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Indicators have been proposed as critical elements for sustained climate assessment. Indicators provide a foundation for assessing change on an ongoing basis and presenting that information in a manner that is relevant to a broad range of decisions. As part of a sustained US National Climate Assessment, a pilot indicator system was implemented, informed by recommendations and (Kenney et al. 2014; Janetos and Kenney 2015; Kenney et al. Clim Chang 135(1):85–96, 2016). This paper extends this work to recommend a framework and topical categories for a system of climate indicators for the nation. We provide an overview of the indicator system as a whole: its goals, the design criteria for the indicators and the system as a whole, the selection of sectors, the use of conceptual models to transparently identify relevant indicators, examples of the actual indicators proposed, our vision for how the overall network can be used, and how it could evolve over time. Individual papers as part of this special issue provide system or sector-specific details as to how to operationalize the conceptual framework; these recommendations do not imply any decisions that are made ultimately by US federal agencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the present paper is to examine a selection of macro- and micro-linguistic features (at text and sentence/word level respectively) of the South-African Green Paper 'National Climate Change Response' from 2010. Our overarching assumption is that the Green Paper needs to handle competing interests, beliefs and voices in a narrative structure favouring specific courses of action. How does the government portray the complex natural and societal phenomenon of climate change, and how does it take into account the many and often competing national and international views and interests which come into play? Our hypothesis is that the Green Paper constructs a narrative and that it relates to a number of voices other than that of the authors, through linguistic markers of polyphony, such as negation, sentence connectives, adverbs and reported speech. Thus we propose a narrative and polyphonic analysis of the Green Paper, at the level of the text as a whole (macro-level) but also with attention to linguistic constructions of polyphony or 'multi-voicedness' (micro-level). We find that the narrative-polyphonic properties of the Green Paper contribute to a strategy for building consensus on climate change policy. The South African government assumes the role of main hero in its own climate change 'story', and there are subtle forms of interaction with different and typically non-identified voices, such as concessive constructions and presuppositions. These results support our overarching interpretation of the whole document as striving to impose a South African consensus on the issue of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his article Willems (Clim Chang 120(4):931-944, ) proposed a methodology to analyse extremes in rainfall series. When applying it to artificially generated, non-cyclic random variables we were able to detect cyclic behavior. Therefor we had a closer look on the methodology. Here we discuss our considerations, why this method generates cycles, depending on chosen subperiods and their coherence between detected cycle lengths. To verify these relationships some examples based on random data samples are given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Tibetan Plateau (TP), the Third Pole of the world, has experienced significant warming over the past several decades. Previous studies have mostly relied on station-observed air temperature (Ta), reanalysis data, and remotely sensed land surface temperature (LST) to analyze the warming trend over the TP. However, the uneven distribution of stations, the poor spatial resolution of reanalysis data, and the differences between LST and Ta may lead to biased warming rates. This paper first maps Ta over the TP from 2001 to 2020 based on multi-source remote sensing data, and then quantifies the spatio-temporal variations of remotely sensed Ta and elevation dependent warming (EDW) of this region. The monthly mean Ta is estimated using machine learning (ML) method year by year, and its accuracy is validated based on station-observed Ta. The coefficient of determination (R2 ranges from 0.97 to 0.98 and the mean absolute error (MAE) ranges from 1.01 to1.04 °C. The remotely sensed Ta is used to analysis warming trend and EDW over the TP. The overall warming trend of the TP during 2001–2020 is 0.17 ℃/10a, and warming mainly distributed in the eastern TP, central TP and western Kunlun Mountains. Among the four seasons, autumn shows the most significant warming, tripling the annual warming rate. Winter shows a significant cooling trend, with the warming rate of -0.18 ℃/10a. The study also reveales the existence of EDW at both the annual and seasonal scales. This paper suggests the potential of remotely sensed Ta in global warming study, and also provides an improved understanding of climate warming over the TP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The politicization of climate change and the difficulty of achieving multi-level or sectoral stakeholder coordination are common institutional barriers to effective climate change adaptation governance outcomes. In the U.S., quasi-government organizations (QGOs) were designed to overcome such barriers, albeit traditionally for non-climatic purposes. This study’s objective is to illustrate how the design characteristics of QGOs may be useful for overcoming the above climate adaptation barriers. Methodologically, this paper analyzes six case studies, selected to illustrate the major characteristics of QGOs, of climate-focused and non climate-focused QGOs at the sub-national level in the U.S. Non climate-focused examples are included for comparison with, and to supplement, the limited number of QGOs currently working on climate efforts. For each case, this study focuses on eight design characteristics: seven that represent measures of political and financial independence, and one focused on board composition, to illustrate the extent to which QGOs enable multi-level and multi-sectoral stakeholder coordination. This study finds that among the assortment of existing QGO designs some are particularly well suited to overcoming either the politicization of climate