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Climate change impacts are already happening through the world, and it is now clear that there is the need for an adaptive response from global institutions down to the local level. Reducing vulnerability to cope with climate variability might be more challenging in tropical countries than in North America or Europe. The ten papers of this special issue were presented during the Adaptclim conference that was held by the Sinergia Project, the CLARIS LPB project, and the GeoData Institute in Asunción, Paraguay, in 2010. All papers, except one regarding the Brahmaputra Basin in South Asia, present studies from South America. These studies are first contextualized geographically and then are related one to another by a simplified vulnerability concept linking climate stress to sensitivity and adaptive capacity of natural and human systems. One half of the papers focus on actual or future climate change and the present-day causes of the vulnerability of natural and agrosystems. Droughts are and will be the main source of stress for agriculture in South America. Increasing fragmentation of forest of the center of this continent is aggravating their vulnerability to dry spells. Another half of the studies of this special issue deal with the adaptive capacity human populations to system perturbations produced or enhanced by climate change. The studies point out inclusion of traditional knowledge and involvement of local actors in their own vulnerability assessment to increase adaptive capacity. These elements of climate justice, giving voice to those less responsible for carbon emissions but bearing their most severe consequences, allow the particular needs of a community to be considered and can direct adaptation policy toward preserving or rebuilding their specific capabilities under threat from climate change. The special issue also made clear that a basin analysis of the climate change problem could provide information, results, and methods more readily of use for the local population and decision makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates whether and how weather conditions affect museum attendance. As a case study, we examine the daily attendance at the Museo Regionale della Ceramica (Regional Museum of Ceramics) in Caltagirone, Sicily (Italy), over the period starting from 1 January 2008 to 31 December 2016. In addition to the daily and monthly fixed effects and the influence of tourism, which are investigated by the available literature, we document a significant effect of weather conditions, specifically temperature and rainfall, which work in an asymmetric way across the different seasons. Temperature has a significant non-monotonic effect on museum attendance, with an increase having a positive impact in low-temperature (non-summer) months and a negative impact in high-temperature (summer) season; rainfalls encourage museum visits but only during summer months. Some long-term projections concerning the impact of weather modifications upon museum attendance due to climate change are proposed and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores what the San Diego region may look like in the year 2050 as projected changes in regional climate conditions take place. Focusing on interrelated issues of climate change, sea level rise, population growth, land use, and changes in water, energy, public health, wildfires, biodiversity, and habitat, the paper reviews the potential impacts of a changing climate by 2050 and makes recommendations for changes in planning processes at the local and regional levels to prepare for these impacts. The original research for this study was completed in 2008 by a team of 40 experts from the region including universities, nonprofit organizations, local governments, public sector agencies and private sector entities. This paper has now been updated with more recent research regarding climate change adaptation while preserving the integrity of the original research team's work. The simulated impacts discussed in this study are based on regional projections of climate change generated by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, employing three climate models and two emissions scenarios used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The impacts are discussed in the context of significant regional growth expected during the period as well as an aging population base. Key issues explored in the report include potential inundation of six selected low-lying coastal areas in San Diego due to sea level rise, potential shortfalls in water deliveries, peak energy demand increases due to higher temperatures, growing risk of devastating wildfires, migrations of species in response to higher temperatures in an increasingly fragmented natural habitat, and public health issues associated with extreme temperature events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Droughts have adverse socioeconomic, agricultural, and environmental impacts that can be reduced by assessing and forecasting drought behavior. The paper presents detailed analyses of both meteorological and vegetative droughts over the period from 1970 to 2005. Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) have been used to quantify drought according to severity, magnitude and spatial distribution at the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Results suggest that the country faced during the past 35 years frequent non-uniform drought periods in an irregular repetitive manner. Drought severity, magnitudes and life span increased with time from normal to extreme levels especially at last decade reaching magnitudes of more than 4. Generated NDVI maps spatial analyses estimate crop-area percentage damage due to severe and extremely severe drought events occurred during October, December, and February of 2000 to be about 10%, 45%, and 30%, respectively. In response to drought spatial extent, the paper suggest the presence of two drought types, local drought acting on one or more geographical climatic parts and national drought, of less common but more severe, that extend over the whole country. Droughts in Jordan act intensively during January, February and March and tend to shift position with time by alternative migrations from southern desert parts to northern desert parts and from the eastern desert parts to highlands and Jordan Rift Valley (JRV) at the west. The paper also investigates the potential use of Global Climate Model's (GCM) to forecast future drought events from 2010 till 2040. Tukey HSD test indicates that ECHAM5OM GCM is capable to predicted rainfall variation at the country and suggests future droughts to become more intensive at the northern and southern desserts with 15% rainfall reduction factor, followed by 10% reduction at the JRV, and 5% at the highlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the implications of recent extreme rainfall and flood events in the Sahel and the wider West African region for climate change adaptation. Are these events merely a temporal nuisance as suggested by the lingering desertification discourse or will more climatic