查看更多>>摘要：Abstract William Stanley Jevons identified what has come to be known as the Jevons paradox: the observation that improvements in energy efficiency are often connected with rising, not falling, energy consumption. This insight informs the subsequent economic concept of the “rebound effect” and the expansive research investigating this relationship. We provide an overview of key empirical research, which establishes that large rebounds in energy consumption connected with rising energy efficiency are common across various units of analysis, including the national, subnational (e.g., states/provinces/cities; power plants), and household levels. We then focus on the range of theoretical arguments that have been put forward to explain why rebounds occur in varying contexts, with particular consideration of implications for efforts to move away from fossil fuels. We emphasize the important distinction between direct effects, indirect effects, and economy‐wide effects in regard to rebounds, particularly those connected with macro‐structural forces, for understanding the causes and implications of the Jevons paradox. This article is categorized under: The Carbon Economy and Climate Mitigation > Decarbonizing Energy and/or Reducing Demand
Tom MatthewsMichael ByrneRadley HortonConor Murphy...
12页
查看更多>>摘要：Abstract Anthropogenic forcing is driving energy accumulation in the Earth system, including increases in the sensible heat content of the atmosphere, as measured by dry‐bulb temperature—the metric that is almost universally used for communications about climate change. The atmosphere is also moistening, though, representing an accumulation of latent heat, which is partly concealed by dry‐bulb temperature trends. We highlight that, consistent with basic theory, latent heat gains are outpacing sensible heat gains over about half of the Earth's surface. The difference is largest in the tropics, where global “hotspots” of total heat accumulation are located, and where regional disparities in heating rates are very poorly represented by dry‐bulb temperatures. Including latent heat in climate‐change metrics captures this heat accumulation and therefore improves adaptation‐relevant understanding of the extreme humid heat and precipitation hazards that threaten these latitudes so acutely. For example, irrigation can lower peak dry‐bulb temperatures, but amplify latent heat content by a larger margin, intensifying dangerous heat stress. Based on a review of the research literature, our Perspective therefore calls for routine use of equivalent temperature, a measure that expresses the combined sensible and latent heat content of the atmosphere in the familiar units of?°C or K. We recognize that dry‐bulb air temperature must remain a key indicator of the atmospheric state, not least for the many sectors that are sensitive to sensible heat transfer. However, we assert here that more widespread use of equivalent temperature could improve process understanding, public messaging, and adaptation to climate change. This article is categorized under: Assessing Impacts of Climate Change > Observed Impacts of Climate Change Paleoclimates and Current Trends > Earth System Behavior
Lauren K. M. SmithHanna C. RossStephanie A. ShouldiceSarah Elizabeth Wolfe...
37页
查看更多>>摘要：Abstract Global climate change awareness is increasing, but efforts to convey information can trigger undesirable behaviors, including denial, skepticism, and increased resource consumption. It is therefore essential to more fully investigate social–psychological responses to climate information and messaging if we are to prompt, support, and sustain pro‐environmental behaviors. Yet consideration of these responses is typically absent from interdisciplinary environmental study designs. Of specific relevance is research using social psychology's Terror Management Theory (TMT) showing that people's efforts to repress mortality salience (MS) or awareness significantly influence their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Research on MS's influence on climate change beliefs is progressing but, to date, a systematic scoping review of the literature has been unavailable. Here, we provide such a review. We propose that TMT insights and methods should be better integrated into research designs to guide climate communications and to generate the comprehensive cultural and behavioral changes needed to address societies' climate problems. We introduce a methodological framework for interdisciplinary researchers to incorporate TMT into their research designs and to help practitioners anticipate how their mortality‐laden messaging could trigger unintentional social‐psychological responses that degrade climate communication strategies. This article is categorized under: Perceptions, Behavior, and Communication of Climate Change > Behavior Change and Responses
Daniel A. FriessMaria Fernanda AdameJanine B. AdamsCatherine E. Lovelock...
