Help Wanted – AR4 Gary Yohe March 3, 2004 CIS oƒ HDGC Carnegie Mellon.

Help Wanted – AR4

Gary Yohe

March 3, 2004

CIS oƒ HDGC Carnegie Mellon

2CIS oƒ HDGC Carnegie Mellon

Context

• Don’t send money.

• Not asking for CLAs or Las

• Send ideas, and work…

»Here is the State of the Process as it Begins!


New Components - WGII

• Chapter 1 – Assessment of Observed Changes»Methods in Detection and Attribution (first order causality)»Larger Scale Aggregation and Attribution (second order

causality)

• Chapter 2 through 16 – Sectors and Regions

• Chapter 17 – Assessment of Adaptation Options, Capacity, Opportunities, Constraints and Practice»Methods and Concepts (vulnerability, resilience, etc.)»Current Practices (risk management, variability, etc.)»Assessing Adaptive Capacity (generic and specific, links to

development)»Enhancing Adaptation (technologies, adaptive learning,

etc.)


More New Components in WGII

• Chapter 18 – Inter-relationship between Adaptation and Mitigation»Implementation and determinants of capacity»Objectives – reducing sensitivity, exposure; dealing with

risk»Scale issues, etc.

• Chapter 19 – Key Vulnerabilities (TAR 19)

• Chapter 20 – Perspectives on Climate Change and Sustainability»Adaptation with multiple stresses»Risk and hazard management»Aggregate impacts versus sub-regional and local»Uncertainties


Chapters 18 & 20

• Their purpose is to address the current state of knowledge about how the impacts of climate change and climate variability (with and perhaps without adaptation) might complement or impede processes of sustainable development in the face of multiple non-climatic stressors?

• Neither will serve as executive summaries of the contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report. Rather, they will focus attention on new knowledge since the Third Assessment Report on the interface between climate issues and development strategies.


A Story Line for Their Contribution

• Fundamental results from the TAR lead to concerns about global vulnerabilities to multiple stressors.

• A regional focus can reveal the implication of vulnerabilities on development, access to resources and equity.

• Paying systematic attention on the determinants of adaptive capacity can reveal the implication of development, access and equity on vulnerabilities.

• Current inadequacies in our ability to produce global portraits of net impacts are profound.


Review of pertinent material in the Third Assessment Report

• The capacity to adapt varies considerably across regions, countries, and socioeconomic groups. It varies even more significantly from location to location within regions and countries.

• Adaptations are most frequently inspired by variability and extreme events and not by long-term secular changes.

• Least developed countries are likely to be the most vulnerable to climate change, climate variability, and the effects of other stressors.


Opportunities and Challenges

The determinants of adaptive capacity correspond well with precursors for sustainable development.

Sustainable development and adaptation to climate change and climate variability are both constrained by the weakest underlying determinant or precursor.

The key to integrating climate and development issues lies in understanding how systems cope with climate variability and other shorter-term stressors that impede steps toward sustainable development.


Recall the Determinants of Adaptive Capacity

• Availability of adaptation options

• Availability and distribution of resources

• Stocks of human and social capital

• Ability of decision makers to» Assume responsibility

» Process information

» Separate signal from noise

• Access to risk spreading mechanisms

• Public perception – attribution and responsibility


Fundamental Conclusions from the TAR - Chapter 18

• “Current knowledge of adaptation and adaptive capacity is insufficient for reliable prediction of adaptations; it is also insufficient for rigorous evaluation of planned adaptation options, measures and policies of governments” (pg 880 or WGII Report)

• Vulnerability is a function of exposure and sensitivity; and both can be influenced by adaptive capacity

• All of these are path dependent and site specific


Anticipated Uncertainties, Gaps and Knowledge Needs at the End

of AR4

• Current knowledge is still insufficient for reliable predictions of adaptations across the globe (some regions and sectors, particularly in developed countries, have been adequately analyzed).

