Information about Adaptation To Global Warming

Adaptation to global warming covers attempts to lessen civilization's vulnerabilities to the negative effects of global warming. This in contrast to the mitigation of global warming, which involves actions meant to reduce the negative effects of global warming.

Effects of global warming

Main article: Effects of global warming

The predicted effects for the environment and for human life are numerous and varied. The main effect is an increasing global average temperature. From this flow a variety of resulting claims, namely, rising sea levels, altered patterns of agriculture, increased extreme weather and extreme weather events, and the expansion of the range of tropical diseases.

Specific anticipated effects include sea level rise of 110 to 770 mm (0.36 to 2.5 feet) between 1990 and 2100, repercussions to agriculture, possible slowing of the thermohaline circulation, reductions in the ozone layer, increased intensity and frequency of extreme weather events, lowering of ocean pH, and the spread of diseases such as malaria and dengue fever.

A summary of probable effects and recent understanding can be found in the report made for the IPCC Third Assessment Report by Working Group II.^[1] The more recent contribution of Working Group II detailing the impacts of global warming for the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report has been summarized for policymakers.^[2]

National Academy of Sciences

One prominent attempt to broach adaptation was a 1991 report by the American National Academy of Sciences, "Policy Implications of Greenhouse Warming." The National Academy report cautioned that agricultural adaptation will be essential in a greenhouse world.^[3]

IPCC Working Group II

IPCC Working Group II argues that mitigation and adaptation should be complementary components of a response strategy to global warming. Their report makes the following observations:

1. Adaptation is a necessary strategy at all scales to complement climate change mitigation efforts.
2. Those with the least resources have the least capacity to adapt and are the most vulnerable
3. Adaptation, sustainable development, and enhancement of equity can be mutually reinforcing

[1]

Adaptation is a necessary strategy

Because of the current and projected climate disruption precipitated by high levels of greenhouse gas emissions by the industrialized nations, adaptation is a necessary strategy at all scales to complement climate change mitigation efforts because we cannot be sure that all climate change can be mitigated. And indeed the odds are quite high that in the long run more warming is inevitable, given the geologic evidence of the past's most similar glacial / interglacial cycle which happened about 400,000 years ago. That similarity being determined by degree of the elliptic shape of the earth's orbit and how close the Sun is when the most land, that is the northern hemisphere, is being warmed by it.

Adaptation has the potential to reduce adverse impacts of climate change and to enhance beneficial impacts, but will incur costs and will not prevent all damages. Extremes, variability, and rates of change are all key features in addressing vulnerability and adaptation to climate change, not simply changes in average climate conditions.

Human and natural systems will to some degree adapt autonomously to climate change. Planned adaptation can supplement autonomous adaptation, though there are more options and greater possibility for offering incentives in the case of adaptation of human systems than in the case of adaptation to protect natural systems.^[4]

Poorer nations

The ability of human systems to adapt to and cope with climate change depends on such factors as wealth, technology, education, information, skills, infrastructure, access to resources, and management capabilities. There is potential for developed and developing countries to enhance and/or acquire adaptive capabilities. Populations and communities are highly variable in their endowments with these attributes, and the developing countries, particularly the least developed countries, are generally poorest in this regard. As a result, they have lesser capacity to adapt and are more vulnerable to climate change damages, just as they are more vulnerable to other stresses. This condition is most extreme among the poorest people. [2]

Mutual reinforcement

Many communities and regions that are vulnerable to climate change are also under pressure from forces such as population growth, resource depletion, and poverty. Policies that lessen pressures on resources, improve management of environmental risks, and increase the welfare of the poorest members of society can simultaneously advance sustainable development and equity, enhance adaptive capacity, and reduce vulnerability to climate and other stresses. Inclusion of climatic risks in the design and implementation of national and international development initiatives can promote equity and development that is more sustainable and that reduces vulnerability to climate change. [3]

National Center for Policy Analysis

A study by the American National Center for Policy Analysis argues that adaptation is more cost-effective than mitigation. Their report makes the following observations:

1. By 2085, the contribution of (unmitigated) warming to the above listed problems is generally smaller than other factors unrelated to climate change.
2. More important, these risks would be lowered much more effectively and economically by reducing current and future vulnerability to climate change rather than through its mitigation.
3. Finally, adaptation would help developing countries cope with major problems now, and through 2085 and beyond, whereas generations would pass before anything less than draconian mitigation would have a discernible effect. http://www.ncpa.org/pub/st/st278/index.html#a

The Kyoto Protocol

Under the Kyoto Protocol, the United States would have agreed to cut greenhouse emissions by about 400 million tons per year by 2012. In 2003 the world net output of anthropogenic carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, was about 25 billion metric tons annually[4].

