Resilience to heat in public space: a case study of Adelaide,South Australia

During summer heatwaves, heat load exacerbates in urban heat islands (especially in hot climates) and threatens public life in cities. This paper examines the links between urban microclimates, outdoor thermal discomfort and public life through an exploratory case study. Heat resilience is highlighted as the ability of the space to support its normal activities when experiencing out-of-comfort temperatures. It also reports on the correlations between heat sensitive outdoor activities and urban greenery in three disparate case studies in Adelaide. Results indicate that necessary and optional activities start to decline after the apparent temperature reaches the threshold of 28?°C–32 °C, while activities in public spaces with more urban greenery show higher resilience to heat stress. Research findings propose heat resilience as a quality indicator in public space and support the application of urban greenery to make urban settings more resilient to heat stress.     

Community resilience,land degradation and endogenous lock-in effects: evidence from the Alento region,Campania, Italy

This study analyses social, economic and political “lock-ins” for understanding community resilience and land degradation. The study focuses on lock-ins from within communities, using four case study communities in Italy affected by land degradation. The analysis highlights the complex interrelationships between various lock-ins, and suggests that the communities are on declining resilience pathways that may lead to increasing difficulties in addressing land degradation issues in future.     

How Grammatical Choice Shapes Media Representations of Climate (Un)certainty

Although mass media continue to play a key role in translating scientific uncertainty for public discourse, communicators of climate science are becoming increasingly aware of their own role in shaping scientific messages in the news. As an example of how future media research can provide relevant feedback to climate communicators, the present study examines the ways in which grammatical and word choices represent and construct uncertainty in news reporting about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Qualifying and hedging language and other “epistemic markers” are analyzed in four newspapers during 2001 and 2007: the New York Times and Wall Street Journal from the USA and El País and El Mundo from Spain. Though the US newspapers contained a higher density of epistemic markers and used more ambiguous grammatical constructs of uncertainty than the Spanish newspapers, all four media sources chose similar words when questioning the certainty around climate change. Moreover, the density of epistemic markers in each newspaper either remained the same or increased with time, despite ever-growing scientific agreement that human activities modify global climate. While the US newspapers increasingly adopted IPCC language to describe climate uncertainties, they also exhibited an emerging tendency to construct uncertainty by highlighting differences between IPCC reports or between scientific predictions and observations. The analysis thus helps identify articulations of uncertainty that will shape future media portrayals of climate science across varying cultural and national contexts.     

Path Dependencies and Path Change in Complex Fields of Action: Climate Adaptation Policies in Germany in the Realm of Flood Risk Management

The spatial and temporal repercussions of climate change are of an extremely complex nature. Coping with climate change is, first and foremost, a challenge to political decision making and, considering the long-term effects of the climate system, to planning. However, there have never been more doubts that the political-administrative system is able to meet these requirements. Although much evidence has been put forward in favor of such skepticism, sometimes, it is dangerous to overstate the existing limits. Drawing on two case studies in the area of flood risk management in Germany, the article illustrates how and why significant path change came about. In both cases, the state proved to still being a pivotal actor, due to a number of functions that cannot be assumed by other actors. However, other actor groups—such as actors from science, the media, NGOs, and citizen groups—play a significant role as well by providing relevant expertise and influencing the public discourse, thus mobilizing significant political pressure.     

云南省污染气候区划

通过污染气象分析,找出了影响空气污染的主要污染气候因子,利用全省126个气象站的常规气象资料,计算了大气纳污指数,对全省污染气候作了区别,为全省工业总体布局和规划提供了依据。 区划结果揭示了污染气候的基本规律。从总体来说,全省大气纳污能力从北向南减弱。其中曲靖地区、红河州、丽江地区、大理州是纳污能力最强的地区;思茅地区、西双版纳州、德宏州和临沧地区西南部是纳污能力最弱地区。区划结果与全省近十年大气环境影响评价结论一致。      

A tree and climate assessment tool for modelling ecosystem response to climate change

