CICERO Research Archive (CICERO Senter for klimaforskning)
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1083 research outputs found
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Extreme weather, food security and the capacity to adapt – the case of crops in China
Get PDFThis is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Food Security. The final authenticated version is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12571-015-0420-6Three extreme weather scenarios are examined for agriculture in China in this study. One scenario assumes a year when every province has precipitation corresponding to the lowest level experienced in the province over the last three decades. Another scenario assumes the highest experienced precipitation for every province is happening; and the last one assumes that the most harmful level of precipitation on crops occurs for every province – whether too little or too much. We studied the role of autonomous adaptation by farmers and through markets as embodied in a computable general equilibrium model. The results show that observed extreme impacts of precipitation on crop harvests are not serious for China at national level. The maize harvest is the most negatively affected with a reduction of 4 % without adaptation and less than 1 % reduction with adaptation. However, the impacts within a province may be serious and even become worse with adaptation. Good harvests might not make farmers better off due to lower crop prices even though consumers benefit. Sensitivity analysis shows that the ability to adapt assumed in the analysis may not be present in the short term.acceptedVersio
An application of automated mediation to international climate treaty negotiation
Get PDFA generic framework for automated mediation of multi-attribute negotiation has recently been reported (Lai and Sycara in Group Decis Negot 18:169–187, 2009). This framework seeks to shorten time to agreement, achieve agreements that are closer to Pareto optimality, and remain tractable in situations involving multiple issues, incomplete information, and dynamic reservation utility. These objectives are all relevant to international climate treaty negotiation. Therefore, in this paper, we describe how this mediation framework can be applied to the climate policy setting and articulate a necessary extension to allow for more than two negotiating parties. We then demonstrate application of the framework, employing some simple economic and procedural assumptions. This example shows that automated mediation can add value to the negotiation process without placing an undue mental or computational burden on negotiators. Part of this value comes simply from encouraging negotiators to be explicit about their assumptions and preferences, even if most of this information is not shared with their opponents.submittedVersio
Standard climate models radiation codes underestimate black carbon radiative forcing
Get PDFRadiative forcing (RF) of black carbon (BC) in the atmosphere is estimated using radiative transfer codes of various complexities. Here we show that the two-stream radiative transfer codes used most in climate models give too strong forward scattering, leading to enhanced absorption at the surface and too weak absorption by BC in the atmosphere. Such calculations are found to underestimate the positive RF of BC by 10% for global mean, all sky conditions, relative to the more sophisticated multi-stream models. The underestimation occurs primarily for low surface albedo, even though BC is more efficient for absorption of solar radiation over high surface albedo.publishedVersio
Reaching peak emissions
No full textRapid growth in global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry ceased in the past two years, despite continued economic growth. Decreased coal use in China was largely responsible, coupled with slower global growth in petroleum and faster growth in renewables.submittedVersio
Measuring a fair and ambitious climate agreement using cumulative emissions
Get PDFPolicy makers have called for a 'fair and ambitious' global climate agreement. Scientific constraints, such as the allowable carbon emissions to avoid exceeding a 2 °C global warming limit with 66% probability, can help define ambitious approaches to climate targets. However, fairly sharing the mitigation challenge to meet a global target involves human values rather than just scientific facts. We develop a framework based on cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide to compare the consistency of countries' current emission pledges to the ambition of keeping global temperatures below 2 °C, and, further, compare two alternative methods of sharing the remaining emission allowance. We focus on the recent pledges and other official statements of the EU, USA, and China. The EU and US pledges are close to a 2 °C level of ambition only if the remaining emission allowance is distributed based on current emission shares, which is unlikely to be viewed as 'fair and ambitious' by others who presently emit less. China's stated emissions target also differs from measures of global fairness, owing to emissions that continue to grow into the 2020s. We find that, combined, the EU, US, and Chinese pledges leave little room for other countries to emit CO2 if a 2 °C limit is the objective, essentially requiring all other countries to move towards per capita emissions 7 to 14 times lower than the EU, USA, or China by 2030. We argue that a fair and ambitious agreement for a 2 °C limit that would be globally inclusive and effective in the long term will require stronger mitigation than the goals currently proposed. Given such necessary and unprecedented mitigation and the current lack of availability of some key technologies, we suggest a new diplomatic effort directed at ensuring that the necessary technologies become available in the near future.publishedVersio
