Climate change research in bilateral development programmes: experiences from India and Peru

This article reflects on the merits and shortfalls of bilateral research programmes aimed at strengthening climate change research capabilities, using the experience from two programmes, the PACC and IHCAP in Peru and India, respectively. The study highlights key aspects of these types of bilateral programmes, namely: capacity; performance, salary and appreciation; funding; bureaucracy and hierarchy; publishing; and data sharing. Furthermore, it emerged that these programmes would benefit from a more extensive consolidation phase of the research activities and partnership rather than rapidly transferring into out- and up-scaling phases

Conservation status of a recently described endemic land snail, Candidula coudensis, from the Iberian Peninsula

Research ArticleWe assessed the distribution, population size and conservation status of Candidula coudensis, a recently described endemic land snail from Portugal. From March 2013 to April 2014, surveys were carried out in the region where the species was described. We found an extent of occurrence larger than originally described, but still quite small (13.5 km2). The species was found mainly in olive groves, although it occurred in a variety of other habitats with limestone soils, including grasslands, scrublands and stone walls. Minimum population estimate ranged from 110,000–311,000 individuals. The main identified potential threats to the species include wildfires, pesticides and quarrying. Following the application of IUCN criteria, we advise a conservation status of either “Least Concern” or “Near-threatened” under criterion D (restricted population)info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Local Difference Measures between Complex Networks for Dynamical System Model Evaluation

Acknowledgments We thank Reik V. Donner for inspiring suggestions that initialized the work presented herein. Jan H. Feldhoff is credited for providing us with the STARS simulation data and for his contributions to fruitful discussions. Comments by the anonymous reviewers are gratefully acknowledged as they led to substantial improvements of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Bioenergy production and sustainable development: Science base for policymaking remains limited

The possibility of using bioenergy as a climate change mitigation measure has sparked a discussion of whether and how bioenergy production contributes to sustainable development. We undertook a systematic review of the scientific literature to illuminate this relationship and found a limited scientific basis for policymaking. Our results indicate that knowledge on the sustainable development impacts of bioenergy production is concentrated in a few well‐studied countries, focuses on environmental and economic impacts, and mostly relates to dedicated agricultural biomass plantations. The scope and methodological approaches in studies differ widely and only a small share of the studies sufficiently reports on context and/or baseline conditions, which makes it difficult to get a general understanding of the attribution of impacts. Nevertheless, we identified regional patterns of positive or negative impacts for all categories – environmental, economic, institutional, social and technological. In general, economic and technological impacts were more frequently reported as positive, while social and environmental impacts were more frequently reported as negative (with the exception of impacts on direct substitution of GHG emission from fossil fuel). More focused and transparent research is needed to validate these patterns and develop a strong science underpinning for establishing policies and governance agreements that prevent/mitigate negative and promote positive impacts from bioenergy production

Complex networks for climate model evaluation with application to statistical versus dynamical modeling of South American climate

Acknowledgments: This paper was developed within the scope of the IRTG 1740/TRP 2011/50151-0, funded by the DFG/FAPESP. Furthermore, this work has been financially supported by the Leibniz Society (project ECONS), and the Stordalen Foundation (JFD). For certain calculations, the software packages pyunicorn (Donges et al. 2013a) and igraph (Csa´rdi and Nepusz 2006) were used. The authors would like to thank Manoel F. Cardoso, Niklas Boers, and the reviewers for helpful comments on the manuscript. Open Access: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited.Peer reviewedPostprin

Projections of global warming-induced impacts on winter storm losses in the German private household sector

We present projections of winter storm-induced insured losses in the German residential building sector for the 21st century. With this aim, two structurally most independent downscaling methods and one hybrid downscaling method are applied to a 3-member ensemble of ECHAM5/MPI-OM1 A1B scenario simulations. One method uses dynamical downscaling of intense winter storm events in the global model, and a transfer function to relate regional wind speeds to losses. The second method is based on a reshuffling of present day weather situations and sequences taking into account the change of their frequencies according to the linear temperature trends of the global runs. The third method uses statistical-dynamical downscaling, considering frequency changes of the occurrence of storm-prone weather patterns, and translation into loss by using empirical statistical distributions. The A1B scenario ensemble was downscaled by all three methods until 2070, and by the (statistical-) dynamical methods until 2100. Furthermore, all methods assume a constant statistical relationship between meteorology and insured losses and no developments other than climate change, such as in constructions or claims management. The study utilizes data provided by the German Insurance Association encompassing 24 years and with district-scale resolution. Compared to 1971–2000, the downscaling methods indicate an increase of 10-year return values (i.e. loss ratios per return period) of 6–35 % for 2011–2040, of 20–30 % for 2041–2070, and of 40–55 % for 2071–2100, respectively. Convolving various sources of uncertainty in one confidence statement (data-, loss model-, storm realization-, and Pareto fit-uncertainty), the return-level confidence interval for a return period of 15 years expands by more than a factor of two. Finally, we suggest how practitioners can deal with alternative scenarios or possible natural excursions of observed losses

Allowable CO2 emissions based on regional and impact-related climate targets

This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Nature and the definitive published version is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature16542© 2016 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved. Global temperature targets, such as the widely accepted limit of an increase above pre-industrial temperatures of two degrees Celsius, may fail to communicate the urgency of reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The translation of CO2 emissions into regional- and impact-related climate targets could be more powerful because such targets are more directly aligned with individual national interests. We illustrate this approach using regional changes in extreme temperatures and precipitation. These scale robustly with global temperature across scenarios, and thus with cumulative CO2 emissions. This is particularly relevant for changes in regional extreme temperatures on land, which are much greater than changes in the associated global mean

Long-term and realistic global change manipulations had low impact on diversity of soil biota in temperate heathland

In a dry heathland ecosystem we manipulated temperature (warming), precipitation (drought) and atmospheric concentration of CO(2) in a full-factorial experiment in order to investigate changes in below-ground biodiversity as a result of future climate change. We investigated the responses in community diversity of nematodes, enchytraeids, collembolans and oribatid mites at two and eight years of manipulations. We used a structural equation modelling (SEM) approach analyzing the three manipulations, soil moisture and temperature, and seven soil biological and chemical variables. The analysis revealed a persistent and positive effect of elevated CO(2) on litter C:N ratio. After two years of treatment, the fungi to bacteria ratio was increased by warming, and the diversities within oribatid mites, collembolans and nematode groups were all affected by elevated CO(2) mediated through increased litter C:N ratio. After eight years of treatment, however, the CO(2)-increased litter C:N ratio did not influence the diversity in any of the four fauna groups. The number of significant correlations between treatments, food source quality, and soil biota diversities was reduced from six to three after two and eight years, respectively. These results suggest a remarkable resilience within the soil biota against global climate change treatments in the long term