Abrupt climate change: Can society cope?

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences

Volumn 361, Issue 1810, 2003, Pages 2001-2021

  Hulme, Mike ^a   Dickson, R R ^b   Stevenson, H ^h   Troccoli, A ^c   Hoskins, B J ^d   Houghton, J T ^e   Niemeyer, S J ^f   Venables, J ^g  

^a UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA   (United Kingdom)

^b CENTRE FOR ENVIRONMENT   (United Kingdom)

^c EUROPEAN CENTRE FOR MEDIUM RANGE WEATHER FORECASTS   (United Kingdom)

^d UNIVERSITY OF READING   (United Kingdom)

^e Hadley Centre   (United Kingdom)

^f UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

^g Crane Environmental Ltd   (United Kingdom)

^h NONE

Author keywords

Adaptation; Analogues; Climate change; Climate impacts; Climate policy; Thermohaline circulation

Indexed keywords

EID: 0141992544     PISSN: 1364503X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1098/rsta.2003.1239     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (51)

1. Adger, W. N. 2001 Scales of governance and environmental justice for adaptation and mitigation of climate change. J. Int. Develop. 13, 921-931.
2. Adger, W. N. & Brooks, N. 2003 Does global environmental change cause vulnerability to disaster? In Natural disasters in a globalising world (ed. M. Pelling), ch. 2. London: Routledge. (In the press.)
3. Balmford, A. (and 19 others) 2002 Economic reasons for conserving wild nature. Science 297, 950-953.
4. Batterbury, S. & Warren, A. 2001 The African Sahel 25 years after the great drought: assessing progress and moving towards new agendas and approaches. Glob. Environ. Change 11, 1-8.
5. Broecker, W. 1987 Unpleasant surprises in the greenhouse. Nature 328, 123-126.
6. Brönnimann, S. 2002 Picturing climate change. Climate Res. 22, 87-95.
7. Bryson, R. A. & Murray, T. J. 1977 Climates of hunger. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
8. Burton, I., Huq, S., Lim, B., Pilifosova, O. & Schipper, E. L. 2002 From impacts assessment to adaptation priorities: the shaping of adaptation policy. Climate Policy 2, 145-159.
9. Clark, P. U., Pisias, N. G., Stocker, T. F. & Weaver, A. J. 2002 The role of the thermohaline circulation in abrupt climate change. Nature 415, 863-869.
10. Conway, D. 2002 Extreme rainfall events and lake level changes in East Africa: recent events and historical precedents. In The East African great lakes: limnology, palaeolimnology and biodiversity (ed. E. O. Odada & D. O. Olago) Advances in Global Change Research vol. 12, pp. 63-92. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
11. Cubasch, U. & Meehl, G. A. 2001 Projections of future climate change. In Climate change 2001: the scientific basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the International Panel on Climate Change, (ed. J. T. Houghton, Y. Ding, D. J. Griggs, M. Noguer, P. J. van der Linden, X. Dai, K. Maskell & C. A. Johnson). Cambridge University Press.
12. DETR 2000 Climate change: the UK programme. Norwich, UK: HSMO.
13. Dessai, S., Adger, W. N., Hulme, M., Köhler, J., Turnpenny, J. & Warren, R. 2003 Defining and experiencing dangerous climate change. (Submitted.)
14. Dickson, B., Yashayaev, I., Meincke, J., Turrell, B., Dye, S. & Holfort, J. 2002 Rapid freshening of the deep North Atlantic Ocean over the past four decades. Nature 416, 832-837.
15. Gagosian, R. B. 2003 Abrupt climate change: should we be worried? Internal manuscript. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA. (Available at http://www.whoi.edu/ institutes/occi/currenttopics/climatechange_wef.html.)
16. Ganopolski, A. & Rahmstorf, S. 2001 Rapid changes of glacial climate simulated in a coupled climate model. Nature 409, 153-158.
17. Gasse, F. 2002 Kilimanjaro's secrets revealed. Science 298, 548-549.
18. Hall, A. & Stouffer, R. J. 2001 An abrupt climate event in a coupled ocean-atmosphere simulation without external forcing. Nature 409, 171-174.
19. Harington, C. R. (ed.) 1992 The year without a summer? World climate in 1816. Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Nature.
20. Hertin, J., Berkhout, F., Gann, D. M. & Barlow, J. 2003 Climate change and UK housebuilding: perceptions, impacts and adaptive capacity. Building Res. Inf. 31, 278-290.
21. Higgins, P. A. T. & Vellinga, M. 2003 Ecosystem responses to abrupt climate change: teleconnections, scale and the hydrological cycle. Internal Report. Hadley Centre, Bracknell, UK.
22. Hulme, M. 2001 Climatic perspectives on Sahelian desiccation: 1973-1998. Glob. Environ. Change 11, 19-29.
