The processes and consequences of climate change are extremely heterogeneous, encompassing many different fields of study. Dr David Rind in his career at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and as a professor at Columbia University has had the opportunity to explore many of these subjects with colleagues from these diverse disciplines. It was therefore natural for the Lectures in Climate Change series to begin with his colleagues contributing lectures on their specific areas of expertise.This first volume, entitled Our Warming Planet: Topics in Climate Dynamics, encompasses topics such as natural and anthropogenic climate forcing, climate modeling, radiation, clouds, atmospheric dynamics/storms, hydrology, clouds, the cryosphere, paleoclimate, sea level rise, agriculture, atmospheric chemistry, and climate change education. Included with this publication are downloadable PowerPoint slides of each lecture for students and teachers around the world to be better able to understand various aspects of climate change.The lectures on climate change processes and consequences provide snapshots of the cutting-edge work being done to understand what may well be the greatest challenge of our time, in a form suitable for classroom presentation.

This volume, the second in the Lectures in Climate Change series, covers the full array of climate impacts and adaptation measures. It has been brought together by friends and colleagues of Dr Martin Parry, Co-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 assessment on impacts and adaptation. The writers are experts in this field and have been lead authors in many of the IPCC assessments and other major publications.Lectures in Climate Change is a unique combination of written text plus electronic slides that together comprise an informative and up-to-date set of presentations. This second volume, entitled Our Warming Planet: Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation, covers areas of climate impacts related to climate science, methods and approaches, sectors, regional and national studies, and policy and practice.The volume comprises topics such as current and future challenges of climate change, global assessments, downscaling, community-based adaptation, impacts on biodiversity, food systems, water resources, and cities. Research from across the world is presented on making science actionable through assessments, early warning and early action, communicating climate risk, documenting the uptake of adaptation on the global front, and transformation towards systemic resilience.Included with this publication are downloadable electronic slides and accompanying notes of each lecture for students, teachers, and public speakers around the world to be better able to understand and present climate change impacts and adaptation.

The portending process of climate change, induced by the anthropogenic accumulations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, is likely to generate effects that will cascade through the biosphere, impacting all life on earth and bearing upon human endeavors. Of special concern is the potential effect on agriculture and global food security.Anticipating these effects demands that scientists widen their field of vision and cooperate across disciplines to encompass increasingly complex interactions. Trans-disciplinary cooperation should aim to generate effective responses to the evolving risks, including actions to mitigate the emissions of greenhouse gases and to adapt to those climate changes that cannot be avoided.This handbook presents an exposition of current research on the impacts, adaptation, and mitigation of climate change in relation to agroecosystems. It is offered as the first volume in what is intended to be an ongoing series dedicated to elucidating the interactions of climate change with a broad range of sectors and systems, and to developing and spurring effective responses to this global challenge. As the collective scientific and practical knowledge of the processes and responses involved continues to grow, future volumes in the series will address important aspects of the topic periodically over the coming years.

Managing climate variability and change remains a key development and food security issue in Bangladesh. Despite significant investments, floods, droughts, and cyclones during the last two decades continue to cause extensive economic damage and impair livelihoods. Climate change will pose additional risks to ongoing efforts to reduce poverty. This book examines the implications of climate change on food security in Bangladesh and identifies adaptation measures in the agriculture sector using a comprehensive integrated framework. First, the most recent science available is used to characterize current climate and hydrology and its potential changes. Second, country-specific survey and biophysical data is used to derive more realistic and accurate agricultural impact functions and simulations. A range of climate risks (i.e. warmer temperatures, higher carbon dioxide concentrations, changing characteristics of floods, droughts and potential sea level rise) is considered to gain a more complete picture of potential agriculture impacts. Third, while estimating changes in production is important, economic responses may to some degree buffer against the physical losses predicted, and an assessment is made of these. Food security is dependent not only on production, but also future food requirements, income levels and commodity prices. Finally, adaptation possibilities are identified for the sector. This book is the first to combine these multiple disciplines and analytical procedures to comprehensively address these impacts. The framework will serve as a useful guide to design policy intervention strategies and investments in adaptation measures.

The processes and consequences of climate change are extremely heterogeneous, encompassing many different fields of study. Dr David Rind in his career at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and as a professor at Columbia University has had the opportunity to explore many of these subjects with colleagues from these diverse disciplines. It was therefore natural for the Lectures in Climate Change series to begin with his colleagues contributing lectures on their specific areas of expertise.This first volume, entitled Our Warming Planet: Topics in Climate Dynamics, encompasses topics such as natural and anthropogenic climate forcing, climate modeling, radiation, clouds, atmospheric dynamics/storms, hydrology, clouds, the cryosphere, paleoclimate, sea level rise, agriculture, atmospheric chemistry, and climate change education. Included with this publication are downloadable PowerPoint slides of each lecture for students and teachers around the world to be better able to understand various aspects of climate change.The lectures on climate change processes and consequences provide snapshots of the cutting-edge work being done to understand what may well be the greatest challenge of our time, in a form suitable for classroom presentation.