Even with the Kyoto Protocol, global emissions by 2015 will rise to perhaps 9 billion tons, 50 percent higher than today's level. Such nearly-inevitable carbon buildup ought to tell us is that if greenhouse theory is right, a warming world is now unavoidable: at least through the next generation, until a renewable-fuels energy economy can be created. [5]

Criteria for assessing responses

James Titus identifies the following criteria that policy makers should use in assessing responses to global warming:

• Economic Efficiency: Will the initiative yield benefits substantially greater than if the resources were applied elsewhere?
• Flexibility: Is the strategy reasonable for the entire range of possible changes in temperatures, precipitation, and sea level?
• Urgency: Would the strategy be successful if implementation were delayed ten or twenty years?
• Low Cost: Does the strategy require minimal resources?
• Equity: Does the strategy unfairly benefit some at the expense of other regions, generations, or economic classes?
• Institutional feasibility: Is the strategy acceptable to the public? Can it be implemented with existing institutions under existing laws?
• Unique or Critical Resources: Would the strategy decrease the risk of losing unique environmental or cultural resources?
• Health and Safety: Would the proposed strategy increase or decrease the risk of disease or injury?
• Consistency: Does the policy support other national state, community, or private goals?
• Private v. Public Sector: Does the strategy minimize governmental interference with decisions best made by the private sector?

[6]

Adaptation mechanisms

Scheraga and Grambsch [7] identify 9 fundamental principles to be considered when designing adaptation policy.

1. The effects of climate change vary by region.
2. The effects of climate change may vary across demographic groups.
3. Climate change poses both risks and opportunities.
4. The effects of climate change must be considered in the context of multiple stressors and factors, which may be as important to the design of adaptive responses as the sensitivity of the change.
5. Adaptation comes at a cost.
6. Adaptive responses vary in effectiveness, as demonstrated by current efforts to cope with climate variability.
7. The systemic nature of climate impacts complicates the development of adaptation policy.
8. Maladaptation can result in negative effects that are as serious as the climate-induced effects that are being avoided.
9. Many opportunities for adaptation make sense whether or not the effects of climate change are realized.

Methods of adaptation

Examples of adaptation include defending against rising sea levels through better flood defences, and changing patterns of land use (avoiding more vulnerable areas for housing).

Adapting to changes in weather

Water management

Agricultural production

Agriculture of any kind is strongly influenced by the availability of water. Climate change will modify rainfall, evaporation, runoff, and soil moisture storage. Changes in total seasonal precipitation or in its pattern of variability are both important. The occurrence of moisture stress during flowering, pollination, and grain-filling is harmful to most crops and particularly so to corn, soybeans, and wheat. Increased evaporation from the soil and accelerated transpiration in the plants themselves will cause moisture stress; as a result there will be a need to develop crop varieties with greater drought tolerance.

The demand for water for irrigation is projected to rise in a warmer climate, bringing increased competition between agriculture--already the largest consumer of water resources in semiarid regions--and urban as well as industrial users. Falling water tables and the resulting increase in the energy needed to pump water will make the practice of irrigation more expensive, particularly when with drier conditions more water will be required per acre.

Urban areas

One strategy involves adapting urban areas to increasingly severe storms by increasing rainwater storage (domestic water butts, unpaved gardens etc) and increasing the capacity of stormwater systems (and also separating stormwater from blackwater, so that overflows in peak periods do not contaminate rivers).