• Current knowledge is still insufficient for rigorous evaluation of planned governmental adaptations (options, measures or policies) across the globe (some regions and sectors, particularly in developed countries, have been adequately analyzed).

• Current knowledge is still insufficient for sustaining credible global portraits of impacts cum adaptation along any given climate scenario.


Uncertainties, Gaps and Knowledge Needs, continued

• Global integrated assessment efforts cannot yet adequately reflect net impacts of even gradual and predictable climate change.

• Researchers should not necessarily tie their analyses explicitly to global climate scenarios; climate scenarios can inform their analyses by framing a range of not-implausible futures.

• Looking at simultaneous vulnerability to multiple stresses can provide insight into how adaptation might be most efficiently mainstreamed into programs and policies that have been designed to alleviate problems of more immediate concern.


Uncertainties, Gaps and Knowledge Needs, continued

• Climate variability and extreme events become priority problems quickly, and so it might be possible to mainstream adaptation in these arenas most effectively; but adequate analysis of an adaptation problem does not necessarily translate into adequate management.

• Current knowledge can support analyses of the joint efficacy of mitigation (stabilization scenarios, for example) and adaptation for some regions and sectors.


Some Working Hypotheses

• Countries where the effects of climate change on development, access to resources, and equity measures are largest tend to be the same countries where adaptive capacity is the weakest.

• Stronger evidence now exists that developing countries are most vulnerable to climate change, climate variability, and other stresses because the effects of these stresses on weak determinants of adaptive capacity are the largest.


Some Working Hypotheses, continued

• Working Group II can rigorously assess the joint the effectiveness of mitigation and adaptation for some regions, sectors, and/or systems where regional advantages in knowledge can be exploited.

• Working Group III should not yield to the temptation of using scattered local and regional estimates of climate impacts net of adaptation to produce unsubstantiated global portraits along specific scenarios whose regional manifestations are fraught with enormous uncertainty and thus highly suspect.


A Result from the Scoping Meeting

• The synthesis of adaptation and mitigation is located in Working Group II………

»This is the point of Chapter 18

WE NEED SOME LITERATURE TO REVIEW!

HELP WANTED


A Perspective from the TAR

• Climate related damages that can be avoided by mitigation are the benefits of that mitigation

• Credible calculations of the benefits of mitigation must therefore recognize the potential that adaptation (autonomous and planned) could reduce damages and therefore the benefits of mitigation.


Support for that Approach

The environmental economics literature – optimal intervention assumes efficient evasive activity

The finance literature – calculates risk premia net of diversifiable risk thereby assuming efficient diversification


More from the TAR

• Adaptation may or may not reduce damages significantly

»SLR examples from developed coastlines (work on the US developed coastline shows significant cost savings from adaptation; corroboration in subsequent global coverage by Nichols and friends)

»SLR examples from low-lying islands (Atoll states work by Adger shows abandonment only option to SLR, but earlier significant stress from other sources)


Including Adaptation can be Critical

• It follows that adaptation cannot be ignored in any credible calculation of the benefit side of mitigation

»It passes the Lave test (factor of two)

»But we are not sure where, when and how.


Two Asides from Neil Adger

• What can be attributed to SLR when atoll states are more vulnerable to extinction in the near term from internal development paths?

• How much mitigation would be forthcoming if the COP of the UNFCCC did not know which 5 of the 180+ members were facing extinction?


A Potentially Unsettling Conclusion

• Asking for estimates of the economic value of mitigation might be wrong question.

• Thinking about mitigation in the context of a cost-benefit framework might be the wrong approach

… …at least for a while… …

This is why it is good that it is in WGII


A Risk-based Approach can Accommodate the Synthesis

• Thinking about both mitigation and adaptation as tools to reduce the risk of troublesome, intolerable, etc… climate change makes them complements rather than substitutes, and we are out of the bind of simply cataloging “win-win” options.

