TY  - JOUR
A1  - Verweij, Marco
A1  - Ney, Steven
A1  - Thompson, Michael
T1  - Cultural Theory’s contributions to climate science
BT  - reply to Hansson
JF  - European journal for philosophy of science
N2  - In his article, 'Social constructionism and climate science denial', Hansson claims to present empirical evidence that the cultural theory developed by Dame Mary Douglas, Aaron Wildavsky and ourselves (among others) leads to (climate) science denial. In this reply, we show that there is no validity to these claims. First, we show that Hansson's empirical evidence that cultural theory has led to climate science denial falls apart under closer inspection. Contrary to Hansson's claims, cultural theory has made significant contributions to understanding and addressing climate change. Second, we discuss various features of Douglas' cultural theory that differentiate it from other constructivist approaches and make it compatible with the scientific method. Thus, we also demonstrate that cultural theory cannot be accused of epistemic relativism.
KW  - Mary Douglas
KW  - Aaron Wildavsky
KW  - Cultural theory
KW  - Climate change
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-022-00464-y
SN  - 1879-4912
SN  - 1879-4920
VL  - 12
IS  - 2
PB  - Springer
CY  - Dordrecht
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Vogel, Johannes
T1  - Drivers of phenological changes in southern Europe
JF  - International Journal of Biometeorology
N2  - The life cycle of plants is largely determined by climate, which renders phenological responses to climate change a highly suitable bioindicator of climate change. Yet, it remains unclear, which are the key drivers of phenological patterns at certain life stages. Furthermore, the varying responses of species belonging to different plant functional types are not fully understood. In this study, the role of temperature and precipitation as environmental drivers of phenological changes in southern Europe is assessed. The trends of the phenophases leaf unfolding, flowering, fruiting, and senescence are quantified, and the corresponding main environmental drivers are identified. A clear trend towards an earlier onset of leaf unfolding, flowering, and fruiting is detected, while there is no clear pattern for senescence. In general, the advancement of leaf unfolding, flowering and fruiting is smaller for deciduous broadleaf trees in comparison to deciduous shrubs and crops. Many broadleaf trees are photoperiod-sensitive; therefore, their comparatively small phenological advancements are likely the effect of photoperiod counterbalancing the impact of increasing temperatures. While temperature is identified as the main driver of phenological changes, precipitation also plays a crucial role in determining the onset of leaf unfolding and flowering. Phenological phases advance under dry conditions, which can be linked to the lack of transpirational cooling leading to rising temperatures, which subsequently accelerate plant growth.
KW  - Phenology
KW  - Southern Europe
KW  - Plant functional types
KW  - Linear mixed effect model
KW  - Climate change
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-022-02331-0
SN  - 0020-7128
SN  - 1432-1254
VL  - 66
IS  - 9
SP  - 1903
EP  - 1914
PB  - Springer
CY  - New York
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Buter, Anuschka
A1  - Heckmann, Tobias
A1  - Filisetti, Lorenzo
A1  - Savi, Sara
A1  - Mao, Luca
A1  - Gems, Bernhard
A1  - Comiti, Francesco
T1  - Effects of catchment characteristics and hydro-meteorological scenarios on sediment connectivity in glacierised catchments
JF  - Geomorphology : an international journal on pure and applied geomorphology
N2  - In the past decade, sediment connectivity has become a widely recognized characteristic of a geomorphic system. However, the quantification of functional connectivity (i.e. connectivity which arises due to the actual occurrence of sediment transport processes) and its variation over space and time is still a challenge. In this context, this study assesses the effects of expected future phenomena in the context of climate change (i.e. glacier retreat, permafrost degradation or meteorological extreme events) on sediment transport dynamics in a glacierised Alpine basin. The study area is the Sulden river basin (drainage area 130 km(2)) in the Italian Alps, which is composed of two geomorphologically diverse sub-basins. Based on graph theory, we evaluated the spatio-temporal variations in functional connectivity in these two sub-basins. The graph-object, obtained by manually mapping sediment transport processes between landforms, was adapted to 6 different hydro-meteorological scenarios, which derive from combining base, heatwave and rainstorm conditions with snowmelt and glacier-melt periods. For each scenario and each sub-basin, the sediment transport network and related catchment characteristics were analysed. To compare the effects of the scenarios on functional connectivity, we introduced a connectivity degree, calculated based on the area of the landforms involved in sediment cascades. Results indicate that the area of the basin connected to its outlet in terms of sediment transport might feature a six-fold increase in case of rainstorm conditions compared to "average " meteorological conditions assumed for the base scenario. Furthermore, markedly different effects of climate change on sediment connectivity are expected between the two sub-catchments due to their contrasting morphological and lithological characteristics, in terms of relative importance of rainfall triggered colluvial processes vs temperature-driven proglacial fluvial dynamics.
