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5 Attribution:HowIs ItRelevant forLoss… 133
canbe tracedback to anthropogenic emissions.Given the challenges of attribution
toanthropogenicemissions forcertainvariables,notablyprecipitationchanges, this
flexibleapproachallows forevidence tobegatheredevenwhere the signal-to-noise
ratio fromanthropogenicactivity is so far small.
The basic premise of impacts attribution research is consistent with the atmo-
spheric research(Sect.5.3.1).Onceachangeinacertainvariablehasbeendetected,
potential drivers of that change are compared: the influence of regional or local
climatechange iscomparedwithotherconfoundingvariables suchaspollutionand
landusechange,andsometimestechnologicalinnovation,orsocialanddemographic
changes.Theprecisemethodologiesvarybetweendisciplines(Stoneetal.2013),but
for a causal relationship tobeestablished it is essential tounderstand theprocesses
bywhichclimatechangecontributedtotheobservedimpact,whichisoftenexplored
usingecological, hydrological, agricultural, or epidemiologicalmodels.
Over thepast coupleofdecades, evidenceabout theobserved impactsofclimate
changehas grown substantially (Hansen2015). In the IPCCreport of 2001, strong
evidencewas restricted to thecryosphereand terrestrial ecosystems innorthern lat-
itudes ormountainous regions (Gitay et al. 2001;Arnell et al. 2001). In theAR5,
impacts of recent climate change were observed on all continents and across all
oceans.There ishighconfidencethatworldwideglacial retreat,permafrostwarming
and thawing, andmass bleachingof coral reefs canbemainly attributed to climate
change. There is evidence that the livelihoods of indigenous people in the Arctic
havebeenalteredbyclimate change, andemergingevidence for indigenouspeople
inother regions (Crameret al. 2014).
Asmightbeexpected,understandingcausal relationships isverychallengingfor
human systems, and there is often a strong role for social and economic factors,
making itdifficult to isolate the roleofclimatechange(Crameretal.2014).Hansen
andCramer (2015) also highlight that the availability of evidence variesmarkedly
between regions. Often there is less evidence available about impacts in regions
considered to be most vulnerable to climate change: suggesting that the lack of
evidencedoesnot indicate thatclimatechangeimpactshavenotoccurred,but rather
than thereare fewerstudiesavailable.Forexample,between2000and2010,10,544
scientific studieswere published about climate change impacts inEurope, and just
1987aboutSouthAmerica (ibid).
Increasingly, there are efforts to analyse whether impacts attributed to climate
changecanalsobeattributedtoanthropogenicemissions,aswellastoextendextreme
eventattributionstudiesofweathertoalsoinvestigateimpacts(i.e.linkingSects.5.3.1
and5.3.2).Attributiontoanthropogenicemissionshasbeendemonstratedforglobal
scale studies of shrinking glaciers (Marzeion et al. 2014), ecological studies at a
global aggregate level of ameta-analysis (Rosenzweiget al. 2008), changingwater
runoff, forexampleinthewesternUnitedStates(Barnettetal.2008),andchangesin
ecosystemproductivity (Sippel et al. 2018).HansenandStone (2016) analysed the
roleofanthropogenicemissionsacrossallof theimpactsassessedintheIPCCWGII
report(Crameretal.2014),andfoundthatapproximately65%oftheimpactsrelated
to changes in atmospheric or ocean temperature could be confidently attributed to
anthropogenicforcing(Fig.5.7).Thestrongestevidenceexistsforshrinkingglaciers,
Loss and Damage from Climate Change
Concepts, Methods and Policy Options
- Titel
- Loss and Damage from Climate Change
- Untertitel
- Concepts, Methods and Policy Options
- Autoren
- Reinhard Mechler
- Laurens M. Bouwer
- Thomas Schinko
- Swenja Surminski
- JoAnne Linnerooth-Bayer
- Verlag
- Springer Open
- Datum
- 2019
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- CC BY 4.0
- ISBN
- 978-3-319-72026-5
- Abmessungen
- 16.0 x 24.0 cm
- Seiten
- 580
- Schlagwörter
- Environment, Climate change, Environmental law, Environmental policy, Risk management
- Kategorien
- International
- Naturwissenschaften Umwelt und Klima