adaptation policy or obstacles to enhancing policy coordination, while some reduce both, albeit to a lesser extent. Broadly, this paper concludes that QGOs can strengthen effective action by depoliticizing informational sources and fostering cross scale coordination of planning and implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, a major challenge for climate science is to overcome what is called the “usability gap” between the projections derived fromclimate models and the needs of the end-users. Regional Climate Models (RCMs) are expected to provide usable information concerning a variety of impacts and for a wide range of end-users. It is often assumed that the development of more accurate, more complex RCMs with higher spatial resolution should bring process understanding and better local projections, thus overcoming the usability gap. In this paper, I rather assume that the credibility of climate information should be pursued together with two other criteria of usability, which are salience and legitimacy. Based on the Swiss climate change scenarios, I study the attempts at meeting the needs of end-users and outline the trade-off modellers and users have to face with respect to the cascade of uncertainty. A conclusion of this paper is that the trade-off between salience and credibility sets the conditions under which RCMs can be deemed adequate for the purposes of addressing the needs of end-users and gearing the communication of the projections toward direct use and action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a methodology for developing a social Cumulative Effects Assessment (CEA) which analyses the impacts of climate change on maritime crime and maritime insecurities. The use of a CEA methodology, including the use of the Effect to Impact Pathway will enable mapping the relationships between certain ‘Activities’ (e.g. human-induced emissions of greenhouse gasses), the ‘Pressure’ engendered (e.g. warming sea temperatures) and their ‘Impacts’ (e.g. food shortages) via ‘Receptors’ (e.g. fishing communities) on specific sectors of society (in this case maritime migration and maritime crime, e.g. illegal fishing). This paper provides a Proof of Concept (PoC) for using such a methodology and shows the applicability of a multidisciplinary approach in understanding causal chains. In this PoC, the authors are generating a Non-Geographic Assessment Map that investigates the ‘Impacts’ that the human-induced greenhouse gas emissions have on maritime security. The proposed analytical tool can then be applied in further studies to assess the dependencies and synergies between climate change and the occurrence of maritime insecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence of the health impact of climate change has been extensively documented in recent scholarly literature. In order to mitigate the adverse health effects induced by climate change, the need for conducting vulnerability assessments (VAs) has been emphasised. A higher vulnerability to climate change is often linked with substantial risks to human lives and built environment. Despite the potential of VAs in alleviating risks posed by climate change, only a limited amount of scholarly work in this domain has been conducted in the Indian context. The present research addresses this lacuna and contributes to the limited scholarship on climate change and health VAs in India. Drawing on the VA framework introduced by the fourth assessment report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this paper estimates district-level health vulnerabilities caused by climate change using multi-dimensional indices. The indices are multi-dimensional since they integrate 50 district-level indicators from 8 data sources for all 640 Census 2011 districts. The statistical technique of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) has been used for integrating the indicators. The findings of this paper indicate that nearly 56% of India’s population in 344 districts is highly vulnerable to the health impact of climate change. The results show that high vulnerability in certain districts is mediated by high adaptive capacity (AC). Since climate exposure varies across districts, the paper highlights the need for local-level responses and Complex Adaptive System (CAS) thinking to understand the implications of climate change and human health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the operationalization of climate-related indicators in violent conflict research. The climate-conflict narrative gained traction in recent decades and climate change is often referred to as a 'threat multiplier' by both policy makers and scholars. Yet, the relationships between climate-related phenomena and violent conflict are complex and context-specific. However, limited attention has been given to the climatic indicators applied in climate-conflict research. This paper addresses that gap by analyzing 32 studies published from 2004 to 2020 on the operationalization of climatic indicators and their relationship with violent conflict. It first categorizes climate indicators operationalization into five clusters: natural disasters, basic climate variability, advanced climate variability, freshwater availability, and the ENSO. The study evaluates the climate indicators for each cluster and shows that at an aggregate level these clusters examine 68 different climate representations. When paired with their respective conflict types, it finds a total of 113 climate-conflict combinations. Most operationalizations represent various forms of climate-related phenomena and variability rather than climate change. Some indicators are advancements over time, for example moving from changes in average rainfall to standardized precipitation indices. However, other indicators refer to various natural processes, making it challenging to determine whether climatic variability impacts conflict. The paper then demonstrates a discrepancy between the pathways through which climate may affect violent conflict and the representation of these pathways in the selected climate indicators. It discusses how the selection and operationalization of climate indicators requires careful consideration, and the phenomena researched should be well-specified in research findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The continuing effects of climate change require farmers and growers to have greater understanding of how