KW  - Functional connectivity
KW  - Graph theory
KW  - Climate change
KW  - Geomorphic systems
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geomorph.2022.108128
SN  - 0169-555X
SN  - 1872-695X
VL  - 402
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Öztürk, Ugur
A1  - Bozzolan, Elisa
A1  - Holcombe, Elizabeth A.
A1  - Shukla, Roopam
A1  - Pianosi, Francesca
A1  - Wagener, Thorsten
T1  - How climate change and unplanned urban sprawl bring more landslides
JF  - Nature : the international weekly journal of science
N2  - More settlements will suffer as heavy rains and unregulated construction destabilize slopes in the tropics, models show.
KW  - Geophysics
KW  - Engineering
KW  - Climate change
KW  - Policy
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-02141-9
SN  - 0028-0836
SN  - 1476-4687
VL  - 608
IS  - 7922
SP  - 262
EP  - 265
PB  - Nature portfolio
CY  - Berlin
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Fuhr, Harald
T1  - The rise of the Global South and the rise in carbon emissions
JF  - Third world quarterly
N2  - Jointly with the Global North, the rise of the Global South has come at a high cost to the environment. Driven by its high energy intensity and the use of fossil fuels, the South has contributed a significant portion of global emissions during the last 30 years, and is now contributing some 63% of today's total GHG emissions (including land-use change and forestry). Similar to the Global North, the Global South's emissions are heavily concentrated: India and China alone account for some 60% and the top 10 countries for some 78% of the group's emissions, while some 120 countries account for only 22%. Without highlighting such differences, it makes little sense to use the term 'Global South'. Its members are affected differently, and contribute differently to global climate change. They neither share a common view, nor do they pursue joint interests when it comes to international climate negotiations. Instead, they are organised into more than a dozen subgroups of the global climate regime. There is no single climate strategy for the Global South, and climate action will differ enormously from country to country. Furthermore, just and equitable transitions may be particularly challenging for some countries.
KW  - Climate change
KW  - international development
KW  - energy
KW  - environmental policy
KW  - Global South
KW  - transition policy
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2021.1954901
SN  - 0143-6597
SN  - 1360-2241
VL  - 42
IS  - 11
SP  - 2724
EP  - 2746
PB  - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
CY  - Abingdon
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Kotz, Maximilian
A1  - Wenz, Leonie
A1  - Stechemesser, Annika
A1  - Kalkuhl, Matthias
A1  - Levermann, Anders
T1  - Day-to-day temperature variability reduces economic growth
JF  - Nature climate change
N2  - Elevated annual average temperature has been found to impact macro-economic growth. However, various fundamental elements of the economy are affected by deviations of daily temperature from seasonal expectations which are not well reflected in annual averages. Here we show that increases in seasonally adjusted day-to-day temperature variability reduce macro-economic growth independent of and in addition to changes in annual average temperature. Combining observed day-to-day temperature variability with subnational economic data for 1,537 regions worldwide over 40 years in fixed-effects panel models, we find that an extra degree of variability results in a five percentage-point reduction in regional growth rates on average. The impact of day-to-day variability is modulated by seasonal temperature difference and income, resulting in highest vulnerability in low-latitude, low-income regions (12 percentage-point reduction). These findings illuminate a new, global-impact channel in the climate–economy relationship that demands a more comprehensive assessment in both climate and integrated assessment models.