• Mitigation is then a means of hedging against bad outcomes measured, net of adaptation, in terms of the likelihood of crossing critical thresholds.

• Adaptation is then a means by which systems can expand their coping ranges or delay their contraction.


The Cost Side

• The cost side of mitigation (thought of as a risk-reducing tool whose outputs are measured in terms of a vector of impacts) is one of cost-effectiveness; i.e., minimizing the cost of achieving certain objectives.

• The cost side of adaptation (thought of as a risk-reducing tools whose outputs are measured in terms of the likelihood of crossing thresholds) is one of opportunity cost informed by understanding how the determinants of adaptive capacity help or impede adaptation.


Decision-makers’ Context

• Their job is to assess the relative opportunity costs of achieving specific risk reductions.

• Double causality is required to assess the effectiveness of mitigation.

• Single causality is sufficient to assess adaptation; but not in a synthetic approach.

• Uncertainty becomes the reason for contemplating policy rather than the reason for contemplating delay.


Can Science Support this Approach?

Will there be Literature to Assess?

• Recent MIT work (Webster, et. al., “Uncertainty Analysis on Climate Change and Research Policy Response”, Climatic Change, 2003) produces distributions of temperature change associated with a specific concentration threshold and translates that into SLR possibilities (at least for 2100, but could produce transcients).


Will there be Literature?

• Recent Schneider work (See OECD Workshop on the Benefits of Climate Policy and forthcoming special issue of Global Environmental Change) produces distributions of an extreme event (THC shutdown) conditional on

»natural variables (climate sensitivity, etc…)

»policy-related variables (the discount rate in an otherwise informed optimization exercise).


Will there be Literature?

• Roger Jones (See OECD Workshop on the Benefits of Climate Policy and forthcoming special issue of Global Environmental Change) : links site specific thresholds to adaptation and climate variables

»SLR illustration with the likelihood of crossing critical thresholds at specific years

»Episodes of coral bleaching and mortality with the likelihood of crossing critical ocean temperature thresholds at specific years


The Implicit Scheme to Gain Access to Considerations of

Mitigation

Temperature (climate variable) distributions →

Impact (vector) distributions →

Frequency of crossing critical thresholds

Adding adaptation assesses the potential of changing the thresholds [or the correlation between temperature (climate variable) and impact].

Contemplating mitigation tracks changes in the temperature (climate variable) distribution


Sea Level Rise is a Great Example – As Usual

• Distributions of temperature change support distributions of SLR.

• Local subsidence combines with this to produce distributions of local SLR.

• Distributions of impacts (inundation, salt-water intrusion, vulnerability to coastal storms, etc….) follow from local modeling links to SLR.

• Adaptations are obvious (protect or not; set-back rules, etc….)

• Mitigation effects distributions of temperature and SLR trajectories.


A Second Approach – Not Implausible Futures

• Not-implausible futures produce ranges of impacts across which adaptations must cope.

• The key on the adaptation side is to look for robust responses that handle many possible futures.

• The link to mitigation follows from changes in not implausible futures.

• The key on the mitigation side is to look at the effect on the range or timing of futures across which robustness might be measured.


A New Example – Flooding in Bangledesh

• Strzepek has calibrated a hydrologic model of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers to COSMIC output to produce trajectories of maximum monthly flow; critical variables includeMonthly precipitation and temperature (winter months) in

highlands (determines timing and significance of snowmelt)

• Strzepek has also calibrated the likelihood of various degrees of flooding to maximum flows


Preliminary Results – 684 Scenarios

0

50000

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100000 120000 140000 160000 180000 200000 220000

Flow in 2050

Flo

w in

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0


Representative Scenarios

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FLow in 2050

Flo

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00


An Alternative View of the Representative Scenarios

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2000 2020 2040 2060 2080 2100