15页
查看更多>>摘要：Abstract The world's nations are committed to keeping global temperature rises to less than 2°C to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Such a target is crucial for mangrove forests, because they are located primarily in tropical and subtropical regions that are expected to see large changes in climatic conditions; their intertidal location and sensitivity to changes in environmental conditions means that mangroves are expected to be on the front line of climate change impacts. We conceptualize what a 2°C world might look like for mangroves, and in particular the potential negative and positive responses of the mangrove ecosystem to anticipated changes in future atmospheric CO2 concentrations, temperature, sea level, cyclone activity, storminess and changes in the frequency, and magnitude of climatic oscillations. We also assess the spatial distribution of such stressors, their relative contributions to mangrove ecosystem dynamics, and discuss the challenges in attributing mangrove ecosystem dynamics to climate change versus other global change stressors. Such knowledge can help future‐proof conservation and restoration activities, improve the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's confidence level ascribed to climate change impacts on mangrove forests, and highlight the key temperature thresholds beyond which the future of the world's mangroves is less certain. This article is categorized under: Climate, Ecology, and Conservation > Modeling Species and Community Interactions Climate, Ecology, and Conservation > Observed Ecological Changes
Hermann F. JungkunstJan G?pelThomas HorvathSimone Ott...
17页
查看更多>>摘要：Abstract Soil organic carbon (SOC) holds the largest terrestrial carbon stock because of soil conditions and processes that favor soil carbon persistence. Vulnerable to climate change, SOC may cross a tipping point toward liberating carbon‐based greenhouse gases, implying massive self‐amplifying SOC‐ climate interactions. Estimates of SOC persistence are challenging as we still lack broad mechanistic insights. Upscaling mechanistic details from small to larger scales is challenging because the driving factors are not available at the needed resolution. Downscaling is problematic as many modeling studies point to the highest uncertainties deriving from the SOC response to climate change, while models themselves have difficulties in replicating contemporary soil properties and dynamics. To bridge the problems of scaling, strict process orientation seems adequate. Holdridge Life Zones (HLZ) classification, as one example, is a climate classification framework at a mesoscale that provides a descriptive approach to facilitate the identification of potential hotspots and coldspots of SOC‐climate interaction. Establishing coordinated experiments across all HLZ, but also including multiple global change drivers, has the potential to advance our understanding of general principles regulating SOC‐climate interaction and SOC persistence. Therefore, regionally tailored solutions for both experiments and modeling are urgently needed and can lead to better management of soil and the ecosystem services provided. Improving “translations” from the scales relevant for process understanding to the scales of decision‐making is key to good management and to predict the fate of our largest terrestrial carbon stock. This article is categorized under: Integrated Assessment of Climate Change > Integrated Scenario Development
查看更多>>摘要：Abstract How will the theories and practices of democracy fare in a climate changing world? Are conventional democratic institutions ultimately doomed or are they able to become more responsive to a changing climate? Is there a need to reimagine democracy and how might it be reimagined? This article reviews the different responses to these questions by distinguishing between three “political imaginaries” in which the relationship between climate change and democracy takes distinct forms. I start by showing how the concept of “political imaginaries” can facilitate the comparison of the different ways in which the relation between democracy and climate change is constructed, before reviewing three such imaginaries. The skeptical imaginary, found in the “eco‐authoritarianism” of the 1970s that is echoed by much sociopolitical analysis today, casts doubt on the possibilities of democratic mechanisms to respond adequately and swiftly to the problem of climate change. Those who resist such skepticism often defend democracy by arguing that institutions and processes of democracy can be made more “ecologically rational”—the rational imaginary of climate democracy involves improvements in political representation and participation. Finally, I present the alternative radical democratic imaginary, in which the crisis of climate change provides a moment for the rupture of existing sociopolitical structures and the formation of alternatives. The article concludes that although none of these imaginaries is able to capture the entirety of climate change politics around the world, the radical democratic imaginary is responsive to the inevitable and valuable plurality around the issue of climate change. This article is categorized under: Climate, Nature, and Ethics > Ethics and Climate Change Policy and Governance > Multilevel and Transnational Climate Change Governance