KW  - Climate change
KW  - Climate-change impacts
KW  - Economics
KW  - Environmental economics
KW  - Environmental impact
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-00985-5
SN  - 1758-678X
SN  - 1758-6798
VL  - 11
IS  - 4
SP  - 319
EP  - 325
PB  - Nature Publishing Group
CY  - London
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Vogel, Johannes
A1  - Paton, Eva
A1  - Aich, Valentin
A1  - Bronstert, Axel
T1  - Increasing compound warm spells and droughts in the Mediterranean Basin
JF  - Weather and climate extremes
N2  - The co-occurrence of warm spells and droughts can lead to detrimental socio-economic and ecological impacts, largely surpassing the impacts of either warm spells or droughts alone. We quantify changes in the number of compound warm spells and droughts from 1979 to 2018 in the Mediterranean Basin using the ERA5 data set. We analyse two types of compound events: 1) warm season compound events, which are extreme in absolute terms in the warm season from May to October and 2) year-round deseasonalised compound events, which are extreme in relative terms respective to the time of the year. The number of compound events increases significantly and especially warm spells are increasing strongly – with an annual growth rates of 3.9 (3.5) % for warm season (deseasonalised) compound events and 4.6 (4.4) % for warm spells –, whereas for droughts the change is more ambiguous depending on the applied definition. Therefore, the rise in the number of compound events is primarily driven by temperature changes and not the lack of precipitation. The months July and August show the highest increases in warm season compound events, whereas the highest increases of deseasonalised compound events occur in spring and early summer. This increase in deseasonalised compound events can potentially have a significant impact on the functioning of Mediterranean ecosystems as this is the peak phase of ecosystem productivity and a vital phenophase.
KW  - Compound events
KW  - Warm spells
KW  - Droughts
KW  - Mediterranean basin
KW  - Extreme events
KW  - Climate change
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wace.2021.100312
SN  - 2212-0947
VL  - 32
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Leins, Johannes A.
A1  - Banitz, Thomas
A1  - Grimm, Volker
A1  - Drechsler, Martin
T1  - High-resolution PVA along large environmental gradients to model the combined effects of climate change and land use timing
BT  - lessons from the large marsh grasshopper
JF  - Ecological modelling : international journal on ecological modelling and systems ecology
N2  - Both climate change and land use regimes affect the viability of populations, but they are often studied separately. Moreover, population viability analyses (PVAs) often ignore the effects of large environmental gradients and use temporal resolutions that are too coarse to take into account that different stages of a population's life cycle may be affected differently by climate change. Here, we present the High-resolution Large Environmental Gradient (HiLEG) model and apply it in a PVA with daily resolution based on daily climate projections for Northwest Germany. We used the large marsh grasshopper (LMG) as the target species and investigated (1) the effects of climate change on the viability and spatial distribution of the species, (2) the influence of the timing of grassland mowing on the species and (3) the interaction between the effects of climate change and grassland mowing. The stageand cohort-based model was run for the spatially differentiated environmental conditions temperature and soil moisture across the whole study region. We implemented three climate change scenarios and analyzed the population dynamics for four consecutive 20-year periods. Climate change alone would lead to an expansion of the regions suitable for the LMG, as warming accelerates development and due to reduced drought stress. However, in combination with land use, the timing of mowing was crucial, as this disturbance causes a high mortality rate in the aboveground life stages. Assuming the same date of mowing throughout the region, the impact on viability varied greatly between regions due to the different climate conditions. The regional negative effects of the mowing date can be divided into five phases: (1) In early spring, the populations were largely unaffected in all the regions; (2) between late spring and early summer, they were severely affected only in warm regions; (3) in summer, all the populations were severely affected so that they could hardly survive; (4) between late summer and early autumn, they were severely affected in cold regions; and (5) in autumn, the populations were equally affected across all regions. The duration and start of each phase differed slightly depending on the climate change scenario and simulation period, but overall, they showed the same pattern. Our model can be used to identify regions of concern and devise management recommendations. The model can be adapted to the life cycle of different target species, climate projections and disturbance regimes. We show with our adaption of the HiLEG model that high-resolution PVAs and applications on large environmental gradients can be reconciled to develop conservation strategies capable of dealing with multiple stressors.
KW  - Climate change
KW  - Land use
KW  - Population viability analysis
KW  - Stage-based model
KW  - High resolution
KW  - Environmental gradients
Y1  - 2020
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2020.109355
SN  - 0304-3800
SN  - 1872-7026
VL  - 440
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Luis Horreo, Jose
A1  - Luisa Pelaez, Maria
A1  - Breedveld, Merel Cathelijne
A1  - Suarez, Teresa
A1  - Urieta, Maria
A1  - Fitze, Patrick S.
