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 - 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 - GEN A1 - Vogel, Johannes A1 - Paton, Eva A1 - Aich, Valentin A1 - Bronstert, Axel T1 - Increasing compound warm spells and droughts in the Mediterranean Basin T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe 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. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 1127 KW - Compound events KW - Warm spells KW - Droughts KW - Mediterranean basin KW - Extreme events KW - Climate change Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-496294 SN - 1866-8372 IS - 1127 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 - CHAP A1 - Bronstert, Axel A1 - Crisologo, Irene A1 - Heistermann, Maik A1 - Öztürk, Ugur A1 - Vogel, Kristin A1 - Wendi, Dadiyorto T1 - Flash-floods: more often, more severe, more damaging? BT - An analysis of hydro-geo-environmental conditions and anthropogenic impacts T2 - Climate change, hazards and adaptation options: handling the impacts of a changing climate N2 - In recent years, urban and rural flash floods in Europe and abroad have gained considerable attention because of their sudden occurrence, severe material damages and even danger to life of inhabitants. This contribution addresses questions about possibly changing environmental conditions which might have altered the occurrence frequencies of such events and their consequences. We analyze the following major fields of environmental changes. Altered high intensity rain storm conditions, as a consequence of regionalwarming; Possibly altered runoff generation conditions in response to high intensity rainfall events; Possibly altered runoff concentration conditions in response to the usage and management of the landscape, such as agricultural, forest practices or rural roads; Effects of engineering measures in the catchment, such as retention basins, check dams, culverts, or river and geomorphological engineering measures. We take the flash-flood in Braunsbach, SW-Germany, as an example, where a particularly concise flash flood event occurred at the end of May 2016. This extreme cascading natural event led to immense damage in this particular village. The event is retrospectively analyzed with regard to meteorology, hydrology, geomorphology and damage to obtain a quantitative assessment of the processes and their development. The results show that it was a very rare rainfall event with extreme intensities, which in combination with catchment properties and altered environmental conditions led to extreme runoff, extreme debris flow and immense damages. Due to the complex and interacting processes, no single flood cause can be identified, since only the interplay of those led to such an event. We have shown that environmental changes are important, but-at least for this case study-even natural weather and hydrologic conditions would still have resulted in an extreme flash flood event. KW - Flash flood KW - Climate change KW - Extreme rainfall KW - Anthropogenic impacts Y1 - 2020 SN - 978-3-030-37425-9 SN - 978-3-030-37424-2 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37425-9_12 SN - 1610-2010 SP - 225 EP - 244 PB - Springer CY - Cham 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 - Hudson, Paul A1 - Botzen, W. J. Wouter A1 - Poussin, Jennifer A1 - Aerts, Jeroen C. J. H. T1 - Impacts of flooding and flood preparedness on subjective well-being BT - a monetisation of the tangible and intangible impacts JF - Journal of Happiness Studies N2 - Flood disasters severely impact human subjective well-being (SWB). Nevertheless, few studies have examined the influence of flood events on individual well-being and how such impacts may be limited by flood protection measures. This study estimates the long term impacts on individual subjective well-being of flood experiences, individual subjective flood risk perceptions, and household flood preparedness decisions. These effects are monetised and placed in context through a comparison with impacts of other adverse events on well-being. We collected data from households in flood-prone areas in France. The results indicate that experiencing a flood has a large negative impact on subjective well-being that is incompletely attenuated over time. Moreover, individuals do not need to be directly affected by floods to suffer SWB losses since subjective well-being is lower for those who expect their flood risk to increase or who have seen a neighbour being flooded. Floodplain inhabitants who prepared for flooding by elevating their home have a higher subjective well-being. A monetisation of the aforementioned well-being impacts shows that a flood requires Euro150,000 in immediate compensation to attenuate SWB losses. The decomposition of the monetised impacts of flood experience into tangible losses and intangible effects on SWB shows that intangible effects are about twice as large as the tangible direct monetary flood losses. Investments in flood protection infrastructure may be under funded if the intangible SWB benefits of flood protection are not taken into account. KW - Flooding KW - Subjective well-being KW - Intangible losses KW - Tangible losses KW - Climate change KW - Adaptation KW - Climate change adaptation Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-017-9916-4 SN - 1389-4978 SN - 1573-7780 VL - 20 IS - 2 SP - 665 EP - 682 PB - Springer Science CY - Dordrecht ER -