Climatic Change最新文献

This paper analyzes the effectiveness of agriculture-led versus non-agriculture-led development strategies under climate-induced economic uncertainty. Utilizing Malawi as a case study, we introduce the application of Stochastic Dominance (SD) analysis, a tool from decision analysis theory, and compare the two strategies in the context of weather/climate-associated economic uncertainty. Our findings suggest that an agriculture-led development strategy consistently surpasses its non-agriculture-led antagonist in poverty and undernourishment outcomes across almost all possible weather/climate scenarios. This underscores that, despite increasing exposure of the entire economy to weather/climate uncertainty, agriculture-led development remains the optimal strategy for Malawi to reduce poverty and undernourishment. The study also endorses the broader use of SD analysis in policy planning studies, promoting its potential to integrate risk and uncertainty into policymaking.

Smallholder farmers in Ghana’s Savannah ecological zone face multiple climate stressors. Government and non-governmental organizations have introduced educative demonstrations on sustainable agriculture practices to help them cope. However, the effectiveness of these strategies in enhancing smallholder farmers’ climate resilience needs examination. Our study, guided by the Resilience Theory (RT), aimed to explore factors that shape smallholder farmers’ climate resilience and how their participation in Farmer Field Schools (FFSs) and Climate Action Plans (CAPs) affect their resilience to climate change. We analyzed data from a cross-sectional survey of 517 smallholder farmers in the Upper West region of Ghana using ordered logistic regression. Our findings showed that smallholder farmers’ “good” climate change resilience was associated with participation in Farmer Field Schools (OR: 7.809, p < 0.001) and active involvement in Climate Action Plans (OR: 1.976, p < 0.01). In addition, household food security (OR: 4.412, p < 0.001), access to credit (OR: 1.761, p < 0.01), and larger household sizes (OR: 2.255, p < 0.01) were associated with “good” climate resilience. However, larger land size (OR: 0.988, p < 0.01) and attainment of primary education (OR: 0.497, p < 0.01) showed a lesser likelihood of having “good” climate resilience. The study highlights the importance of practical learning platforms and participatory planning in improving climate resilience among smallholder farmers. Policies and programs should support these initiatives, improve resource accessibility, and tailor educational approaches. Our recommendations include expanding FFSs, integrating CAPs with agricultural services, developing scalable, adaptable, and sustainable agricultural practices, enhancing resource accessibility, and implementing monitoring and evaluation systems for these initiatives.

The growing understanding of how and why the climate is changing has led to mounting calls on climate scientists to take on more responsibility in the context of climate science. While an increasing responsibilisation takes place in the academic literature, asking scientists to “do more”, there is limited engagement with the responsibilities that scientists already assume in practice. Drawing on novel empirical insights from 77 semi-structured interviews with participants of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), I take the increasing ‘peer-to-peer responsibilisation’ as a point of departure to contextualise such calls, asking what scientists themselves already feel and assume responsibility for at both the personal and professional level. I find that climate experts participating in the IPCC not only assume increasing responsibility across different stages of the IPCC process but also beyond. As my data analysis demonstrates, IPCC participants increasingly feel and take on responsibility not only for producing and assessing climate science but also for communicating and/or enacting it (PACE). The contribution of the article is threefold. Firstly, it makes sense of the mounting peer-to-peer responsibilisation by surfacing and contextualising how, why and with what consequences particular climate knowledge holders already assume responsibility for climate science at four key moments (PACE). Secondly, conceiving of the IPCC as a community of practice, the article provides novel insights into the work of IPCC participants and their individual experiences with the institution and its processes. Thirdly, the article adds evidence to a growing body of literature on practices of responsibility and climate emotions by focussing on participants' individual affective experiences. As the 7th Assessment Cycle gathers pace, I propose some measures the IPCC may undertake to support participants in assuming their responsibilities in the context of climate science.

Surface wind speed (SWS) over China exhibited a decreasing trend before the mid-1990s, referred to as SWS stilling, and an increasing trend thereafter. Northern China is susceptible to dust incidents in spring because of gales. In this study, we investigate the characteristics and causes of spring gale events over northern China. We find that gale events had a decreasing trend during both the SWS stilling and recovery period, reaching -0.68 day/year during the period 1973-2020. Four types of weather systems are associated with gale events, and analysis of all four weather systems indicates that the deep trough in the east of Eurasia is prone to cause gale events. Changes in atmospheric circulation contributed in part to the decrease of gale events, while thermodynamic factors arising from human emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols, and radiation changes caused by land use change, dominated the decreasing trend of gale events during the last 5 decades.