Is Global Change such a bad thing after all?

Allow me to play Devil’s advocate for a moment in order to make rather cynical observations that – unfortunately – common-sense is dictating me: (1) melting of the arctic ice cap offers fantastic opportunities for transport, land use and oil extraction; (2)sea level rise will offer Pacific islanders opportunities (denied to them up until now) of relocation in often far better places, due to international pressure; (3) as some places will probably suffer extreme weather patterns due to Climate Change, other will enjoy far better conditions compared with historical records; (4) oilpalm plantations are indeed prime destroyers of biodiversity but they sustain far more people per acreage compared with native forests…and might play an essential role in solving the energy dilemma in many tropical countries.

I guess this is enough to illustrate my point: ‘average Joe’ has always had the feeling that WE, human beings, are integral parts of an endless journey on a boat called GAIA. Over billions of years, things have changed, they are currently changing and will most certainly continue to do so in the future. Sometimes changes are brutal and their consequences dramatic for entire civilizations.

Here is the crux of my argument: earth sciences (and, by definition, earth scientists) need to embark into a history-contingent and holistic story-telling of the changes we observe. Over the last century, earth sciences have moved towards causality-driven approaches and models, renegating – to some extend – basic premises of physics where things are, evolve and interact without searching for causal factors as such.

This is a paramount shift for earth sciences and the way we communicate its results: as long as ‘average Joe’ will feel like he belongs to the group of culprits who CAUSE all these changes…nothing will change as a well established psychological process, called cognitive dissonance, will prevent humanity at large to become pro-active about Global Change. Science needs to step out from the ‘blame game’ as soon as possible and to go back to Newton’s fundamentals: things and beings are, evolve and interact.

If the current perturbations we call Global Change serve as a wake-up call, I’d say that it is not such a bad thing after all!

What are the regional expressions of climate change?

Over the last decades and years, the question of climate change attribution has been resolved scientifically and we have made good progress in constraining the magnitude of greenhouse warming at a global scale. In contrast, the regional expression of climate change is still poorly understood, hence providing a vague physical basis for foresighted political decisions and socioeconomic planning.

Gaps to fill in our knowledge on regional climate relate to regional trends and magnitudes of monsoon precipitation, drought in subtropical regions of both hemispheres, Arctic warming (including melt of sea ice and Greenland ice), prevalent climate modes and seasonality in mid-latitude regions, etc.

Focused research over the next decade should be able to constrain many of the uncertainties about the regionally relevant aspects of climate change. Such research needs to address regional climate dynamics across past and present timescales, based on targeted, high-resolution climate modeling and the generation and analysis of detailed paleo-climate reconstructions and climate-observation datasets. Without better-founded expectations about regional changes, any research on global change impacts and adaptation measures will be built on sand and remain speculative.

How will anthropogenic factors change local weather systems? Where are the areas most vulnerable to a change in the weather which could significantly affect the ability of their human population to survive?

Any change in the climate system will affect different areas to different extents. Some places (particularly in poorer countries) rely on growing food locally and do not have the infractructure to deal with large weather fluctuations. We need to understand how changes in large atmospheric and oceanic systems affect weather on smaller scales in order to provide support to those communities and protect nearby wildlife habitat.