agenda for future research, recommending that SSPs incorporate not only the standard variables of population and gross domestic product, but also indicators such as income distribution, spatial population, human health and governance.

Vulnerability to Climate Variability and Change in East Timor

Abstract This paper presents the results of a preliminary study of climate vulnerability in East Timor. It shows the results of projections of climate change in East Timor. The countrys climate may become hotter, drier, and increasingly variable. Sea levels are likely to rise. The paper then considers the implications of these changes on three natural resources—water, soils, and the coastal zone—and finds all to be sensitive to changes in climate and sea level. Changes in the abundance and distribution of these resources is likely to cause a reduction in agricultural production and food security, and sea-level rise is likely to damage coastal areas, including Dili, the capital city.

Climatic Background to Past and Future Floods in Australia

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses climatic background and future floods in Australia. Floods in the Murray–Darling Basin (MDB) can be due to local severe storms leading to flash flooding, or to heavy rains from much larger scale systems leading to basis-wide great floods that can take months to travel downstream. The Basin is subject to large scale rain events from diverse synoptic origins, mainly tropical lows in the summer half year in the northern region and fronts and cutoff lows in the southern sector during the winter half year. Great year-to-year variability is associated with fluctuations in the El Nino–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) regime, and there have been marked interdecadal variations in rainfall in the past, some of which have occurred abruptly. Changes due to the enhanced greenhouse effect will include higher temperatures and increased potential evaporation, and likely increases in rainfall intensity associated with major storm systems, including cutoff lows of both tropical and midlatitude origin. Annual mean rainfall is generally expected to increase in northern regions of the MDB, especially inland, but to decrease in the southernmost areas south of the Murray River. Changes in rainfall intensity in models are scale-dependent, with finer resolution models generally predicting larger increases. More work is needed to resolve these uncertainties, and to apply flood routing to rainfall scenarios.

Tropical coastal ecosystems and climate change prediction: global and local risks

Coastal marine ecosystems occupy shallow coastal waters and extend up rivers and across coastal lands to the normal inland influence of tidal seawater intrusion. In the tropics (Figure 1), coastal ecosystems are characterized more than anything else by mangroves, seagrass meadows and tropical calcareous reefs (i.e., coral reefs and coralline algae ridges) – the rich, diverse and interconnected engines of marine productivity for tropical islands, coasts and continental shelves. Our goal is to consider the prospects for these habitats in the relatively short term of a few decades- as their local environmental settings change with the changing global climate. We focus on the resilience of their defining and essential attributes, and their values to humans.

Dealing with Dementia.

Dementia describes a range of common and serious degenerative diseases that have huge implications for individuals, families, communities, and economies. Over 800 000 people in the UK have dementia, which affects many millions in Europe and approaching 50 million people worldwide.1 The commonest forms of dementia are Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia, and Lewy body dementia. Different types of dementia have different clinical features and run different courses, but all substantially reduce life expectancy, with a mean survival in older people with Alzheimer’s of a little over 4 years.2 The incidence and the health and social consequences of dementia are steadily escalating, creating major problems in both the developed world and in the resource-poor countries of the global South, where the majority …

Assessing Climate Change Impacts and Risks on Three Salt Lakes in Western Victoria, Australia

ABSTRACT Salt lakes are significant landscape features in Australia. The three studied lakes, in particular, are recognized as being of national (Gnotuk) and international significance (Keilambete, Bullenmerri) for their ecological, social, and scientific values. The lake levels have been declining since the mid-1800s, the likely cause being a natural climate-driven decrease in precipitation and increase in evaporation. With the prospect of human-induced climate change further altering regional climate, this article presents a framework and results for assessing the impacts and risks of climate change on lake levels and salinity. A lake water balance model was applied with the inputs of climate observations and modeled future climate variables. The latter are generated from 14 general circulation model simulations used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report. The resulting scenarios represent the range of likely outcomes of regional climate under enhanced greenhouse conditions to year 2100. Models project that all lake levels are likely to continue to decline, with the declines for Bullenmerri expected to exceed those of the other two lakes. The salinity in the lakes is likely to increase, with the rate of increase likely to become more rapid over time. Some implications of these findings are discussed.

Editor's briefing.

Its a mad world my masters! The BMA has led the profession into what I consider to be ill-judged and very badly timed industrial action, the senior academic in charge of the NHS Commissioning Board has attributed excess weekend emergency admissions to GPs playing too much golf, and other powers-that-be have instructed healthcare professionals not to use the word obesity in relation to fat patients — who presumably have instead, in the ghastly argot, ‘weight management issues’. I once worked for a wonderful obstetrician who, in a soft brogue and with an admiring twinkle in his eye, could ask his patients ‘And tell me Mrs Davies, how is it that a woman like you can have become so terribly fat?’ without giving the slightest offence. But I recognise that the climate has changed. While I was always comfortable enquiring of a patient with alcohol on their breath at morning surgery if they had needed an eye-opener, or asking someone with a hacking cough and darkly nicotine-stained fingers to put two and …

New Year’s Resolutions

In a few months’ time the UK will have a new government. That much is certain, but the political, economic, and medical landscape beyond May 2015 is anything but. In the meantime the health service has become a political football as never before. Bidding wars rage over the number of new GPs that the parties will produce; by magic, of course, for where will they come from? How many of the NHS’s missing £8 billion will the others come up with before 15 May? An extra £300 million for general practice sounds a lot, but represents only around £6000 per annum to support the work of each member of the RCGP. Time then to steady the ship, to try to work out what to protect, as well as …