T1  - Population structure of the oviparous South-West European common lizard
JF  - European journal of wildlife research
N2  - Gene flow is an important factor determining the evolution of a species, since it directly affects population structure and species’ adaptation. Here, we investigated population structure, population history, and migration among populations covering the entire distribution of the geographically isolated South-West European common lizard (Zootoca vivipara louislantzi) using 34 newly developed polymorphic microsatellite markers. The analyses unravelled the presence of isolation by distance, inbreeding, recent bottlenecks, genetic differentiation, and low levels of migration among most populations, suggesting that Z. vivipara louislantzi is threatened. The results point to discontinuous populations and are in line with physical barriers hindering longitudinal migration south to the central Pyrenean cordillera and latitudinal migration in the central Pyrenees. In contrast, evidence for longitudinal migration exists from the lowlands north to the central Pyrenean cordillera and the Cantabrian Mountains. The locations of the populations south to the central Pyrenean cordillera were identified as the first to be affected by global warming; thus, management actions aimed at avoiding population declines should start in this area.
KW  - Climate change
KW  - Conservation
KW  - First-generation migrant
KW  - gene flow
KW  - IBD
KW  - Zootoca vivipara
Y1  - 2019
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10344-018-1242-6
SN  - 1612-4642
SN  - 1439-0574
VL  - 65
IS  - 1
PB  - Springer
CY  - New York
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Piontek, Franziska
A1  - Kalkuhl, Matthias
A1  - Kriegler, Elmar
A1  - Schultes, Anselm
A1  - Leimbach, Marian
A1  - Edenhofer, Ottmar
A1  - Bauer, Nico
T1  - Economic Growth Effects of Alternative Climate Change Impact Channels in Economic Modeling
JF  - Environmental & resource economics : the official journal of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists
N2  - Despite increasing empirical evidence of strong links between climate and economic growth, there is no established model to describe the dynamics of how different types of climate shocks affect growth patterns. Here we present the first comprehensive, comparative analysis of the long-term dynamics of one-time, temporary climate shocks on production factors, and factor productivity, respectively, in a Ramsey-type growth model. Damages acting directly on production factors allow us to study dynamic effects on factor allocation, savings and economic growth. We find that the persistence of impacts on economic activity is smallest for climate shocks directly impacting output, and successively increases for direct damages on capital, loss of labor and productivity shocks, related to different responses in savings rates and factor-specific growth. Recurring shocks lead to large welfare effects and long-term growth effects, directly linked to the persistence of individual shocks. Endogenous savings and shock anticipation both have adaptive effects but do not eliminate differences between impact channels or significantly lower the dissipation time. Accounting for endogenous growth mechanisms increases the effects. We also find strong effects on income shares, important for distributional implications. This work fosters conceptual understanding of impact dynamics in growth models, opening options for links to empirics.
KW  - Climate change
KW  - Damages
KW  - Economic growth
KW  - Impact channels
KW  - Production factors
KW  - Persistence
Y1  - 2018
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-018-00306-7
SN  - 0924-6460
SN  - 1573-1502
VL  - 73
IS  - 4
SP  - 1357
EP  - 1385
PB  - Springer
CY  - Dordrecht
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Veh, Georg
A1  - Korup, Oliver
A1  - von Specht, Sebastian
A1  - Rößner, Sigrid
A1  - Walz, Ariane
T1  - Unchanged frequency of moraine-dammed glacial lake outburst floods in the Himalaya
JF  - Nature climate change
N2  - Shrinking glaciers in the Hindu Kush-Karakoram-Himalaya-Nyainqentanglha (HKKHN) region have formed several thousand moraine-dammed glacial lakes(1-3), some of these having grown rapidly in past decades(3,4). This growth may promote more frequent and potentially destructive glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs)(5-7). Testing this hypothesis, however, is confounded by incomplete databases of the few reliable, though selective, case studies. Here we present a consistent Himalayan GLOF inventory derived automatically from all available Landsat imagery since the late 1980s. We more than double the known GLOF count and identify the southern Himalayas as a hotspot region, compared to the more rarely affected Hindu Kush-Karakoram ranges. Nevertheless, the average annual frequency of 1.3 GLOFs has no credible posterior trend despite reported increases in glacial lake areas in most of the HKKHN3,8, so that GLOF activity per unit lake area has decreased since the late 1980s. We conclude that learning more about the frequency and magnitude of outburst triggers, rather than focusing solely on rapidly growing glacial lakes, might improve the appraisal of GLOF hazards.