Year

Maxi

mu

m M

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thly

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w

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Scenario 2

Scenario 3

Scenario 4

Scenario 5

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Scenario 7

Scenario 8


The Likelihood of Severe Flooding

0.000

0.200

0.400

0.600

0.800

1.000

2000 2020 2040 2060 2080 2100

Year

Pro

bab

ility

of

an E

xtre

me

Flo

od

(p

er

year

)

Scenario 1

Scenario 2

Scenario 3

Scenario 4

Scenario 5

Scenario 6

Scenario 7

Scenario 8


The Likelihood of Moderate Flooding

0.000

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0.800

1.000

2000 2020 2040 2060 2080 2100

Year

Pro

bab

ility

of

Med

ium

Flo

od

ing

(p

er

year

)

Scenario 1

Scenario 2

Scenario 3

Scenario 4

Scenario 5

Scenario 6

Scenario 7

Scenario 8


The Likelihood of Modest Flooding

0.000

0.200

0.400

0.600

0.800

1.000

2000 2020 2040 2060 2080 2100

Year

Pro

bab

ility

of

Lo

w F

loo

din

g (

per

year

)

Scenario 1

Scenario 2

Scenario 3

Scenario 4

Scenario 5

Scenario 6

Scenario 7

Scenario 8


Efficacy of Protecting Against Modest Flooding Only

0.00

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0.40

0.60

0.80

1.00

2000 2020 2040 2060 2080 2100

Year

Eff

icac

y F

acto

r fo

r P

rote

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g A

gai

nst

On

ly

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Scenario 1

Scenario 2

Scenario 3

Scenario 4

Scenario 5

Scenario 6

Scenario 7

Scenario 8


Efficacy of Protecting against Modest and Moderate Flooding

0.00

0.20

0.40

0.60

0.80

1.00

2000 2020 2040 2060 2080 2100

Year

Eff

icac

y F

acto

r o

f P

rote

ctin

g a

gai

nst

Bo

th

Mo

der

ate

and

Mo

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t F

loo

din

g R

iver

sid

e

Scenario 1

Scenario 2

Scenario 3

Scenario 4

Scenario 5

Scenario 6

Scenario 7

Scenario 8


Decrease in the Likelihood of Modest Flooding with Moderate

Protection

0.000

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0.400

0.600

0.800

1.000

2000 2020 2040 2060 2080 2100

Year

Dec

reas

e in

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e L

ikel

iho

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of

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loo

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Scenario 1

Scenario 2

Scenario 3

Scenario 4

Scenario 5

Scenario 6

Scenario 7

Scenario 8


Adding Mitigation

• Track the representative scenarios with mitigation imposed to achieve some sort of stabilization target.

• Track the differences in the likelihood of flooding, the efficacy of protection, and the necessary timing – would protection be more effective (because peak flows are lower) or would the timing of the benefits change (forward or backward in time)?

• QUESTION: STABILIZE WHAT?


Multiple Stabilization Options:Two Examples

• Limit concentrations – temperature uncertainty persists, particularly with 5% to 10% of the tail of the cumulative probability distribution at 9 degrees or more.

• Limit temperatures – produces significant uncertainty about the cost of compliance.

• Implementation uncertainty – the ability to achieve the target and/or effect midcourse corrections contingent on measuring something and understanding causality.


In Any Case – One Way Forward

• Analysis of mitigation should focus on cost-effectiveness, the ability to make mid-course corrections, and implementation uncertainty.

• Analysis of adaptation should focus on understanding the roles played by the various determinants of adaptive capacity and the antecedents of robust options.


A Two Way Street

• Adaptation must be included in any assessment of what may or may not be accomplished by mitigation in terms reducing the likelihood crossing critical impact thresholds.

• The degree to which mitigation complements adaptation in reducing those likelihoods must be explored with full recognition of associated uncertainties in the outcome of mitigation.

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Help Wanted – AR4 Gary Yohe March 3, 2004 CIS oƒ HDGC Carnegie Mellon.

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