Seasons in the sun - weather and climate front-page news stories in Europe’s rainiest city, Bergen

This paper is a portrayal of aspects of weather and climate as front-page news in Europe’s rainiest city, Bergen, Norway. It descriptively explores the coverage and different contextualization of weather and climate. By asking the simple question of what actually constitutes a good or bad weather day in Bergen, short-lived weather descriptions in the news are compared with climatological data. The study reveals a complex picture with different annotations of good and bad weather depending on the season. It is found that while the amount of sunshine is important for defining a good weather day during winter, it is temperature that determines a good summer day. In spring, holidays and the anticipation to the summer result in a lower sunshine threshold for what to call a good weather day. The conspicuousness of rainfall is shown by both the amount of articles and the various contexts in which bad weather is presented in the newspaper. It is suggested here that it is not the amount of rainfall that creates headlines, but rather the context of the surrounding event, as well as the weather of the previous period. Human perceptions cannot be read off meteorological stations. Nevertheless, they can strengthen measurements and therefore, have a value in themselves. As a result, perceptions of seasonal or daily weather anomalies may well play a role in how society in Bergen will think about and experience a probable climate change with a projected increase in rainfall

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On the (im-)possibilities of defining human climate thresholds

The aim of this study is to explore the way climate creates thresholds within society. Both human physiology and the human mind determine when and where climate can trigger and influence human activities. By presenting a stimulus-response model, deliberate weather- and climate- related decisions (e.g. migration, clothing) and physiological responses in daily life (e.g. sweating) are placed in a broader theoretical context. While physiological thresholds can be described quantitatively to a certain extent, subjective thresholds may be illustrated in a predominantly qualitative manner through surrogates (surveys on wants or needs). Examples from the literature on climate thresholds for humans highlight the complexity of the issue: People have different thresholds, as they do not necessarily respond to the same stimuli in the same way. At the same time, given the same stimulus, an individual may perceive it, and thus react, differently at different times in their life. In many cases, the threshold rather specifies a bandwidth or transition zone than a particular point. The level of acceptance and the cultural, technological and genetic aspects of adaptation will decide how climate may influence human well-being and contribute in setting limits to society, for example where to live, what impacts to expect, and when and what decisions to take. Knowledge of the complexity of human thresholds can be an important supplement to the analysis of peoples’ vulnerability to climate change. When populations are vulnerable and thresholds are exceeded, only then will there be a measurable response

Climate and society. A complex and conditional relationship

Too little rainfall causes human adaptation problems. Too much rainfall as well. The same isvalid for temperature. What makes people vulnerable to climate and what impacts can climatecause on society? Where lies the border of what is still acceptable and what not? When dopeople change their habits and where is intervention needed? What role do people’s perceptionsabout climate play? And can we draw conclusions from one region or time-period to another?This thesis is a contribution to the literature on climate and society linkages. With case-studiesfrom Ethiopia and Norway as well as a literature review from many other regions, it providesempirical evidence of the complexity of the climate-society relationship. It describes thedifficulties associated with deterministic approaches to understanding and predicting the humanimpacts of climate extremes and climate change. Several aspects are covered: Paper 1 elaboratesthe issue of climate vulnerability and discusses the problem of how to distinguish betweenclimate as a trigger or just one out of many influence factors for a specific human response suchas migration. The case-study is directed towards dryland regions and Ethiopia. In Paper 2, againfocusing on Ethiopia, the divergence between climate perceptions and climate measurements istaken up. By explaining the possible origin of the low correlation between them, the importanceof other environmental and social variables becomes evident. Paper 3 attempts to attachmeteorological data to weather narratives in the media and by this annotating what makes up agood and bad weather day in Europe’s rainiest city, Bergen, Norway. The data suggest that it issupply and demand of specific weather events which influence people’s perceptions of attachingpositive or negative features to it. The importance of the seasonal occurrence of weather eventsis revealed. By exploring human climate thresholds, Paper 4 draws on empirical results of aliterature review. By presenting a stimulus-response model, it describes climate’s influence onthe human body and on human perceptions, which determine jointly when and where climatecan trigger and influence certain human activities. Paper 5 is turning back to experiences fromEthiopia, from a combined climate statistics and financial-economic perspective. It investigatesthe subject of climate micro-insurance as a possible adaptation to climate extremes and changefrom the perspective of an insurance provider. The issue of climate risk pooling as well asmaking use of non-covariate spatial climate behaviour for reducing necessary risk capital isaddressed.But as we are all different, people do not necessarily respond to the same climate stimulus in thesame way. Culture, technology and physiological adaptation contribute their part in influencinghuman well-being and in setting limits to society, for example of where to live, what impacts toexpect and what decisions to take

Migration caused by climate change: how vulnerable are people inn dryland areas?

climate change, Ethiopia, historical analogy, migration, vulnerability,

A Bayesian hierarchical model with spatial variable selection: the effect of weather on insurance claims. Derivation of distributions and MCMC sampling schemes

Climate change will affect the insurance industry. We develop a Bayesian hierarchical statistical approach to explain and predict insurance losses due to weather events at a local geographical scale. The number of weather-related insurance claims is modelled combining generalized linear models with spatially smoothed variable selection. Using Gibbs sampling and reversible jump MCMC, the model is fitted on daily weather and insurance data from each of the 319 municipalities of southern and central Norway for the period 1997-2006. Out-of-sample predictions from the model are very good. Our results show interesting regional patterns in the impact of different weather covariates. In addition to being useful for insurance pricing, our model can be used for short-term predictions based on weather forecasts and long-term predictions based on downscaled climate models