KW  - Climate change
KW  - Cryospheric science
KW  - Environmental impact
KW  - Geomorphology
Y1  - 2019
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0437-5
SN  - 1758-678X
SN  - 1758-6798
VL  - 9
IS  - 5
SP  - 379
EP  - 383
PB  - Nature Publ. Group
CY  - London
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Bürger, Gerd
A1  - Pfister, A.
A1  - Bronstert, Axel
T1  - Temperature-Driven Rise in Extreme Sub-Hourly Rainfall
JF  - Journal of climate
N2  - Estimates of present and future extreme sub-hourly rainfall are derived from a daily spatial followed by a sub-daily temporal downscaling, the latter of which incorporates a novel, and crucial, temperature sensitivity. Specifically, daily global climate fields are spatially downscaled to local temperature T and precipitation P, which are then disaggregated to a temporal resolution of 10 min using a multiplicative random cascade model. The scheme is calibrated and validated with a group of 21 station records of 10-min resolution in Germany. The cascade model is used in the classical (denoted as MC) and in the new T-sensitive (MC+) version, which respects local Clausius-Clapeyron (CC) effects such as CC scaling. Extreme P is positively biased in both MC versions. Observed T sensitivity is absent in MC but well reproduced by MC+. Long-term positive trends in extreme sub-hourly P are generally more pronounced and more significant in MC+ than in MC. In units of 10-min rainfall, observed centennial trends in annual exceedance counts (EC) of P > 5 mm are +29% and in 3-yr return levels (RL) +27%. For the RCP4.5-simulated future, higher extremes are projected in both versions MC and MC+: per century, EC increases by 30% for MC and by 83% for MC+; the RL rises by 14% for MC and by 33% for MC+. Because the projected daily P trends are negligible, the sub-daily signal is mainly driven by local temperature.
KW  - Extreme events
KW  - Rainfall
KW  - Climate change
KW  - Statistical techniques
KW  - Time series
KW  - Stochastic models
Y1  - 2019
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-19-0136.1
SN  - 0894-8755
SN  - 1520-0442
VL  - 32
IS  - 22
SP  - 7597
EP  - 7609
PB  - American Meteorological Soc.
CY  - Boston
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Hudson, Paul
T1  - A comparison of definitions of affordability for flood risk adaption measures
BT  - a case study of current and future risk-based flood insurance premiums in Europe
JF  - Mitigation and adaptation strategies for global change : an international journal devoted to scientific, engineering, socio-economic and policy responses to environmental change
N2  - Risk-based insurance is a commonly proposed and discussed flood risk adaptation mechanism in policy debates across the world such as in the United Kingdom and the United States of America. However, both risk-based premiums and growing risk pose increasing difficulties for insurance to remain affordable. An empirical concept of affordability is required as the affordability of adaption strategies is an important concern for policymakers, yet such a concept is not often examined. Therefore, a robust metric with a commonly acceptable affordability threshold is required. A robust metric allows for a previously normative concept to be quantified in monetary terms, and in this way, the metric is rendered more suitable for integration into public policy debates. This paper investigates the degree to which risk-based flood insurance premiums are unaffordable in Europe. In addition, this paper compares the outcomes generated by three different definitions of unaffordability in order to investigate the most robust definition. In doing so, the residual income definition was found to be the least sensitive to changes in the threshold. While this paper focuses on Europe, the selected definition can be employed elsewhere in the world and across adaption measures in order to develop a common metric for indicating the potential unaffordability problem.
KW  - Flood risk
KW  - Insurance
KW  - Affordability
KW  - Climate change
KW  - Adaptation
KW  - Public policy
Y1  - 2018
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11027-017-9769-5
SN  - 1381-2386
SN  - 1573-1596
VL  - 23
IS  - 7
SP  - 1019
EP  - 1038
PB  - Springer
CY  - Dordrecht
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Oguntunde, Philip G.
