Comparison of the range of values (m/s) in many areas of the 80 m wind speed map constructed from MERRA data to the one produced by the Australian Government.

<p>The first region encompasses much of the East coast, and includes southeast and northeast QLD, and Tasmania.</p

Anticoincidence (left) and Null-anticoincidence (right) of wind power density, at 50 m.

<p>Units indicate the number of grid points in a ∼1000×1000 km box surrounding the gridpoint in question which are anticoincident to the central gridpoint, which is when the hourly time series of WPD is greater than 200 W m-2 at one of the two points, but not both, for 50% of the total length of the time series.</p

Measures of abundance.

<p>(a) The mean WPD at 50 m, (b) the change in the mean from 50 m to 80 m and from (c) 50 m to 150 m, (d) median wind power density at 50 m, (e) the change in the median from 50 m to 80 m and from (f) 50 m to 150 m. All units are W m⁻².</p

Using Land To Mitigate Climate Change: Hitting the Target, Recognizing the Trade-offs

Land can be used in several ways to mitigate climate change, but especially under changing environmental conditions there may be implications for food prices. Using an integrated global system model, we explore the roles that these land-use options can play in a global mitigation strategy to stabilize Earth’s average temperature within 2 °C of the preindustrial level and their impacts on agriculture. We show that an ambitious global <i>Energy-Only</i> climate policy that includes biofuels would likely not achieve the 2 °C target. A thought-experiment where the world ideally prices land carbon fluxes combined with biofuels (<i>Energy+Land</i> policy) gets the world much closer. Land could become a large net carbon sink of about 178 Pg C over the 21st century with price incentives in the <i>Energy+Land</i> scenario. With land carbon pricing but without biofuels (a <i>No-Biofuel</i> scenario) the carbon sink is nearly identical to the case with biofuels, but emissions from energy are somewhat higher, thereby results in more warming. Absent such incentives, land is either a much smaller net carbon sink (+37 Pg C – <i>Energy-Only policy</i>) or a net source (−21 Pg C – <i>No-Policy</i>). The significant trade-off with this integrated land-use approach is that prices for agricultural products rise substantially because of mitigation costs borne by the sector and higher land prices. Share of income spent on food for wealthier regions continues to fall, but for the poorest regions, higher food prices lead to a rising share of income spent on food