these changes affect crop production. However, while climatic data is generally available to help provide much of that understanding, it can often be in a form not easy to digest. The proposed Combined Location Online Weather Data (CLOWD) framework is an easy-to-use online platform for analysing recent and historical weather data of any location within Australia at the click of a map. CLOWD requires no programming skills and operates in any HTML5 web browser on PC and mobile devices. It enables comparison between current and previous growing seasons over a range of environmental parameters, and can create a plain-English PDF report for offline use, using natural language generation (NLG). This paper details the platform, the design decisions taken and outlines how farmers and growers can use CLOWD to better understand current growing conditions. Prototypes of CLOWD are now online for PCs and smartphones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate adaptation for Indigenous communities is not as simple as making good policy; it is equally about how policy is implemented and how collaboration unfolds between settler governments and Indigenous stakeholders. Rural Alaska Native villages are among the most environmentally threatened communities in the United States. Their ability to effectively manage environmental change and preserve sovereignty depends upon successful collaboration with a range of stakeholders, especially federal agencies. For more than two decades, academics and government agencies have documented a consistent pattern of failures, particularly by federal actors, to effectively manage adaptation challenges. These obstacles are sometimes misrepresented as policy failures. While poor policy is certainly involved in these poor outcomes, this paper highlights a set of barriers to successful collaboration that are not policy issues, per se, but rather micropolitical issues; that is, they pertain to the conduct of government in the context of Tribal relationships. Unaddressed, these micropolitical issues have created obstacles to Alaska Native communities' self-determination as they adapt to a changing landscape. These barriers are explored in a case study drawn from Typhoon Merbok, which struck Western Alaska in 2022, and empirically grounded in a series of interviews and participant observation with experts, elders, elected officials, and Tribal staff. This article concludes with several concrete recommendations to improve the practice of domestic diplomacy between Indigenous communities and colonial governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Covid-19 pandemic challenged global governance in unprecedented ways by requiring intergovernmental meetings to be held online. For the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this meant that the intergovernmental approval of the key findings of the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) had to be conducted virtually. In this paper, we assess how the move away from face-to-face meetings affected country participation in IPCC approval sessions. Our findings demonstrate that virtual meetings increased the size of member governments’ delegations, but this did not necessarily translate into a greater number of interventions during the approval of the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) as time zone differences reduced engagement levels significantly—particularly for countries from the Pacific, East Asian, and Latin American regions whose delegations often found themselves in IPCC meetings late at night and early in the morning. These results offer initial, empirically robust evidence about what online meetings can and cannot achieve for promoting more inclusive global governance at a time when the IPCC and other organizations reflect on the future use of virtual and hybrid meeting formats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a world of increasing pressures from climate change, water utilities need to maintain—or even improve—their ability to continue provision safe and secure water supply. To ensure capacity in service delivery, some providers have embraced different forms of interlocal collaboration. Yet, such interdependence engenders risk, thus driving some collaborating providers to enter into contractual agreements. While these agreements can reduce risk, but new complexities may still arise, especially when the agreement is capital intense and physically constrained. This study asks: i) How does perceived risk of from external climate-related pressures to public service provision affect preferences for the future of current contractual agreements? and ii) how do local efforts to offset need for collaboration shape these future preferences? This study examines how beliefs and local strategies (i.e., technical, managerial, or programmatic advances) affect contract preferences among community water systems linked through interlocal agreements. The paper discusses insights about ways ontological beliefs may shape operational decisions specific to interlocal collaboration and the potential for consolidation of water service operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water resources managers face decisions related to building new infrastructure to increase water system resilience to climate and demand changes. To inform this adaptation planning process, current decision-making methods commonly use scenario approaches to estimate the benefit of adaptation options. While effective, these new analyses require communication of complicated findings to often nontechnical audiences. This paper introduces a pragmatic approach that uses the results from a bottom-up assessment of vulnerability of the water system with future climate projection-based probabilities of climate change to select a single planning scenario that encapsulates the decision-makers’ chosen level of robustness for their system. Contrary to typical implementation of option analysis under deep climate uncertainty, the proposed pragmatic approach does not require the analyst to evaluate each portfolio of adaptation options against all possible states of the world, significantly reducing the required computational costs and communication challenges. It also aligns with the planning scenario approach used in practice by water utilities. The modeling framework is illustrated for the regional water system operated by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (California, United