A1  - Lischeid, Gunnar
A1  - Abiodun, Babatunde Joseph
T1  - Impacts of climate variability and change on drought characteristics in the Niger River Basin, West Africa
JF  - Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment
N2  - West Africa has been afflicted by droughts since the declining rains of the 1970s. Therefore, this study examines the characteristics of drought over the Niger River Basin (NRB), investigates the influence of the drought on the river flow, and projects the impacts of future climate change on drought. A combination of observation data and regional climate simulations of past (1986-2005) and future climates (2046-2065 and 2081-2100) were analyzed. The standardized precipitation index (SPI) and standardized precipitation and evapotranspiration index (SPEI) were used to characterize drought while the standardized runoff index (SRI) was used to quantify river flow. Results of the study show that the historical pattern of drought is consistent with previous studies over the Basin and most part of West Africa. RCA4 ensemble gives realistic simulations of the climatology of the Basin in the past climate. Generally, an increase in drought intensity and frequency are projected over NRB. The coupling between SRI and drought indices was very strong (P < 0.05). The dominant peaks can be classified into three distinct drought cycles with periods 1-2, 2-4, 4-8 years. These cycles may be associated with Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO) and El-Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO). River flow was highly sensitive to precipitation in the NRB and a 1-3 month lead time was found between drought indices and SRI. Under RCP4.5, changes in the SPEI drought frequency range from 1.8 (2046-2065) to 2.4 (2081-2100) month year(-1) while under RCP8.5, the change ranges from 2.2 (2046-2065) to 3.0 month year(-1) (2081-2100). Niger Middle sub-basin is likely to be mostly impacted in the future while the Upper Niger was projected to be least impacted. Results of this study may guide policymakers to evolve strategies to facilitate vulnerability assessment and adaptive capacity of the basin in order to minimize the negative impacts of climate change.
KW  - Drought indices
KW  - Water management
KW  - Climate change
KW  - River flow
KW  - Niger River Basin
Y1  - 2018
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00477-017-1484-y
SN  - 1436-3240
SN  - 1436-3259
VL  - 32
IS  - 4
SP  - 1017
EP  - 1034
PB  - Springer
CY  - New York
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Unterberger, Christian
A1  - Hudson, Paul
A1  - Botzen, W. J. Wouter
A1  - Schroeer, Katharina
A1  - Steininger, Karl W.
T1  - Future public sector flood risk and risk sharing arrangements
BT  - An Assessment for Austria
JF  - Ecological economics
N2  - Climate change, along with socio-economic development, will increase the economic impacts of floods. While the factors that influence flood risk to private property have been extensively studied, the risk that natural disasters pose to public infrastructure and the resulting implications on public sector budgets, have received less attention. We address this gap by developing a two-staged model framework, which first assesses the flood risk to public infrastructure in Austria. Combining exposure and vulnerability information at the building level with inundation maps, we project an increase in riverine flood damage, which progressively burdens public budgets. Second, the risk estimates are integrated into an insurance model, which analyzes three different compensation arrangements in terms of the monetary burden they place on future governments' budgets and the respective volatility of payments. Formalized insurance compensation arrangements offer incentives for risk reduction measures, which lower the burden on public budgets by reducing the vulnerability of buildings that are exposed to flooding. They also significantly reduce the volatility of payments and thereby improve the predictability of flood damage expenditures. These features indicate that more formalized insurance arrangements are an improvement over the purely public compensation arrangement currently in place in Austria.
KW  - Climate change
KW  - Adaptation
KW  - Flood risk
KW  - Insurance
KW  - Public sector
KW  - Risk reduction
Y1  - 2018
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2018.09.019
SN  - 0921-8009
SN  - 1873-6106
VL  - 156
SP  - 153
EP  - 163
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Avrami, Lydia
A1  - Sprinz, Detlef F.
