“Pilot implementation of an interdisciplinary course on climate solutions”

A pilot implementation of an experimental interdisciplinary course on climate solutions was undertaken at San Jose´ State University in the fall semester of 2008. The course, co-taught by seven faculty members from six colleges, was approved for a general education requirement and was open to upperclass students campus-wide. A course with such a breadth of topics and range of student backgrounds was the first of its kind here. The lessons learned from the pilot effort were assessed from student, faculty, and administrative perspectives. The educational benefits to students from the interdisciplinary format were found to be substantial, in addition to faculty development. However, challenges associated with team-teaching were also encountered and must be overcome for the long-term viability of the course. The experimental course was approved as a permanent course starting in the fall semester of 2009 based on the pilot effort, and plays a role in the College of Engineering’s recent initiatives in sustainability in addition to campus-wide general educatio

Global Climate Change: Impact and Remediation

This "clicker case" is a continuation of another case study "Global Climate Change: Evidence and Causes". Students assume the role of an intern working for a U.S. senator to learn about the effects of global climate change as well as technologies and practices available to remediate the impact of climate effects. The case was designed for use in a one-semester introductory biology course taken primarily by freshmen and sophomores to fulfill a general education requirement, but could be used in any introductory biology course or in an ecology or environmental science course. It consists of a PowerPoint presentation (2.2MB) presented in class that is punctuated by multiple-choice questions students respond to using personal responses systems, or "clickers." The case can be adapted for use without these technologies. Educational levels: High school, Undergraduate lower division

Towards a unified characterization of phenological phases: fluctuations and correlations with temperature

Phenological timing -- i.e. the course of annually recurring development stages in nature -- is of particular interest since it can be understood as a proxy for the climate at a specific region; moreover changes in the so called phenological phases can be a direct consequence of climate change. We analyze records of botanical phenology and study their fluctuations which we find to depend on the seasons. In contrast to previous studies, where typically trends in the phenology of individual species are estimated, we consider the ensemble of all available phases and propose a phenological index that characterizes the influence of climate on the multitude of botanical species.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures, appendix with 1 table; accepted for Physica

Adapting to climate change: an evolving research programme

Since its launch in 1977, the scientific issues addressed by papers published in Climatic Change have changed considerably. Nuclear winter came and went, and papers have come from an increasingly diverse range of disciplines. Most obvious, of course, has been the emergence to overwhelming dominance of papers concerned with the processes and consequences associated with the climate changes driven by increasing human emissions of greenhouse gases. Within this theme too, it is possible to track the evolution of different topics over the last thirty years. In the pages of Climatic Change, as within the climate change research community, increased attention has been given to adaptation to a changing climate. Here, I examine the scale and characteristics of adaptation research in Climatic Change, draw some general conclusions from the research published in Climatic Change, and suggest from this some future research directions

Timeline of Australian climate change policy

This paper presents a record of Australian climate change policies, including key international developments to provide global context.IntroductionClimate change is a long-term, global problem. Long-term problems generally require stable but flexible policy implementation over time. However, Australia’s commitment to climate action over the past three decades could be seen as inconsistent and lacking in direction. At times Australia has been an early adopter, establishing the world’s first government agency dedicated to reducing greenhouse gas emissions; signing on to global climate treaties the same day they are created; establishing the world’s first emissions trading scheme (ETS) (albeit at a state level); and pioneering an innovative land-based carbon offset scheme. But at other times, and for many reasons, Australia has erratically altered course: disbanding the climate change government agency, creating a new one then disbanding that; refusing to ratify global treaties until the dying minute; and introducing legislation to repeal the national ETS

A methodological note on the making of causal statements in the debate on anthropogenic global warming

At best, the empirical evidence for human impact on climate change, more specifically, the anthropogenic global warming (AGW), is based on correlational research. That is, no experiment has been carried out that confirms or falsifies the causal hypothesis put forward by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that anthropogenic increasing of green house gas concentrations very likely causes increasing of the (mean) global temperature. In this article, we point out the major weaknesses of correlational research in assessing causal hypotheses. We further point out that the AGW hypothesis is in need of potential falsifiers in the Popperian (neopositivistic) sense. Some directions for future research on the formulation of such falsifiers in causal research are discussed. Of course, failure to find falsifying evidence in empirical climate data will render the AWG hypothesis much stronger