States) for which changes in average temperature, precipitation and urban demand are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how rising temperatures impact the agricultural production value of Thai farmers, compares potential adaptation strategies like agricultural diversification, and analyzes future projections based on IPCC AR6 scenarios. We analyze nationally representative socioeconomic survey data from farm households alongside ERA5 weather data, utilizing econometric regression analysis. Our analysis reveals that higher temperatures lead to a reduction in agricultural output value, with the situation expected to worsen as global warming progresses. Furthermore, we find that households with diversified production practices, such as a variety of agricultural activities or multicropping, exhibit a greater capacity to adapt to rising temperatures. These findings substantiate the importance of the country’s policies promoting integrated farming and diversified crop-mix strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Dingwu Great Famine (DGF) is considered to be the worst drought in China over the past 300 years. How the central government took steps to cope with the catastrophe during this period and ultimately survived deserves in-depth study. This paper collects the official records during the DGF and uses textual analysis and statistical methods to explore the responses carried by the central government. We found that 21 measures in 7 categories had been taken in response to this extreme drought, with political, economic, and cultural responses being the most commonly used. The governmental responses during DGF can be divided into three phases and had a significant “mismatch” (6 months lagging behind) compared with the meteorological process, which may be related to the higher social robustness in the early period. The 7 categories can be further clustered into 3 types based on their time-series performance. The first type includes economic, material, and political responses, which were aimed at responding to the drought impacts and reducing social losses more quickly and played the role of a “quick effect drug” for society. The second type includes agricultural and engineering, and population responses, which mitigated the drought impacts through “after-effects” measures and played the role of “slow-release drug”. The third type is the cultural response, which acted like a “placebo”. It did not help to mitigate the drought but alleviated the dissatisfaction of the refugees by shaping the spiritual objects (rain gods), thus maintaining social stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to its potential geo-political and environmental implications, climate migration is an increasing concern to the international community. However, while there is considerable attention devoted to migration in response to sea-level rise, there is a limited understanding of human mobility due to freshwater and inland hydroclimatic changes. Hence, the aim of this paper is to examine the existing evidence on migration as an adaptation strategy due to freshwater and inland hydroclimatic changes. A meta-review of papers published between 2014 and 2019 yielded 67 publications, the majority of which focus on a handful of countries in the Global South. Droughts, floods, extreme heat, and changes in seasonal precipitation patterns were singled out as the most common hazards triggering migration. Importantly, most of the papers discuss mobility as part of a portfolio of responses. Motivations to migrate at the household level range from survival to searching for better economic opportunities. The outcomes of migration are mixed — spanning from higher incomes to difficulties in finding employment after moving and struggles with a higher cost of living. While remittances can be beneficial, migration does not always have a positive outcome for those who are left behind. Furthermore, this meta-review shows that migration, even when desired, is not an option for some of the most vulnerable households. These multifaceted results suggest that, while climate mobility is certainly happening due to freshwater and inland hydroclimatic changes, studies reviewing it are limited and substantial gaps remain in terms of geographical coverage, implementation assessments, and outcomes evaluation. We argue that these gaps need to be filled to inform climate and migration policies that increasingly need to be intertwined rather than shaped in isolation from each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Paris Agreement created an institutionalized role for non-state actors through voluntary cooperation. Many international NGOs (INGOs) are particularly active in these "Paris partnerships," often working with multinational corporations to reduce emissions and promote decarbonization. Though there is ample work on both the effectiveness of the Paris partnerships and on the role of INGOs in the global climate regime, much of this work focuses "outward" – on how INGOs contribute to climate mitigation and adaptation, or influence norms, discourse and policy. Yet, there is considerably less work that focuses "inward" – examining who INGOs work with in order to achieve their policy goals. This paper provides a descriptive analysis of key INGOs in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process, as a first step in a larger research agenda to understand the incentives and opportunities that drive INGO behavior. Specifically, it uses network analysis to identify the "climate establishment" – which I define as the insider INGOs working within the multilateral process and with large corporations to influence rulemaking, soft law and firm behavior. Measures of network centrality demonstrate that two INGOs – WWF and the World Resources Institute – are by far, the most authoritative members of the climate establishment. They participate in the largest number of partnerships, and have "important" friends, as measured by eigenvector centrality. The data also indicate that the climate establishment sees carbon pricing as a key strategy, and it often cooperates with banks that are large funders of fossil fuel projects. The descriptive analysis of the climate establishment and its partners raises important questions for future research about why INGOs choose to partner with F100 companies, and how such cooperation might influence INGO behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the effectiveness of agriculture-led versus non-agriculture-led development strategies under climate-induced economic uncertainty. Utilizing Malawi as a case study, we introduce the application of Stochastic Dominance (SD) analysis, a tool from decision analysis theory, and compare the two strategies in the context of weather/climate-associated economic uncertainty. Our findings suggest that an agriculture-led development strategy consistently surpasses its non-agriculture-led antagonist in poverty and undernourishment outcomes across almost all possible weather/climate scenarios. This underscores that, despite increasing exposure of the entire economy to weather/climate uncertainty, agriculture-led development remains the optimal strategy for Malawi to reduce poverty and undernourishment. The study also endorses the broader use of SD analysis in policy planning studies, promoting its potential to integrate risk and uncertainty into policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the impact of recent global warming on extreme climatic events in Central Asia (CA) for 1901-2019 by comparing the composite representation of the observational climate with a hypothetical counterfactual one that does not include the long-term global warming trend. The counterfactual climate data are produced based on a simple detrending approach, using the global mean temperature (GMT) as the independent variable and removing the long-term trends from the climate variables of the observational data. This trend elimination is independent of causality, and the day-to-day variability in the counterfactual climate remains preserved. The analysis done in the paper shows that the increase in frequency and magnitude of extreme temperature and precipitation events can be attributed to global warming. Specifically, the probability of experiencing a +7 K temperature anomaly event in CA increases by up to a factor of seven in some areas due to global warming. The analysis reveals a significant increase in heatwave occurrences in Central Asia, with the observational climate dataset GSWP3-W5E5 (later called also factual) showing more frequent and prolonged extreme heat events than hypothetical scenarios without global warming. This trend, evident in the disparity between factual and counterfactual data, underscores the critical impact of recent climatic changes on weather patterns, highlighting the urgent need for robust adaptation and mitigation strategies. Additionally, using the self-calibrated Palmer drought severity index (scPDSI), the sensitivity of dry and wet events to the coupled precipitation and temperature changes is analyzed. The areas under dry and wet conditions are enhanced under the observational climate compared to a counterfactual scenario, especially over the largest deserts in CA. The expansion of the dry regions aligns well with the pattern of desert development observed in CA in recent decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During extreme heat events (EHEs) the public often learns about health protective actions through the media. Visual news coverage can act as a powerful tool to help convey complex health protective actions to the public. Despite the importance of images in helping the public understand the risk, there has been no systematic analysis to assess what images have been used by media outlets in Canada during EHEs. This paper helps to fill that gap by analyzing how the Canadian media visually communicated the risks of extreme heat to the public during the unprecedented 2021 Heat Dome. A review of thousands of online news media articles published about the 2021 Heat Dome in Canada was conducted on five subscription news databases. Overall, 845 images were coded to identify denotative, connotative, and ideological content. Only 16% of these published images implied that heat was dangerous, of which only 40% depicted people, and 46% implied human suffering. Our findings demonstrate that the majority of images used in Canadian news coverage on the 2021 Heat Dome are incompatible with, and frequently contradict, evidence-based heat protective actions. Governments, public health agencies, and other stakeholders engaged in distributing heat preparedness messaging (e.g., journalists) should prioritize improving the images of extreme heat in news coverage to align with evidence-based public health messages. With rising global temperatures due to climate change and the associated increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme heat events, prioritizing these actions is critically important to offset the threat posed to public health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graduate students can face difficulties collaborating across disciplines and outside of academia. Stakeholder-engaged research (i.e., research involving partners outside of academia) presents challenges for developing a project, finding collaborators, and co-creating knowledge. Past reflections on how to navigate stakeholder-engaged research assume a faculty member leads the project and do not often address implementation from a student-led approach. In this paper, we provide insight on our team science process from an applied, graduate student perspective. We reflect on the formation of our student team and the implementation of a tourism planning research project with community partners. We discuss challenges and focus on practical tips to overcome these challenges. Specifically, we include reflections on co-developing a research project, building authentic partnerships, negotiating power dynamics, and the role of institutional support. Lessons learned from this project can guide other graduate student teams working with stakeholders, as well as faculty seeking to train graduate students in stakeholder-engaged research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Sweden’s Norrbotten County, a “green transition” driven by market demand and new normative structures is underway, creating a regional mega-project designed to put Sweden at the forefront of emerging green industries. These industries, such as carbon-neutral steel fabrication, battery production, and data center hosting, all require large amounts of energy, land, and minerals. This paper applies the regional environmental governance framework to Arctic data to examine which stakeholders have the capacity to impose their agenda on the Arctic