T1  - Measuring and explaining the EU’s effect on national climate performance
JF  - Environmental Politics
N2  - To what extent has the European Union (EU) had a benign or retarding effect on what its member states would have undertaken in the absence of EU climate policies during 2008–2012? A measurement tool for the EU policy’s effect is developed and shows a benign average EU effect with considerable variation across countries. The EU’s policy effectiveness vis-à-vis its member states is explained by the EU’s non-compliance mechanism, the degree of usage of the Kyoto flexible mechanisms, and national pre-Kyoto emission reduction goals. Time-series cross-sectional analyses show that the EU’s non-compliance mechanism has no effect, while the ex-ante plans for using Kyoto flexible mechanisms and/or the ambitious pre-Kyoto emission reduction targets allow member states to escape constraints imposed by EU climate policy.
KW  - Climate change
KW  - policy effectiveness
KW  - EU
KW  - kyoto protocol
KW  - non-compliance
KW  - Kyoto (flexible) mechanisms
Y1  - 2018
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2018.1494945
SN  - 0964-4016
SN  - 1743-8934
VL  - 28
IS  - 5
SP  - 822
EP  - 846
PB  - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
CY  - Abingdon
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Oguntunde, Philip G.
A1  - Abiodun, Babatunde Joseph
A1  - Lischeid, Gunnar
T1  - Impacts of climate change on hydro-meteorological drought over the Volta Basin, West Africa
JF  - Global and planetary change
N2  - This study examines the characteristics of drought in the Volta River Basin (VRB), investigates the influence of drought on the streamflow, and projects the impacts of future climate change on the drought. A combination of observation data and regional climate simulations of past and future climates (1970-2013, 2046-2065, and 2081-2100) were analyzed for the study. The Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and Standardized Precipitation and Evapotranspiration (SPEI) were used to characterize drought while the Standardized Runoff Index (SRI) were used to quantify runoff. Results of the study show that the historical pattern of drought is generally consistent with previous studies over the Basin and most part of West Africa. RCA ensemble medians (RMED) give realistic simulations of drought characteristics and area extent over the Basin and the sub-catchments in the past climate. Generally, an increase in drought intensity and spatial extent are projected over VRB for SPEI and SPI, but the magnitude of increase is higher with SPEI than with SPI. Drought frequency (events per decade) may be magnified by a factor of 1.2, (2046-2065) to 1.6 (2081-2100) compared to the present day episodes in the basin. The coupling between streamflow and drought episodes was very strong (P < 0.05) for the 1-16-year band before the 1970 but showed strong correlation all through the time series period for the 4-8 -years band. Runoff was highly sensitive to precipitation in the VRB and a 2-3 month time lag was found between drought indices and streamflow in the Volta River Basin. Results of this study may guide policymakers in planning how to minimize the negative impacts of future climate change that could have consequences on agriculture, water resources and energy supply.
KW  - Drought indices
KW  - Water management
KW  - Climate change
KW  - Streamfiow
KW  - Volta Basin
Y1  - 2017
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2017.07.003
SN  - 0921-8181
SN  - 1872-6364
VL  - 155
SP  - 121
EP  - 132
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Bergholz, Kolja
A1  - May, Felix
A1  - Ristow, Michael
A1  - Giladi, Itamar
A1  - Ziv, Yaron
A1  - Jeltsch, Florian
T1  - Two Mediterranean annuals feature high within-population trait variability and respond differently to a precipitation gradient
JF  - Basic and applied ecology : Journal of the Gesellschaft für Ökologie
N2  - Intraspecific trait variability plays an important role in species adaptation to climate change. However, it still remains unclear how plants in semi-arid environments respond to increasing aridity. We investigated the intraspecific trait variability of two common Mediterranean annuals (Geropogon hybridus and Crupina crupinastrum) with similar habitat preferences. They were studied along a steep precipitation gradient in Israel similar to the maximum predicted precipitation changes in the eastern Mediterranean basin (i.e. -30% until 2100). We expected a shift from competitive ability to stress tolerance with decreasing precipitation and tested this expectation by measuring key functional traits (canopy and seed release height, specific leaf area, N-and P-leaf content, seed mass). Further, we evaluated generative bet-hedging strategies by different seed traits. Both species showed different responses along the precipitation gradient. C. crupinastrum exhibited only decreased plant height toward saridity, while G. hybridus showed strong trends of generative adaptation to aridity. Different seed trait indices suggest increased bet-hedging of G. hybridus in arid environments. However, no clear trends along the precipitation gradient were observed in leaf traits (specific leaf area and leaf N-/P-content) in both species. Moreover, variance decomposition revealed that most of the observed trait variation (>> 50%) is found within populations. The findings of our study suggest that responses to increased aridity are highly species-specific and local environmental factors may have a stronger effect on intraspecific trait variation than shifts in annual precipitation. We therefore argue that trait-based analyses should focus on precipitation gradients that are comparable to predicted precipitation changes and compare precipitation effects to effects of local environmental factors. (C) 2017 Gesellschaft fur Okologie. Published by Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.