City of Oslo
Get PDFCategory: Second Opinion, Sector: Municipal Government, Issuer type: Local Government, Shading: Dark GreenpublishedVersio
Look to Sweden: The making of a new renewable energy support scheme in Norway
Get PDFTwo renewable energy support schemes have spread across Europe: green certificate schemes (GCSs) and feed-in tariffs (FITs). After a decade-long policy-making process, Norwegian decision makers decided in 2011 to adopt a GCS compatible with the already existing one in Sweden and thereby establish a joint Norwegian-Swedish GCS. The article explores this process of policy transfer, and asks to what extent competition and policy learning contributed to Norway's choice of a GCS. It finds that competition was a barrier to a joint Norwegian-Swedish GCS rather than (as predicted by some scholars) a driver of policy transfer. In terms of policy learning, it finds that Norwegian bureaucrats systematically were searching for information about renewable energy policy instruments in a process characterised by rational learning. However, this information was not taken into account by elected policy makers, whose learning was unsystematic and almost exclusively influenced by Sweden – making it a process of bounded learning. Finally, domestic factors that facilitated and constrained the policy transfer process are identified in the article. A reluctant bureaucracy defending the status quo policies constrained the policy transfer process. GCS as a market-based instrument independent of yearly allocations over the annual national budgets facilitated the process by securing strong support in a broad coalition of stakeholder groups and thereby cross-partisan support. The latter finding may contribute to the literature by underscoring the importance of domestic political factors.submittedVersio
Climate change policy inventory and analysis for Tanzania
Get PDFThis report is an output of the Global Framework for Climate Services Adaptation Programme in Africa. The goal of the report is to: 1) assess the extent to which climate change concerns have been integrated or mainstreamed into national policy documents in mainland Tanzania, 2) to consider the role of climate services in achieving national sectorial policy goals, and 3) identify entry points for the further development of climate services within the current policy frameworks. Fifteen key policy documents relevant to economic development, climate change and environment, agriculture and food security, disaster management and risk reduction, and health planning were analysed. Three major findings emerged from this analysis. First, while climate change is addressed in a number of the policy documents, the concept of climate services was not. Second, policy documents across all sectors identified improved early warning systems as a specific objective. This represents a common entry point for development and delivery of climate services, as well as an opportunity to increase cross-sectorial adaptation coordination and planning. Third, the analysis highlighted that efforts to manage short- and long-term climate risks are not well integrated under current policies and legislation in Tanzania. Additionally, we found that the National Environmental Policy and National Environmental Management Act are the primary policy documents that oversee climate change-related issues. It will be important to link the development and delivery of climate services with the established institutional structures for climate change adaptation under these current policies and legislation, to avoid creating isolated or duplicative institutional arrangements. Based on these findings, several recommendations are made that can inform climate services development and delivery in Tanzania
Internasjonale klimaforhandlinger: Nøkkelaktører og Norges handlingsrom
Get PDFpublishedVersionsubmittedVersio
The Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (GeoMIP6): Simulation design and preliminary results
Get PDFWe present a suite of new climate model experiment designs for the Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project (GeoMIP). This set of experiments, named GeoMIP6 (to be consistent with the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6), builds on the previous GeoMIP project simulations, and has been expanded to address several further important topics, including key uncertainties in extreme events, the use of geoengineering as part of a portfolio of responses to climate change, and the relatively new idea of cirrus cloud thinning to allow more longwave radiation to escape to space. We discuss experiment designs, as well as the rationale for those designs, showing preliminary results from individual models when available. We also introduce a new feature, called the GeoMIP Testbed, which provides a platform for simulations that will be performed with a few models and subsequently assessed to determine whether the proposed experiment designs will be adopted as core (Tier 1) GeoMIP experiments. This is meant to encourage various stakeholders to propose new targeted experiments that address their key open science questions, with the goal of making GeoMIP more relevant to a broader set of communities.publishedVersio