查看更多>>摘要：Abstract In an integrated global economy, trade policy and climate policy are closely intertwined. This paper adopts an interdisciplinary approach to provide an overview of the key debates in economics, political science, and legal studies related to globalization and climate change. We identify a number of emerging issues that deserve increased attention in future research in this direction. These include international financial flows, migration, telecommunication, and digitization as well as changing lifestyles and consumption patterns across the globe. We also present potential research question regarding the diversification of import and export portfolios in the face of growing climate impacts and the decarbonization of industry, aviation, and shipping. Finally, we discuss how these recent developments could shape trade and climate policy formulation. We conclude that ambitious climate policies seem more likely to flourish in an open world trading system which provides sufficient flexibility for individual countries to adopt nationally appropriate climate policies. This article is categorized under: Climate Economics?>?Economics and Climate Change
查看更多>>摘要：Abstract Independent evidence from Europe and Asia shows that tree‐ring stable isotopes can reveal persistent long‐term hydroclimate trends that are generally not captured by more traditional dendroclimatic studies using tree‐ring width or density. Since the recently observed long‐term discrepancy between flatter “growth‐dependent” and more varying “growth‐independent” climate proxy data is unrelated to possible biases of statistical age‐trend removal, I call for a conceptual rethinking of the predictive power of different tree‐ring parameters for reconstructing climate variability on interannual to multimillennial timescales. I describe why traditional “growth‐dependent” tree‐ring width and wood density measurements usually lack abiotic signals on ultra‐long timescales, whereas “growth‐independent” carbon and oxygen isotopic ratios from tree‐ring cellulose can capture environmental variation well beyond the segment length of individual tree‐ring samples. Caution is therefore advised when information from diverse tree‐ring parameters is combined in multiproxy reconstructions of Holocene climate that aim to reflect the full range of interannual to multimillennial variability. This Perspective not only emphasizes the paleoclimatic value that can be obtained from tree‐ring stable isotopes in living and relict wood. It also stresses the need for developing new high‐resolution isotopic datasets from different species and regions in both hemispheres to supplement the existing tree‐ring record. This article is categorized under: Paleoclimates and Current Trends > Paleoclimate
查看更多>>摘要：Abstract The notion of disproportionate impacts of climate change on certain groups and regions has long been a part of policy debates and scientific inquiry, and was instrumental to the emergence of the “Loss and Damage” (L&D) policy agenda in international negotiations on climate change. Yet, ‘disproportionality’ remains relatively undefined and implicit in science on loss and damage from climate change. A coherent theoretical basis of disproportionality is needed for advancing science and policy on loss and damage. It is necessary to ask: What is disproportionate, to whom, and in relation to what? We critically examine the uses of disproportionality in loss and damage scholarship by analyzing how disproportionality is treated in the literature conceptually, methodologically, and empirically. We review publications against a set of criteria derived from seminal work on disproportionality in other fields, mainly environmental justice and disaster studies that have analyzed environment–society interactions. We find disproportionality to be dynamic and multidimensional, spanning the themes of risks, impacts, and burdens. Our results show that while the concept is often used in loss and damage scholarship, its use relies on unarticulated notions of justice and often lacks conceptual, methodological and empirical grounding. Disproportionality also appears as a boundary concept, enabling critical and multiscalar explorations of historical processes that shape the uneven impacts of climate change, alongside social justice and normative claims for desired futures. This emerging area of science offers an opportunity to critically re‐evaluate the conceptualization of the relationship between climate‐change‐related impacts, development, and inequality. This article is categorized under: Climate, Nature, and Ethics > Climate Change and Global Justice Climate and Development > Social Justice and the Politics of Development
NSTL
Wiley