Climate Change Research and Technology for Adaptation

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- This book provides an interdisciplinary view of how to prepare the ecological and socio-economic systems to the reality of climate change. Scientifically sound tools are needed to predict its effects on regional, rather than global, scales, as it is the level at which socio-economic plans are designed and natural ecosystem reacts. The first section of this book describes a series of methods and models to downscale the global predictions of climate change, estimate its effects on biophysical systems and monitor the changes as they occur. To reduce the magnitude of these changes, new ways of economic activity must be implemented. The second section of this book explores different options to reduce greenhouse emissions from activities such as forestry, industry and urban development. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that climate change can be minimized, but not avoided, and therefore the socio-economic systems around the world will have to adapt to the new conditions to reduce the adverse impacts to the minimum. The last section of this book explores some options for adaptation.
- Climate is a fundamental part of the world as we know it. The landscape and everything on it are determined by climate acting over long periods of time (Pittock 2005). Therefore, any change on climate will have effects sooner or later on the world around us. These changes have happened before in the past, and they will likely happen again in the future. Climate variability can be both natural or anthropogenic (Simard and Austin 2010). In either case, the change in the current climate will have impacts on the biogeophysical system of the Earth. As all human activities are built on this system, our society will be impacted as well. As a consequence, climate change is increasingly becoming one of the most important issues, generating discussions in economy, science, politics, etc. There is no discrepancy among scientists that climate change is real and it has the potential to change our environment (Oreskes and Conway 2010), but uncertainty exists about the magnitude and speed at which it will unfold (Moss et al. 2010). The most discussed effect of global warming is the increase of temperatures, although this increase will not be homogeneous through the seasons, with the winters expected to warm up significantly more than the summers. In addition, changes in precipitation are also expected that could lead to increase or decrease of rainfall, snowfall and other water-related events. Finally, a change in the frequency and intensity of storm events could be possible, although this is probably the most uncertain of the effects of global warming. These uncertainties highlight the need for more research on how global events have effects at regional and local scales, but they also indicated the need for the society at large to assume a risk-free approach to avoid the worse effects of climate change in our socio-economical and ecological systems (IPCC 2007).
Humans have been dealing with risk-related activities for a long time. For example, when buying a car or home insurance, the discussion is not about whether the adverse effects will happen or not, but on how to reduce its effects and recover from if they happen. In many countries having car insurance is compulsory to drive a car, even if only a small percentage of drivers suffer car accidents compared to the total number of cars. In addition, the most risky manoeuvres (i.e. excessive speed, not stopping on red light, etc.) are banned to reduce the risks of accidents. Similarly, developing policies and practices that reduce and minimize the risks and effects of climate change is needed, even if the worse situations will never happen. If not, we will be in the equivalent of driving without insurance and without respecting the signals.

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