Understanding how vulnerable forest ecosystems are to climate change is a key requirement if sustainable forest management is to be achieved. Modelling the response of species in their regeneration niche to phenological and biophysical processes that are directly influenced by climate is one method for achieving this understanding. A model was developed to investigate species resilience and vulnerability to climate change within its fundamental-regeneration niche. The utility of the developed model, tree and climate assessment (TACA), was tested within the interior Douglas-fir ecosystem in south-central British Columbia. TACA modelled the current potential tree species composition of the ecosystem with high accuracy and modelled significant responses amongst tree species to climate change. The response of individual species suggests that the studied ecosystem could transition to a new ecosystem over the next 100 years. TACA showed that it can be an effective tool for identifying species resilience and vulnerability to changes in climate within the most sensitive stage of development, the regeneration phase. The TACA model was able to identify the degree of change in phenological and biophysical variables that control tree establishment, growth and persistence. The response to changes in one or more of these variables resulted in changes in the climatic suitability of the ecosystem for species and enabled a measure of vulnerability to be quantified. TACA could be useful to forest managers as a decision support tool for adaptation actions and by researchers interested in modelling stand dynamics under climate change.     

气候变暖对黑龙江省灾害气候影响及减灾对策

黑龙江省自上世纪80年代以来的20年里，年均温度较前30年上升了1℃。增温最大的季节是冬季，增温1．6℃，其次春季，夏秋季分列第3，4位；增温高值中心在呼玛。增温主要表现在最低气温的增高，年平均最低气温增高1．7℃，年较差变小1．16℃。气候变暖对灾害天气的影响包括：(1)风速减弱，大风次数减少；(2)暴雨次数增加；(3)干旱增强；(4)大涝次数减少；(5)低温次数减少；(6)初霜日后延；(7)寒潮次数减少；(8)大雪次数增加。针对这一情况，提出了防灾减灾的3项对策。     

Localizing Climate Change: Nordic Homeowners’ Interpretations of Visual Representations for Climate Adaptation

In recent years, effort has been put into developing various forms of climate visualization to create opportunities for people to explore and learn about local climate change risks and adaptation options. However, how target audiences make sense of such climate visualization has rarely been studied from a communication perspective. This paper analyses how Nordic homeowners made sense of a specific climate visualization tool, the VisAdapt? tool. Involving 35 homeowners from three cities in 15 group test sessions, this study analyses the interpretive strategies participants applied to make sense of and assess the relevance of the visualized data. The study demonstrates that participants employed a set of interpretive strategies relating to personal experience and well-known places to make sense of the information presented, and that critical negotiation of content played an important role in how participants interpreted the content.     

“The End of the Ice Age?”: Disappearing World Heritage and the Climate Change Communication Imperative

Rapid environmental change in vulnerable destinations has stimulated a new form of travel termed “last chance tourism” (LCT). Studies have examined the risks of LCT, while leaving potential opportunities within this new tourism market largely underexplored. Results of survey (n?=?399) research in Jasper National Park, Canada reveal that a LCT motivation influences decisions to visit this iconic Canadian destination, and suggest that this motivation is linked to a desire to learn about the impacts of climate change on the Athabasca Glacier. Findings suggest there may be short to medium term opportunities associated with LCT, including promoting climate change ambassadorship through management interventions. This paper discusses a range of possible education, interpretive, and outreach activities that might be employed at LCT destinations. It outlines the relative merits (or what we refer to as “uneasy benefits”) of promoting the glacier and other LCT destinations within a protected areas management and climate change adaptation context.     

“Environmentally Friendly Oil and Gas Production”: Analyzing Governmental Argumentation and Press Deliberation on Oil Policy

This article exemplifies an approach to analyzing political arguments and press deliberation on the issue of climate change and oil policy. I apply political discourse analysis to examine an oil minister's press conference presentation of the key official document on Norway's future oil policy, and evaluate how he attempted to reconcile the country's expansive petroleum policy with its self-proclaimed ambition of being world leading in responsible climate policy. The analysis displays how the minister's argumentation served to legitimate an expansive oil policy by projecting an altruistic motivation and invoking the authority of the tradition of the industry. This is supplemented by an analysis of newspaper editorials and commentaries on the speech, identifying a major split in viewpoints between local and national newspapers. The analyses evaluate arguments in an explicit manner, for example by critically questioning their value premises, thus suggesting an approach that could benefit critical research on environmental communication.