The Earth's climate is constantly changing. Some of the changes are progressive, while others fluctuate at various time scales. The El Nino-la Nina cycle is one such fluctuation that recurs every few years and has far-reaching impacts. It generally appears at least once per decade, but this may vary with our changing climate. The exact frequency, sequence, duration and intensity of El Nino's manifestations, as well as its effects and geographic distributions, are highly variable. The El Nino-la Nina cycle is particularly challenging to study due to its many interlinked phenomena that occur in various locations around the globe. These worldwide teleconnections are precisely what makes studying El Nino-la Nina so important.
Cynthia Rosenzweig and Daniel Hillel describe the current efforts to develop and apply a global-to-regional approach to climate-risk management. They explain how atmospheric and social scientists are cooperating with agricultural practitioners in various regions around the world to determine how farmers may benefit most from new climate predictions. Specifically, the emerging ability to predict the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle offers the potential to transform agricultural planning worldwide. Biophysical scientists are only now beginning to recognize the large-scale, globally distributed impacts of ENSO on the probabilities of seasonal precipitation and temperature regimes. Meanwhile, social scientists have been researching how to disseminate forecasts more effectively within rural communities. Consequently, as the quality of climatic predictions have improved, the dissemination and presentation of forecasts have become more effective as well. Thisbook explores the growing understanding of the interconnectedness of climate predictions and productive agriculture for sustainable development, as well as methods and models used to study this relationship.

The Urban Climate Change Research Network's Second Assessment Report on Climate Change in Cities (ARC3.2) is the second in a series of global, science-based reports to examine climate risk, adaptation, and mitigation efforts in cities. The book explicitly seeks to explore the implications of changing climatic conditions on critical urban physical and social infrastructure sectors and intersectoral concerns. The primary purpose of ARC3.2 is to inform the development and implementation of effective urban climate change policies, leveraging ongoing and planned investments for populations in cities of developing, emerging, and developed countries. This volume, like its predecessor, will be invaluable for a range of audiences involved with climate change and cities: mayors, city officials and policymakers; urban planners; policymakers charged with developing climate change mitigation and adaptation programs; and a broad spectrum of researchers and advanced students in the environmental sciences.

This two-part handbook focuses on the work that the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) accomplished using a new method - the AgMIP Regional Integrated Assessment Protocol - in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and South Asia (SA), with funding from the UK Department for International Development. Through this research, AgMIP substantially improves the characterization and understanding of food security in SSA and SA and how its affected by climate variability and change.The chapters in this handbook demonstrate how AgMIP has enhanced the capacity of developing country researchers and stakeholders to work together, exploring and prioritizing adaptation to current and future climate stresses. Part 1 describes regional integrated assessment methods and analyses, while Part 2 presents the outcomes of farming system studies. The entire volume shows how AgMIP has established, as a public good, protocols for Regional Integrated Assessments that improve the capability of developing countries to address climate change challenges.Related Link(s)

This volume, the second in the Lectures in Climate Change series, covers the full array of climate impacts and adaptation measures. It has been brought together by friends and colleagues of Dr Martin Parry, Co-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 assessment on impacts and adaptation. The writers are experts in this field and have been lead authors in many of the IPCC assessments and other major publications.Lectures in Climate Change is a unique combination of written text plus electronic slides that together comprise an informative and up-to-date set of presentations. This second volume, entitled Our Warming Planet: Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation, covers areas of climate impacts related to climate science, methods and approaches, sectors, regional and national studies, and policy and practice.The volume comprises topics such as current and future challenges of climate change, global assessments, downscaling, community-based adaptation, impacts on biodiversity, food systems, water resources, and cities. Research from across the world is presented on making science actionable through assessments, early warning and early action, communicating climate risk, documenting the uptake of adaptation on the global front, and transformation towards systemic resilience.Included with this publication are downloadable electronic slides and accompanying notes of each lecture for students, teachers, and public speakers around the world to be better able to understand and present climate change impacts and adaptation.

Urban areas are home to over half the world's people and are at the forefront of the climate change issue. The need for a global research effort to establish the current understanding of climate change adaptation and mitigation at the city level is urgent. To meet this goal a coalition of international researchers - the Urban Climate Change Research Network (UCCRN) - was formed at the time of the C40 Large Cities Climate Summit in New York in 2007. This book is the First UCCRN Assessment Report on Climate Change and Cities. The authors are all international experts from a diverse range of cities with varying socio-economic conditions, from both the developing and developed world. It is invaluable for mayors, city officials and policymakers; urban sustainability officers and urban planners; and researchers, professors and advanced students.

Climate change is no longer merely projected to occur in the indeterminate future. It has already begun to be manifested in the weather regimes affecting agroecosystems, food production, and rural livelihoods in many regions around the world. It is a real and growing challenge to the world at large and in particular to the scientific community, which is called upon with increasing urgency to respond effectively.The second volume in the ICP Series on Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation, and Mitigation, Handbook of Climate Change and Agroecosystems: Global and Regional Aspects and Implications is published jointly by the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America and Imperial College Press. The ongoing series is dedicated to elucidating the actual and potential impacts of climate change, and to formulating effective responses to this global challenge. It is designed to inform, spur, and integrate the work of leading researchers in the major regions of the world, and to further international cooperation in this crucial field.

Managing climate variability and change remains a key development and food security issue in Bangladesh. Despite significant investments, floods, droughts, and cyclones during the last two decades continue to cause extensive economic damage and impair livelihoods. Climate change will pose additional risks to ongoing efforts to reduce poverty. This book examines the implications of climate change on food security in Bangladesh and identifies adaptation measures in the agriculture sector using a comprehensive integrated framework. First, the most recent science available is used to characterize current climate and hydrology and its potential changes. Second, country-specific survey and biophysical data is used to derive more realistic and accurate agricultural impact functions and simulations. A range of climate risks (i.e. warmer temperatures, higher carbon dioxide concentrations, changing characteristics of floods, droughts and potential sea level rise) is considered to gain a more complete picture of potential agriculture impacts. Third, while estimating changes in production is important, economic responses may to some degree buffer against the physical losses predicted, and an assessment is made of these. Food security is dependent not only on production, but also future food requirements, income levels and commodity prices. Finally, adaptation possibilities are identified for the sector. This book is the first to combine these multiple disciplines and analytical procedures to comprehensively address these impacts. The framework will serve as a useful guide to design policy intervention strategies and investments in adaptation measures.