Low-intensity fires mitigate the risk of high-intensity wildfires in California's forests.

The increasing frequency of severe wildfires demands a shift in landscape management to mitigate their consequences. The role of managed, low-intensity fire as a driver of beneficial fuel treatment in fire-adapted ecosystems has drawn interest in both scientific and policy venues. Using a synthetic control approach to analyze 20 years of satellite-based fire activity data across 124,186 square kilometers of forests in California, we provide evidence that low-intensity fires substantially reduce the risk of future high-intensity fires. In conifer forests, the risk of high-intensity fire is reduced by 64.0% [95% confidence interval (CI): 41.2 to 77.9%] in areas recently burned at low intensity relative to comparable unburned areas, and protective effects last for at least 6 years (lower bound of one-sided 95% CI: 6 years). These findings support a policy transition from fire suppression to restoration, through increased use of prescribed fire, cultural burning, and managed wildfire, of a presuppression and precolonial fire regime in California.

Accounting for the Greenhouse Gas Emission Intensity of Regional Electricity Transfers.

Accurately quantifying greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is essential for climate policy implementation but challenging in the case of electricity transfers across regulatory jurisdictions. Regulating emissions associated with delivered electricity is further complicated by contractual arrangements for dynamic electricity transfers that confound emission accounting approaches rooted in the physics of grid operations. Here, we propose a novel consumption-based accounting methodology to reconcile the nominal and the physical flows of electricity from generators to consumers. We also compare capacity factor-based and regression-based approaches for estimating default emission factors, in the absence of fully specified nominal electricity flows. As a case study, we apply this approach to assess the methods by which California regulators quantify specified and unspecified electricity imports and their associated GHG emissions. Collectively, these efforts illustrate principles for a comprehensive, empirical accounting framework that could inform efforts to improve the accuracy and consistency of policies regulating regional electricity transfers.

Net-zero emissions energy systems.

Some energy services and industrial processes-such as long-distance freight transport, air travel, highly reliable electricity, and steel and cement manufacturing-are particularly difficult to provide without adding carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere. Rapidly growing demand for these services, combined with long lead times for technology development and long lifetimes of energy infrastructure, make decarbonization of these services both essential and urgent. We examine barriers and opportunities associated with these difficult-to-decarbonize services and processes, including possible technological solutions and research and development priorities. A range of existing technologies could meet future demands for these services and processes without net addition of CO2 to the atmosphere, but their use may depend on a combination of cost reductions via research and innovation, as well as coordinated deployment and integration of operations across currently discrete energy industries.

A multistage crucible of revision and approval shapes IPCC policymaker summaries.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) member governments approve each report's summary for policymakers (SPM) by consensus, discussing and agreeing on each sentence in a plenary session with scientist authors. A defining feature of IPCC assessment, the governmental approval process builds joint ownership of current knowledge by scientists and governments. The resulting SPM revisions have been extensively discussed in anecdotes, interviews, and perspectives, but they have not been comprehensively analyzed. We provide an in-depth evaluation of IPCC SPM revisions, establishing an evidential basis for understanding their nature. Revisions associated with governmental review and approval generally expand SPMs, with SPM text growing by 17 to 53% across recent assessment reports. Cases of high political sensitivity and failure to reach consensus are notable exceptions, resulting in SPM contractions. In contrast to recent claims, we find that IPCC SPMs are as readable, for multiple metrics of reading ease, as other professionally edited assessment summaries. Across reading-ease metrics, some SPMs become more readable through governmental review and approval, whereas others do not. In an SPM examined through the entire revision process, most revisions associated with governmental review and approval occurred before the start of the government-approval plenary session. These author revisions emphasize clarity, scientific rigor, and explanation. In contrast, the subsequent plenary revisions place greater emphasis especially on policy relevance, comprehensiveness of examples, and nuances of expert judgment. Overall, the value added by the IPCC process emerges in a multistage crucible of revision and approval, as individuals together navigate complex science-policy terrain.

Tolerance adaptation and precipitation changes complicate latitudinal patterns of climate change impacts.

Global patterns of biodiversity and comparisons between tropical and temperate ecosystems have pervaded ecology from its inception. However, the urgency in understanding these global patterns has been accentuated by the threat of rapid climate change. We apply an adaptive model of environmental tolerance evolution to global climate data and climate change model projections to examine the relative impacts of climate change on different regions of the globe. Our results project more adverse impacts of warming on tropical populations due to environmental tolerance adaptation to conditions of low interannual variability in temperature. When applied to present variability and future forecasts of precipitation data, the tolerance adaptation model found large reductions in fitness predicted for populations in high-latitude northern hemisphere regions, although some tropical regions had comparable reductions in fitness. We formulated an evolutionary regional climate change index (ERCCI) to additionally incorporate the predicted changes in the interannual variability of temperature and precipitation. Based on this index, we suggest that the magnitude of climate change impacts could be much more heterogeneous across latitude than previously thought. Specifically, tropical regions are likely to be just as affected as temperate regions and, in some regions under some circumstances, possibly more so.

Assessing dangerous climate change through an update of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) "reasons for concern".

