Multisectoral climate impact hotspots in a warming world

Piontek, Franziska; Müller, Christoph; Pugh, Thomas A.M.; Clark, Douglas B. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1348-7922; Deryng, Delphine; Elliott, Joshua; González, Felipe de Jesus Colón; Flörke, Martina; Folberth, Christian; Franssen, Wietse; Frieler, Katja; Friend, Andrew D.; Gosling, Simon N.; Hemming, Deborah; Khabarov, Nikolay; Kim, Hyungjun; Lomas, Mark R.; Masaki, Yoshimitsu; Mengel, Matthias; Morse, Andrew; Neumann, Kathleen; Nishina, Kazuya; Ostberg, Sebastian; Pavlick, Ryan; Ruane, Alex C.; Schewe, Jacob; Schmid, Erwin; Stacke, Tobias; Tang, Qiuhong; Tessler, Zachary D.; Tompkins, Adrian M. Tompkins; Warszawski, Lila; Wisser, Dominik; Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim. 2014 Multisectoral climate impact hotspots in a warming world. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111 (9). 3233-3238. 10.1073/pnas.1222471110

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Official URL: http://www.pnas.org/content/111/9/3233

Abstract/Summary

The impacts of global climate change on different aspects of humanity’s diverse life-support systems are complex and often difficult to predict. To facilitate policy decisions on mitigation and adaptation strategies, it is necessary to understand, quantify, and synthesize these climate-change impacts, taking into account their uncertainties. Crucial to these decisions is an understanding of how impacts in different sectors overlap, as overlapping impacts increase exposure, lead to interactions of impacts, and are likely to raise adaptation pressure. As a first step we develop herein a framework to study coinciding impacts and identify regional exposure hotspots. This framework can then be used as a starting point for regional case studies on vulnerability and multifaceted adaptation strategies. We consider impacts related to water, agriculture, ecosystems, and malaria at different levels of global warming. Multisectoral overlap starts to be seen robustly at a mean global warming of 3 °C above the 1980–2010 mean, with 11% of the world population subject to severe impacts in at least two of the four impact sectors at 4 °C. Despite these general conclusions, we find that uncertainty arising from the impact models is considerable, and larger than that from the climate models. In a low probability-high impact worst-case assessment, almost the whole inhabited world is at risk for multisectoral pressures. Hence, there is a pressing need for an increased research effort to develop a more comprehensive understanding of impacts, as well as for the development of policy measures under existing uncertainty.

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	10.1073/pnas.1222471110
Programmes:	CEH Topics & Objectives 2009 - 2012 > Water > WA Topic 3 - Science for Water Management > WA - 3.3 - Better represent hydrological and biogeochemical processes in Earth System Models
UKCEH and CEH Sections/Science Areas:	Reynard
ISSN:	0027-8424
Additional Information. Not used in RCUK Gateway to Research.:	Freely available on the journal's website and at PubMed Central.
Additional Keywords:	coinciding pressures, differential climate impacts, ISI-MIP
NORA Subject Terms:	Meteorology and Climatology
Date made live:	09 Jan 2014 15:12 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/503360

Item Type:

Publication - Article

Digital Object Identifier (DOI):

10.1073/pnas.1222471110

Programmes:

CEH Topics & Objectives 2009 - 2012 > Water > WA Topic 3 - Science for Water Management > WA - 3.3 - Better represent hydrological and biogeochemical processes in Earth System Models

UKCEH and CEH Sections/Science Areas:

Reynard

ISSN:

0027-8424

Additional Information. Not used in RCUK Gateway to Research.:

Freely available on the journal's website and at PubMed Central.