According to English Nature, gardeners can help mitigate the effects of climate change by providing habitats for the most threatened species, and/or saving water by changing gardens to use plants which require less. [8]

Temperature

Weather control

Russian and American scientists have in the past tried to control the weather, for example by seeding clouds with chemicals to try to produce rain when and where it is needed. A new method being developed involves replicating the urban heat island effect, where cities are slightly hotter than the countryside because they are darker and absorb more heat. This creates 28% more rain 20-40 miles downwind from cities compared to upwind.[9] On the timescale of several decades, new weather control techniques may become feasible which would allow control of extreme weather such as hurricanes.[10]

Changes in ecosystems

The retreat of glaciers

Damming glacial lakes

Glacial Lake Outburst Floods may become a bigger concern due to the retreat of glaciers, leaving behind numerous lakes that are impounded by often weak terminal moraine dams. In the past, the sudden failure of these dams has resulted in localized property damage, injury and deaths. Glacial lakes in danger of bursting can have their moraines replaced with concrete dams (which may also provide hydroelectric power). [11].

Food production

Climate change over the next century may have significant effects on food supply, i.e., how much food is produced, as well as food security, i.e. how much food is available to people. How much, where, and when food supply and security will be affected by climate change are questions many scientists and policy-makers are examining.

There are also a variety of measures that can be taken to ensure food security in the face of less reliable agricultural yields, particularly in the tropics, where drought is expected to become more common.

As global warming causes climate change, the effects of global warming on agriculture due to the change in weather conditions is often invoked in arguments on the course of action involving prediction of climate events. These conditions, including temperature, radiation and water, determine the carrying capacity of the biosphere to produce enough food for the human population and domesticated animals. Any short-term fluctuations of the climate can have dramatic effects on the agricultural productivity. Thus, the climate has a direct incidence on food supply. Also, the often thought anthropogenic cause of global warming, an increase in the amount of carbon dioxide levels, would also have effects, both detrimental and beneficial, on crop yields.

It is hoped that a positive effect of global warming would be increased agricultural yields, because of the role of carbon dioxide in photosynthesis.

Assessment of the effects of global climate changes on agriculture might help to properly anticipate and adapt farming to maximize agricultural production.

Underdeveloped nations

Developing countries are most vulnerable to warming because they lack adaptive capacity. That capacity can be increased by enhancing economic development, human capital and the propensity for technological innovation, which are precisely the goals of sustainable development. Moreover, enhancing adaptive capacity would also increase their ability to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.

In 2000, there was a proposal made at the Sixth Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change that called for the creation of an Adaptation Fund of $1 billion per year for developing countries, especially the least developed and small island states, to enable them to combat the consequences of climate change.

References

Sources

Relevant IPCC reports

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) produced two separate reports: "Mitigation" [12] and "Adaptation and Vulnerability"[13].

Relevant United States sources

US Global Change Research Program: [14]

US National Assessment -- Preparing for a Changing Climate report: [15]

California Regional Assessment: Preparing for Climate Change: The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change for California (not on Federal site) 2002: [16]

The U.S. Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) published two reports containing detailed assessments of mitigation and adaptation strategies. "Changing by Degrees" investigates options for controlling emissions of carbon dioxide, the most troublesome anthropogenic greenhouse gas (OTA 1991). "Preparing for an Uncertain Climate" examines how managed natural resource systems--such as water, agriculture, and forests--might adapt to changing environmental conditions brought about by global warming (OTA 1993).

• "Changing by Degrees" U.S. Office of Technology Assessment 1991
• "Preparing for an Uncertain Climate" U.S. Office of Technology Assessment 1993

Other Government sources

Several countries have taken a lead in climate vulnerability assessment and adaptation planning. Their web sites contain reports, strategies, and tools which other countries can customize to their own situation.

• The United Kingdom's Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP): http://www.ukcip.org.uk/
• Australia: http://www.greenhouse.gov.au/impacts/

Other relevant sources

• The World Bank has worked with developing countries to support adaptation planning since 1999. It has also analyzed how to mainstream adaptation planning into its loan and grant programs. This page offers many publications to download: http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/ENVIRONMENT/EXTCC/0,,contentMDK:20484574%7EmenuPK:1172760%7EpagePK:148956%7EpiPK:216618%7EtheSitePK:407864,00.html
• Indigo Development offers a comprehensive page of links to government and research web sites on climate adaptation: http://www.indigodev.com/climadaptlinks.html

In addition to government and United Nations reports, an extensive research literature assesses options for response to global warming. Much of this literature addresses the potential economic costs associated with different strategies.