Article 2 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [United Nations (1992) http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/conveng.pdf. Accessed February 9, 2009] commits signatory nations to stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that "would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference (DAI) with the climate system." In an effort to provide some insight into impacts of climate change that might be considered DAI, authors of the Third Assessment Report (TAR) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) identified 5 "reasons for concern" (RFCs). Relationships between various impacts reflected in each RFC and increases in global mean temperature (GMT) were portrayed in what has come to be called the "burning embers diagram." In presenting the "embers" in the TAR, IPCC authors did not assess whether any single RFC was more important than any other; nor did they conclude what level of impacts or what atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases would constitute DAI, a value judgment that would be policy prescriptive. Here, we describe revisions of the sensitivities of the RFCs to increases in GMT and a more thorough understanding of the concept of vulnerability that has evolved over the past 8 years. This is based on our expert judgment about new findings in the growing literature since the publication of the TAR in 2001, including literature that was assessed in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), as well as additional research published since AR4. Compared with results reported in the TAR, smaller increases in GMT are now estimated to lead to significant or substantial consequences in the framework of the 5 "reasons for concern."

Prioritizing climate change adaptation needs for food security in 2030.

Investments aimed at improving agricultural adaptation to climate change inevitably favor some crops and regions over others. An analysis of climate risks for crops in 12 food-insecure regions was conducted to identify adaptation priorities, based on statistical crop models and climate projections for 2030 from 20 general circulation models. Results indicate South Asia and Southern Africa as two regions that, without sufficient adaptation measures, will likely suffer negative impacts on several crops that are important to large food-insecure human populations. We also find that uncertainties vary widely by crop, and therefore priorities will depend on the risk attitudes of investment institutions.

Probabilistic assessment of "dangerous" climate change and emissions pathways.

Climate policy decisions driving future greenhouse gas mitigation efforts will strongly influence the success of compliance with Article 2 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the prevention of "dangerous anthropogenic interference (DAI) with the climate system." However, success will be measured in very different ways by different stakeholders, suggesting a spectrum of possible definitions for DAI. The likelihood of avoiding a given threshold for DAI depends in part on uncertainty in the climate system, notably, the range of uncertainty in climate sensitivity. We combine a set of probabilistic global average temperature metrics for DAI with probability distributions of future climate change produced from a combination of several published climate sensitivity distributions and a range of proposed concentration stabilization profiles differing in both stabilization level and approach trajectory, including overshoot profiles. These analyses present a "likelihood framework" to differentiate future emissions pathways with regard to their potential for preventing DAI. Our analysis of overshoot profiles in comparison with non-overshoot profiles demonstrates that overshoot of a given stabilization target can significantly increase the likelihood of exceeding "dangerous" climate impact thresholds, even though equilibrium warming in our model is identical for non-overshoot concentration stabilization profiles having the same target.

Human-modified temperatures induce species changes: Joint attribution.

Average global surface-air temperature is increasing. Contention exists over relative contributions by natural and anthropogenic forcings. Ecological studies attribute plant and animal changes to observed warming. Until now, temperature-species connections have not been statistically attributed directly to anthropogenic climatic change. Using modeled climatic variables and observed species data, which are independent of thermometer records and paleoclimatic proxies, we demonstrate statistically significant "joint attribution," a two-step linkage: human activities contribute significantly to temperature changes and human-changed temperatures are associated with discernible changes in plant and animal traits. Additionally, our analyses provide independent testing of grid-box-scale temperature projections from a general circulation model (HadCM3).

Probabilistic integrated assessment of "dangerous" climate change.

Climate policy decisions are being made despite layers of uncertainty. Such decisions directly influence the potential for "dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system." We mapped a metric for this concept, based on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment of climate impacts, onto probability distributions of future climate change produced from uncertainty in key parameters of the coupled social-natural system-climate sensitivity, climate damages, and discount rate. Analyses with a simple integrated assessment model found that, under midrange assumptions, endogenously calculated, optimal climate policy controls can reduce the probability of dangerous anthropogenic interference from approximately 45% under minimal controls to near zero.

Dynamics of climate and ecosystem coupling: abrupt changes and multiple equilibria.

Interactions between subunits of the global climate-biosphere system (e.g. atmosphere, ocean, biosphere and cryosphere) often lead to behaviour that is not evident when each subunit is viewed in isolation. This newly evident behaviour is an emergent property of the coupled subsystems. Interactions between thermohaline circulation and climate illustrate one emergent property of coupling ocean and atmospheric circulation. The multiple thermohaline circulation equilibria that result caused abrupt climate changes in the past and may cause abrupt climate changes in the future. Similarly, coupling between the climate system and ecosystem structure and function produces complex behaviour in certain regions. For example, atmosphere-biosphere interactions in the Sahel region of West Africa lead to multiple stable equilibria. Either wet or dry climate equilibria can occur under otherwise identical forcing conditions. The equilibrium reached is dependent on past history (i.e. initial conditions), and relatively small perturbations to either climate or vegetation can cause switching between the two equilibria. Both thermohaline circulation and the climate-vegetation system in the Sahel are prone to abrupt changes that may be irreversible. This complicates the relatively linear view of global changes held in many scientific and policy communities. Emergent properties of coupled socio-natural systems add yet another layer of complexity to the policy debate. As a result, the social and economic consequences of possible global changes are likely to be underestimated in most conventional analyses because these nonlinear, abrupt and irreversible responses are insufficiently considered.