environment and the points of conflict and collaboration during this period of accelerated growth. The paper tests the assumption that regional governance accommodates a plurality of interests. A case study examining Norrbotten County’s industrial mega-project centered around Luleå, Sweden, identifies a dominant coalition uniting government and industry that supports norms seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in this region. However, the existing regional governance model does a poor job of integrating the local Indigenous Sámi preferences for land use. At the core of the difference between actors advancing the green economy and the local Sámi reindeer herders are divergent conceptions of nature and sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of a detailed review of the research literature on how nomadic pastoralists are being affected by climate change, how they are adapting, and challenges with using traditional knowledge in adaptation. It focuses on research that investigates local, and particularly traditional, knowledge of water, pasture, their variability, and livestock. This knowledge underpins nomadic livelihoods, so is a foundation for effective adaptation. Changes in the total amount of precipitation, and particularly shifts in its timing, and increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme events, are having the greatest impacts on herding livelihoods. Herders in drylands worldwide face common adaptation challenges: declining traditional water sources and pasture degradation. Herders' adaptation strategies fall into five major categories: movement to areas with better water and pasture, improving seasonal access to water, improving seasonal access to feed, shifts in herd composition, and livelihood diversification. Movement is central to nomads' adaptation, yet, as climate change takes hold, restrictions on movement are increasing for both socio-economic reasons and climate reasons. Many papers emphasised the importance of combining traditional knowledge and current science to guide adaptation decision-making at household, locality, and national levels. There is widespread concern about the decline in traditional knowledge. All the papers reviewed emphasised the need to support passing on traditional know-how. Herder women's know-how, in particular, is marginalised in the research literature, so their traditional knowledge should be a focus in further research. Herders' adaptations are mostly localised, incremental, and have a relatively short-term focus. As nomadic pastoralism moves further outside the range of historical experience, the possibility of more profound transformations looms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moving beyond technocratic approaches to climate action, climate justice articulates a paradigm shift in how organizations think about their response to the climate crisis. This paper makes a conceptual contribution by exploring the potential of this paradigm shift in higher education. Through a commitment to advancing transformative climate justice, colleges and universities around the world could realign and redefine their priorities in teaching, research, and community engagement to shape a more just, stable, and healthy future. As inequitable climate vulnerabilities increase, higher education has multiple emerging opportunities to resist, reverse, and repair climate injustices and related socioeconomic and health disparities. Rather than continuing to perpetuate the concentration of wealth and power by promoting climate isolationism’s narrow focus on technological innovation and by prioritizing the financial success of alumni and the institution, colleges and universities have an opportunity to leverage their unique role as powerful anchor institutions to demonstrate climate justice innovations and catalyze social change toward a more equitable, renewable-based future. This paper explores how higher education can advance societal transformation toward climate justice, by teaching climate engagement, supporting impactful justice-centered research, embracing non-extractive hiring and purchasing practices, and integrating community-engaged climate justice innovations across campus operations. Two climate justice frameworks, Green New Deal-type policies and energy democracy, provide structure for reviewing a breadth of proposed transformational climate justice initiatives in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines various studies on weather and climate extreme events (WCEE) to identify thematic trends and research gaps and suggest directions for further studies. The review identifies 14 subthemes and 23 research focuses, that address impacts and issues in the pre-, during-, and post-disaster phases. Using a matrix of WCEE dimensionality and content matrix analysis, we analyze the distribution and research focus of these studies, revealing areas with both extensive and limited research. While significant literature exists on certain WCEE subthemes, with a strong focus on damage assessment, spatial extent, losses, and disaster management approaches, only a limited number of studies have explored crucial areas such as risk prediction, urban planning, water quality, urban resilience, and public health dimensions. These areas are vital for effective disaster risk reduction. To bridge the knowledge gaps in these areas and other areas with multi-dimensional outlooks within the context of WCEE, we recommend prioritizing research in these subthemes. Our findings underscore the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration and the need for additional research to enhance our understanding of WCEE. Through evidence-based strategies, policymakers and practitioners can develop measures to enhance resilience and mitigate the impacts of WCEE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to analyze decoupling between CO2 emissions and income growth in the U.S. through the lens of Environmental Kuznets curve (EKC). Many states in the U.S. have achieved absolute decoupling in recent years, which means that CO2 emissions have decreased while the economy grows. This is partly due to the adoption of low-emission technologies, such as coal to gas switching, nuclear power, and economic restructuring towards a more sustainable economy. We argue that understanding decoupling is crucial to implement effective climate change policies. This study suggests that, after 