• Oxfam has issued a report detailing the need for high emissions countries to support adaptation in developing countries: Adapting to climate change, What’s needed in poor countries, and who should pay Oxfam Briefing Paper 104 http://www.oxfam.org/en/files/bp104_climate_change_0705.pdf/download
• "Economic Approaches to Greenhouse Warming" provides a summary of Yale economist William Nordhaus' ideas (1991). Nordhaus, who has written widely on the global warming issue, questions the motivation for countries to pursue relatively costly measures for responding to global warming given current scientific uncertainty about the problem's magnitude and estimates that potential economic impacts may not be that high, particularly for developed economies.

Economist William Cline offers an opposing view, arguing that potential economic costs of unabated global warming could be very high. In the monograph, "Global Warming: The Economic Stakes", Cline (1992) assesses the potential cost of damages from global warming and the cost of efforts to control greenhouse gas emissions.

• "Global Warming: The Economic Stakes", Cline (1992)
• "Economic Approaches to Greenhouse Warming" William Nordhaus (1991)
• "Coping with Global Climate Change: The Role of Adaptation in the United States" Pew Center on Global Climate Change, June 2004. http://www.pewclimate.org/document.cfm?documentID=319
• "Living with Global Warming" National Center for Policy Analysis http://www.ncpa.org/pub/st/st278/
• "Adaptation to Global Warming" James Titus http://users.erols.com/jtitus/JAPA/adapt.html
• "Climate's Long-Lost Twin" Richard Monastersky http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20000226/bob10.asp
• "Adapt or Die: The Science, Politics and Economics of Climate Change" Profile Books, December 2003 ISBN 1-86197-795-6
• "Economics of Carbon Sequestration" USDA Economic Research Service http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/tb1909/
• "Agricultural Adaptation to Climate Change: Issues of Longrun Sustainability" USDA Economic Research Service http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/aer740/
• "World Agriculture and Climate Change: Economic Adaptations" USDA Economic Research Service http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/aer703/
• "Policy Implications of Greenhouse Warming." National Academy of Sciences, 1991.
• "Water Allocation in a Changing Climate: Institutions and Adaptation" Springer Netherlands, ISSN 0165-0009 (Paper) 1573-1480 (Online) Volume 35, Number 2, February 1997. pp. 157 - 177.
• "Risks, opportunities, and adaptation to climate change" Joel D. Scheraga, Anne E. Grambsch, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. http://www.epa.gov/eims/global/clim_res.pdf
• McMichael et al. (2003). Climate Change and Human Health – Risk and Responses. WHO, UNEP, WMO, Geneva. ISBN 92-4-159081-5.
• Müller, B. (2002) Equity in Climate Change. The Great Divide. Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. Oxford, UK (Executive Summary)
• House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs, 2nd Report of Session 2005-06, The Economics of Climate Change Volume I: Report http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldeconaf/12/12i.pdf
• Rivington M, Matthews KB, Buchan K and Miller D (2005) "An integrated assessment approach to investigate options for mitigation and adaptation to climate change at the farm-scale", NJF Seminar 380, Odense, Denmark, 7-8 November 2005.

•  • [ e] Global warming and Climate change
Temperatures	Instrumental record Satellite record Past 1000 years Since 1880 Geologic record
Causes	Scientific opinion on climate change Anthropogenic: Carbon dioxide Climate sensitivity Deforestation Global dimming Global warming potential Greenhouse effect Greenhouse gases Keeling Curve Urban heat island Natural: Cloud forcing Glaciation Global cooling Ocean variability Orbital variations Plate tectonics Radiative forcing Solar variation Volcanism
Models	Global climate model
Issues	Ozone depletion Ocean acidification
Politics	Global warming controversy Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Scientists opposing the mainstream assessment
Effects	Sea level rise Glacier retreat Climate change and agriculture National Assessment on Climate Change Economics of global warming Shutdown of thermohaline circulation
Mitigation	Individual and political action on climate change Kyoto Protocol: Clean Development Mechanism Schemes: Emissions trading Personal carbon trading Carbon tax Carbon offsets Carbon dioxide sink (Carbon sequestration) Energy conservation: Efficient energy use Renewable energy Renewable energy commercializationRenewable energy development Soft energy path
Adaptation	United Kingdom Climate Change Programme European Climate Change Programme