extremes characterize the region over the next century? After reviewing incidences of severe rainfall and projected future climate variability, the paper examines local flood knowledge and decision-making, drawing upon a case study in Ghana. The data demonstrate that a variety of response strategies to flooding exist; yet, knowledge of and access to climate forecasts and other learning tools are essentially absent. So far, floods have not triggered mass displacement although cumulative environmental deterioration is likely to cause environmental refugees. The paper recommends to lay to rest the desertification narrative, consider the possibility of both floods and droughts, and mobilize local memory for anticipatory learning and practical adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Floods are caused by a number of interacting factors, making it remarkably difficult to explain changes in flood hazard. This paper reviews the current understanding of historical trends and variability in flood hazard across Australia. Links between flood and rainfall trends cannot be made due to the influence of climate processes over a number of spatial and temporal scales as well as landscape changes that affect the catchment response. There are also still considerable uncertainties in future rainfall projections, particularly for sub-daily extreme rainfall events. This is in addition to the inherent uncertainty in hydrological modelling such as antecedent conditions and feedback mechanisms. Research questions are posed based on the current state of knowledge. These include a need for high-resolution climate modelling studies and efforts in compiling and analysing databases of sub-daily rainfall and flood records. Finally there is a need to develop modelling frameworks that can deal with the interaction between climate processes at different spatio-temporal scales, so that historical flood trends can be better explained and future flood behaviour understood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning about the causes and consequences of climate change can be an important avenue for supporting mitigation policy and efficient adaptation. This paper uses internet search activity data, a distinctly revealed preference approach, to examine if local weather fluctuations cause people to seek information about climate change. The results suggest that weather fluctuations do have an effect on climate change related search behavior, however not always in ways that are consistent with the projected impacts of climate change. While search activity increases with extreme heat in summer and extended periods of no rainfall and declines in extreme cold in winter, search activity also increases with colder winter and spring average temperatures. Some of the surprising results are magnified when heterogeneity by political ideology and educational attainment in responsiveness is modeled, which could suggest that different people have different perceptions about what types of weather define climate change or that climate science deniers seek information through Google. However, the results also indicate that for all groups in the political and educational spectrum, there exist weather events consistent with the predicted impacts of climate change that elicit increased information seeking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change has the potential ability to alter the occurrence and severity of extreme events. Though predicting changes of such extreme events is difficult, understanding them is important to determine the impacts of climate change in various sectors. This paper presents the change in rainfall extremes in the monsoon season in south-west Indian peninsula. Daily rainfall data were analysed for the entire Kerala state in India to determine if the extreme rainfall had changed over the 50-year period. Several indices were derived from the data to identify the extreme rainfalls. The trends of all the extreme indices were assessed by parametric ordinary least square regression technique, which were tested for significance at 95% level. Results showed significant decrease in monsoon rainfall extremes in Kerala that would affect the tendency of change in seasonal total rainfall. This study provides a comprehensive knowledge on extreme monsoon precipitation in Kerala, which could also be employed to study changing climate at local scale in other regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the robustness of the long-run, cointegrating, relationship between global temperatures and radiative forcing. It is found that the temperature sensitivity to a doubling of radiative forcing is of the order of 2 ± 1°C. This result is robust across the sample period of 1850 to 2000, thus providing further confirmation of the quantitative impact of radiative forcing and, in particular, CO2 forcing, on temperatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a three-step thaw model to assess the impact of predicted warming on an ice-rich polar desert landscape in the Canadian high Arctic. Air temperatures are established for two climate scenarios, showing mean annual increases of 4.9 and 6.5°C. This leads to a lengthening of the summer thaw season by up to 26 days and increased thaw depths of 12-70 cm, depending on the thermal properties of the soil. Subsidence of the ground surface is the primary landscape response to warming and is shown to be a function of the amount and type of ground ice in various cryostratigraphic units. In areas of pore ice and thin ice lenses with a low density of ice wedges, subsidence may be as much as 32 cm. In areas with a high density of ice wedges, subsidence will be slightly higher at 34 cm. Where massive ice is present, subsidence will be greater than 1 m. Landscape response to new climate conditions can take up to 15 years, and may be as long as 50 years in certain cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research begins with the recognition that climate change researchers have become interested in Inuit ecological observations because of the importance of northern changes on the global climate system, but this research often marginalizes Inuit understandings of these climate-related changes. The direct translation of the Inuktitut term Sila in much of this research is a case study in this methodological problem. In contrast to climate research translations of Sila as weather, ethnographies of Inuit conceive of Sila as a spiritual power that is related to the weather. These diverging interpretations of Sila reflect the difficulty of conducting cross-cultural research. To mitigate this difficulty a dialogue was engaged with Inuit concerning their experience of climate change in relation to the different Inuit and Western understandings of Sila. The central goals of this paper are to clearly define Sila so as to identify implications it may have for Western approaches in conducting cross-cultural climate research, and, in the process, to begin a cross-cultural dialogue that aims at an agreed upon understanding of climate change that is respectful of different knowledges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]