KW  - Climate change
KW  - Functional ecology
KW  - Plant height
KW  - Drought stress
KW  - Rainfall gradient
KW  - Trait-environment relationship
KW  - Local adaptation
KW  - Phenotypic plasticity
Y1  - 2017
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.baae.2017.11.001
SN  - 1439-1791
SN  - 1618-0089
VL  - 25
SP  - 48
EP  - 58
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Jena
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Bansard, Jennifer S.
A1  - Pattberg, Philipp H.
A1  - Widerberg, Oscar
T1  - Cities to the rescue? Assessing the performance of transnational municipal networks in global climate governance
JF  - International environmental agreements: politics, law and economics
N2  - Despite the proliferation and promise of subnational climate initiatives, the institutional architecture of transnational municipal networks (TMNs) is not well understood. With a view to close this research gap, the article empirically assesses the assumption that TMNs are a viable substitute for ambitious international action under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It addresses the aggregate phenomenon in terms of geographical distribution, central players, mitigation ambition and monitoring provisions. Examining thirteen networks, it finds that membership in TMNs is skewed toward Europe and North America while countries from the Global South are underrepresented; that only a minority of networks commit to quantified emission reductions and that these are not more ambitious than Parties to the UNFCCC; and finally that the monitoring provisions are fairly limited. In sum, the article shows that transnational municipal networks are not (yet) the representative, ambitious and transparent player they are thought to be.
KW  - Climate change
KW  - Cities and regions
KW  - Urban politics
KW  - Transnational networks
Y1  - 2017
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-016-9318-9
SN  - 1567-9764
SN  - 1573-1553
VL  - 17
SP  - 229
EP  - 246
PB  - Springer
CY  - Dordrecht
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Norris, Jesse
A1  - Carvalho, Leila M. V.
A1  - Jones, Charles
A1  - Cannon, Forest
A1  - Bookhagen, Bodo
A1  - Palazzi, Elisa
A1  - Tahir, Adnan Ahmad
T1  - The spatiotemporal variability of precipitation over the Himalaya: evaluation of one-year WRF model simulation
JF  - Climate dynamics : observational, theoretical and computational research on the climate system
N2  - The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model is used to simulate the spatiotemporal distribution of precipitation over central Asia over the year April 2005 through March 2006. Experiments are performed at 6.7 km horizontal grid spacing, with an emphasis on winter and summer precipitation over the Himalaya. The model and the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission show a similar inter-seasonal cycle of precipitation, from extratropical cyclones to monsoon precipitation, with agreement also in the diurnal cycle of monsoon precipitation. In winter months, WRF compares better in timeseries of daily precipitation to stations below than above 3-km elevation, likely due to inferior measurement of snow than rain by the stations, highlighting the need for reliable snowfall measurements at high elevations in winter. In summer months, the nocturnal precipitation cycle in the foothills and valleys of the Himalaya is captured by this 6.7-km WRF simulation, while coarser simulations with convective parameterization show near zero nocturnal precipitation. In winter months, higher resolution is less important, serving only to slightly increase precipitation magnitudes due to steeper slopes. However, even in the 6.7-km simulation, afternoon precipitation is overestimated at high elevations, which can be reduced by even higher-resolution (2.2-km) simulations. These results indicate that WRF provides skillful simulations of precipitation relevant for studies of water resources over the complex terrain in the Himalaya.
KW  - WRF
KW  - Himalayas
KW  - Mesoscale
KW  - Precipitation
KW  - Climate change
KW  - Orographicprecipitation
KW  - Water resources
Y1  - 2017
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-016-3414-y
SN  - 0930-7575
SN  - 1432-0894
VL  - 49
SP  - 2179
EP  - 2204
PB  - Springer
CY  - New York
ER  -