2015, EKC has taken on the U-shaped form with many states currently located on the negatively sloped portion of the curve. It is not desirable as emissions may eventually begin to increase as the economy grows. To support this claim, we estimate panel fixed effects rolling-window EKCs using two-stage least square with two instrumental variables, unemployment rate and the trend variable. Empirical results show how the inverted U-shaped EKC has transformed into the U-shaped EKC in the U.S. This transformation is probably caused by the recent increases in emissions in transportation sector, strong electricity demand in recent years with cold winter seasons, reversals of eco-friendly energy policies, and manufacturers’ onshoring. Stakeholders should make efforts to transform the U-shaped EKC back to an inverted U-shaped EKC even in cases where absolute decoupling is observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific knowledge is at the heart of discussions about climate change. However, it has been proposed that the apparent predominance of climate science in the societal debate should be reconsidered and that a more inclusive approach is warranted. Further, the introduction of new communication technology has made the information environment more fragmented, possibly endangering the quality of societal deliberation on climate change concerns. Using focus group methodology, this paper explores how climate scientists, climate journalists, and citizens perceive scientific experts’ mandate when they communicate publicly, the role of experiential knowledge in discussions of climate-related issues, and who the three actors prefer to guard the quality of the climate information exchanged in the public sphere. The findings show that scientific experts are perceived to carry a high degree of legitimacy, but only within their own narrow specialty, while experiential knowledge was seen as more useful in applied domains of science than in arcane research fields. In the new media landscape, journalists are still generally preferred as gatekeepers by all three actor types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education institutions have a mandate to serve the public good, yet in many cases fail to adequately respond to the global climate crisis. The inability of academic institutions to commit to purposeful climate action through targeted research, education, outreach, and policy is due in large part to “capture” by special interests. Capture involves powerful minority interests that exert influence and derive benefits at the expense of a larger group or purpose. This paper makes a conceptual contribution to advance a framework of “academic capture” applied to the climate crisis in higher education institutions. Academic capture is the result of the three contributing factors of increasing financialization issues, influence of the fossil fuel industry, and reticence of university employees to challenge the status quo. The framework guides an empirical assessment evaluating eight activities and related indices of transparency and participation based on principles of climate justice and the growing democracy-climate nexus. The framework can be a helpful tool for citizens and academics to assess the potential for academic capture and capacity for more just and democratic methods of climate action in higher education. We conclude with a series of recommendations on how to refine and apply our framework and assessment in academic settings. Our goal is to further the discussion on academic capture and continue to develop tools that transform higher education institutions to places of deep democracy and innovative climate education, research, and outreach to meet the challenges of the Anthropocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The widespread demand for animal-sourced foods poses challenges in addressing climate change due to their significant greenhouse gas emissions. Alternative proteins like cultured meat show promise with lower greenhouse gas emissions, but have faced public resistance, posing substantial barriers to their broad development and adoption. This paper reports a survey that examined the perceived naturalness of protein sources as an important factor that predicts perceived risks, benefits, and support for consumption. A diverse sample from the United States considered six different protein technologies, including three newer alternative proteins such as cultured meat and three more conventional proteins. Newer alternative proteins were perceived as less natural and were less supported than conventional proteins. Additionally, the more participants perceived protein sources as natural, the less risky and more beneficial they perceived them to be, contributing to their support. These results suggest that perceived naturalness, and associated risks and benefits, could be an important factor in shaping public support for or opposition to new proteins. These findings have theoretical and broader implications for the development and adoption of sustainability technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change will push the planet worryingly close to its boundaries, across all latitudes and levels of development. One question therefore is the extent to which climate change does (and will) severely affect societies’ livelihoods, health, well-being, and cultures. This paper discusses the “severe climate risks” concept developed under Working Group II’s contribution to the Fifth and Sixth Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, AR5, and AR6). Focusing on low-lying coastal socio-ecological systems (LCS) and acknowledging that attempts to define “severe” climate risk have been problematic at the level of global syntheses, we argue for a more place- and people-based framing relating to “habitability under a changing climate.” We summarize habitability in terms of five habitability pillars: land, freshwater, food, settlement and infrastructure, and economic and subsistence activities; we acknowledge social and cultural factors (including perceptions, values, governance arrangements, human agency, power structures) as critical underlying factors rather than as separate pillars. We further develop the habitability framing and examine climate risk to future human health and habitability for three climate “hotspot” archetypes (arctic coasts, atoll islands, densely populated urban areas). Building on the IPCC AR6 