What are the key regional drivers of future climate change?

Globally, greenhouse gas forcing is the key driver in policy-relevent climate change (ie. over the next 20, 50, 100 years). Regionally -at the scales people live, ecosystems function, water is obtained and crops grown, other forcings can dominate. Land cover change, urbanization, industrial aerosols etc can all have regional fingerprints that while globally small are locally dominant. Other modes of variability, ocean-atmopshere coupling, land-atmopshere coupling, orographic effects etc all can be locally dominant drivers even if they are lost in any global measure of climate change. A research program to understand drivers of climate change at the scales that people live is hugely challenging at a scientific level, technical level for the modelling and in terms of research at the interface of risk and vulnerability.

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1. designerfutures says:

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   Futures research methods can help here and much work has already been done by qualified researchers in various regions.