Iowa Power Fund Board Project Report Update, July 29, 2009

Climate refers to the long-term course or condition of weather, usually over a time scale of decades and longer. It has been documented that our global climate is changing (IPCC 2007, Copenhagen Diagnosis 2009), and Iowa is no exception. In Iowa, statistically significant changes in our precipitation, streamflow, nighttime minimum temperatures, winter average temperatures, and dewpoint humidity readings have occurred during the past few decades. Iowans are already living with warmer winters, longer growing seasons, warmer nights, higher dew-point temperatures, increased humidity, greater annual streamflows, and more frequent severe precipitation events (Fig. 1-1) than were prevalent during the past 50 years. Some of the impacts of these changes could be construed as positive, and some are negative, particularly the tendency for greater precipitation events and flooding. In the near-term, we may expect these trends to continue as long as climate change is prolonged and exacerbated by increasing greenhouse gas emissions globally from the use of fossil fuels and fertilizers, the clearing of land, and agricultural and industrial emissions. This report documents the impacts of changing climate on Iowa during the past 50 years. It seeks to answer the question, “What are the impacts of climate change in Iowa that have been observed already?” And, “What are the effects on public health, our flora and fauna, agriculture, and the general economy of Iowa?

Farmers’ Adaptation to Climate Change: A Framed Field Experiment

The risk of losing income and productive means due to adverse weather can differ significantly among farmers sharing a productive landscape and is, of course, hard to estimate or even “guesstimate” empirically. Moreover, the costs associated with investments in adaptation to climate are likely to exhibit economies of scope. We explore the implications of these characteristics on Costa Rican coffee farmers’ decisions to adapt to climate change, using a framed field experiment. Despite having a baseline of high levels of risk aversion, we still found that farmers more frequently chose the safe options when the setting is characterized by unknown risk (that is, poor or unreliable risk information). Second, we found that farmers, to a large extent, coordinated their decisions to secure a lower adaptation cost and that communication among farmers strongly facilitated coordination.risk, ambiguity, technology adoption, climate change, field experiment

Heidi Asbjornsen Associate Professor of Natural Resources, COLSA, travels to Costa Rica

Experiential Student Learning and Collaborative Research: Understanding Tropical Ecosystem Response to Climate Change from Leaves to Landscapes. During January 2012, I traveled to Costa Rica to visit potential field sites for a future UNH J-term course in Tropical Ecology and to collect preliminary data for a new research project linked to the course. Both of these initiatives are in collaboration with Dr. Michael Palace, a research scientist at UNH’s Earth Systems Research Center. Together, we visited three sites in Costa Rica, each having very different climates and vegetation: Curu Wildlife Refuge, a tropical dry deciduous forest receiving only about 1,500mm rain annually; La Selva Biological Station, a lowland tropical rainforest that receives over 4,000 m of rain annually, and Monteverde Reserve, a tropical montane cloud forest that is immersed in fog for much of the year

Course report: Climate change adaptation in agriculture and natural resource management - Integrating climate change in policy making and programming for sustainable development

At the request of the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (LNV) in the Netherlands, Wageningen UR1 has initiated a support programme for climate change adaptation in Eastern Africa in 2008. In partnership with ASARECA2, IUCN – EARO3 and RUFORUM4 a scoping workshop and follow-up were organised. The focus was on capacities needed to better integrated climate change adaptation responses into agricultural, rural development and natural resources policy processes. The initiative led, among others, to the development of a new training course in 2009, implemented by the partnership, in collaboration with HoA-REC5 at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. The regional training on Climate Change Adaptation in agriculture and NRM took place from 15 to 26 June 2009 in Addis Ababa. It was attended by 26 participants from Ethiopia (20), Uganda (3), Kenya (2) and Tanzania (1). Participants were drawn from universities, agricultural research institutes, non-governmental organisations and government departments. The course was coordinated and facilitated by a team from HoA-REC and Wageningen UR, complemented by presenters and lecturers from various universities and institutes, such as Prof. Richard Odingo (University of Nairobi), Dr. Jan Verhagen (Wageningen UR), Dr. Gebru Jember (National Meteorological Agency, Ethiopia), and Dr. Lulseged Tamene (Addis Ababa University)