framing of severe climate risks, we discuss three key parameters describing severe climate risks in LCS: the point of irreversibility of changes, physical and socio-ecological thresholds, and cascading effects across various habitability dimensions. We also highlight the variability of severe risk conditions both between coastal archetypes and within each of them. Further work should consist of refining the case study framing to find the right balance between capturing context-specificities through real-world local case studies and commonalities derived from more generic archetypes. In addition, there is a need to identify appropriate methods to assess irreversibility, thresholds, and cascading effects, and thus severe climate risks to habitability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although dependency ratio (DR) significantly affects anthropogenic emissions and thus emission abatement, previous researchers usually neglected DR’s impact on climate policy implementation. In this paper, we attempt to narrow the research gap by studying how the DR is related to the emission trading scheme (ETS) in China. To achieve this research target, a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model is employed to study the relation between DR and ETS. The CGE model results show that both DR and ETS negatively affect carbon emissions because they decrease labor employment and thus economic output. The DR is negatively related to emission abatement and the economic cost of the ETS, whereas the ETS relieves the negative DR impacts on the economy and emissions. These findings imply that characterized by rising DR, population aging helps achieve emission mitigation; as climate policy relieves the negative impacts of the rising DR on the economy and emissions, its implementation may be smoother in an aging society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If local governments reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they will not see effects unless a very large number of other actors do the same. However, reducing greenhouse gas emissions can have multiple local “co-benefits” (improved air quality, energy savings, even energy security), creating incentives for local governments to reduce emissions—if just for the local side-effects of doing so. Available empirical research yet shows a large gap between co-benefits as a rationale and an explanatory factor for climate mitigation by local governments: co-benefits are seemingly very large, but do not seem to drive local mitigation efforts. Relying on policy documents, available research, and other written sources, the present paper consists of a multiple case study addressing the link between co-benefits and climate mitigation in Moscow, Paris, and Montreal. Air quality plays a very different role in each case, ranging from a key driver of mitigation to a liability for local climate action. This heterogeneity of mechanisms in place emerges as a likely explanation for the lack of a clear empirical link between co-benefits and local mitigation in the literature. We finally discuss implications for urban climate action policy and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate action-based assumptions and tradable characteristics underpinned the development of climate change futures contracts, which are related to carbon and climate markets. Therefore, this paper examines return and volatility spillover between climate change futures and carbon allowance futures using dynamic conditional correlation (DCC) and asymmetric dynamic conditional correlation (ADCC) models with daily and weekly frequency data. Considering the emergence of US market-based carbon futures and climate futures, this study explores bivariate optimal hedging strategies and optimal portfolio strategies. Using daily data, this study discovers unidirectional and positive return and volatility spillover from the carbon futures market to the climate change futures market, implying opportunities for diversification and hedging. The weekly analysis shows bidirectional and negative return spillover between the carbon futures market and the climate change futures market, implying opportunities for risk hedging. In addition, it also reveals unidirectional and positive volatility spillovers from the carbon futures market to the climate change futures market. The carbon market dominates the climate change futures market. The study also reveals that optimal portfolio strategies will be preferred over optimal hedging strategies. Therefore, this study offers practical implications for investors and portfolio managers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical scholars on power relations and climate change adaptation have highlighted the lack of community participation as a consequence of unbalanced power operations. Evidence about how unequal power relations and subject formation constrain public participation, however, is under-studied. In this paper, we utilised the intersection between community participation and the subjectivities lens to examine how a hierarchical political structure systematically operates to influence community engagement in adaptation and how and why local communities are included or excluded from adaptation as a result of subject-making, using Vietnam as a case study. Using 66 semi-structured interviews and ten focus group discussions involving policymakers, practitioners, local authorities, and communities, we examined how the key respondents stereotyped local roles and capacity in agricultural adaptation activities. Applying content analysis, we found that the general population in Vietnam is often framed as lacking knowledge and capacity to respond to climate impacts. Reflected through a traditional government-led model in two agricultural adaptation projects, the study showed that subtle but pervasive subjectivities and subject-making processes constrain community participation by affecting perceptions and, subsequently, actions of key stakeholders, undermining local roles and capacity in undertaking adaptation. These perpetuate the power imbalance between local communities and government entities. The findings contribute to the prevailing scholarship of climate change adaptation that, under an authoritarian regime, local capacity is undermined not only by powerholders but also by community members as they consent to government decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]