23. Hulme, M. (and 11 others) 2002 Climate change scenarios for the UK: the UKCIP02 scientific report. Tyndall Centre, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.
24. IPCC 2001 Climate change 2001: synthesis report. Cambridge University Press.
25. Johnson, C., Tunstall, S. & Penning-Rowsell, E. 2003 Crises as catalysts for adaptation: human responses to major floods. Report. Flood Hazard Research Centre, University of Middlesex, London, UK. (Available at http://www.psi.org.uk/ehb/projectsjohnson.html.)
26. Keller, K., Tan, K., Morel, F. M. M. & Bradford, D. F. 2000 Preserving the ocean circulation: implications for climate policy. Climatic Change 47, 17-43.
27. Klein Tank, A. M. G. & Können, G. P. 1997 Simple temperature scenario for a Gulf Stream- induced climate change. Climatic Change 37, 505-512.
28. Kundzewicz, Z. W. & Parry, M. L. 2001 Europe. In Climate change 2001: impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Third Assessment Report, vol. II (ed. J. J. McCarthy. O. F. Canziani, N. A. Leary, D. J. Dokken & K. S. White). Cambridge University Press.
29. Lamb, H. H. 1982 Climate, history and the modern world. London: Methuen.
30. Lomborg, B. 2001 The sceptical environmentalist. Cambridge University Press.
31. Mastrandrea, M. D. & Schneider, S. H. 2001 Integrated assessment of abrupt climatic changes. Climate Policy 1, 433-449.
32. Mortimore, M. J. & Adams, W. M. 2001 Farmer adaptation, change and 'crisis' in the Sahel. Glob. Environ. Change 11, 49-57.
33. NERC 2002 Rapid climate change: thematic research programme. Natural Environment Research Council, Swindon. (Available at http://www.soc.soton.ac.uk/rapid/rapid.php.)
34. NRC 2002 Abrupt climate change: inevitable surprises. Washington DC, USA: National Academy of Science. (Available at http://www.nap.edu/books/0309074347/html/.)
35. Nuñez, L., Grosjean, M. & Cartajena, I. 2002 Human occupations and climate change in the Puna de Atacama, Chile. Nature 298, 821-824.
36. O'Neill, B. C. & Oppenheimer, M. 2002 Dangerous climate impacts and the Kyoto Protocol. Nature 296, 1971-1972.
37. Poortinga, W. & Pidgeon, N. F. 2003 Public perceptions of risk, science and governance: main findings of a British survey on five risk cases. Technical Report, Centre for Environmental Risk, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.
38. Rahmstorf, S. 2001 Abrupt change. In Encyclopedia of ocean sciences (ed. J. Steele, S. Thorpe & K. Turekian), pp. 1-6. Academic.
39. Rahmstorf, S. & Ganopolski, A. 1999 Long-term global warming scenarios computed with an efficient coupled climate model. Climatic Change 43, 353-367.
40. Retallack, S. 2001 Climate crisis: a briefing for funders. Oxford, UK: Think Publishing.
41. Rosenberg, N. J., Crosson, P. R., Frederick, K. D., Easterling, W. E., McKenney, M. S., Bowes, M. D., Sedjo, R. A., Darmstadter, J., Katz, L. A. & Lemon, K. M. 1993 The MINK methodology: background and baseline. Climatic Change 24, 7-22.
42. Schneider, S. H. & Thompson, S. L. 2000 A simple climate model used in economic studies of climate change. In New directions in the economics and integrated assessment of global climate change (ed. S. J. Decanio, R. B. Howarth, A. H. Sanstad, S. H. Schneider & S. L. Thompson), pp. 59-79. Pew Centre on Global Climate Change, Arlington, VA, USA.
43. Srokosz, M. 2002 Rapid climate change (RAPID): a new UK NERC programme. CLIVAR Exch. 7, 66-68.
44. Smith, D. & McCloskey, J. 2001 History repeating itself? Expertise, barriers to learning and the precautionary principle. In Risk management and society (ed. E. Coles, D. Smith & S. Tombs). Dordrecht: Kluwer.
45. Smith, J. B., Schellnhuber, H.-J. & Mirza, M. Q. (eds.) 2001 Vulnerability to climate change and reasons for concern: a synthesis. In Climate change 2001: impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Third Assessment Report, vol. II (ed. J. J. McCarthy, O. F. Canziani, N. A. Leary, D. J. Dokken & K. S. White). Cambridge University Press.
46. Stahle, D. W., Cleaveland, M. K., Blanton, D. B., Therrell, M. D. & Gay, D. A. 1998 The lost colony and Jamestown droughts. Science 280, 564-567.
47. Stouffer, R. J. & Manabe, S. 1999 Response of a coupled ocean-atmosphere model to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide: sensitivity to the rate of increase. J. Clim. 12, 2224-2237.
48. Todorov, A. V. 1985 Sahel: the changing rainfall regime and the 'normals' used for its assessment. J. Clim. Appl. Meteorol. 24, 97-107.
49. Toi, R. J. 1998 Potential slowdown of the thermohaline circulation and climate policy. Discussion paper no. DS98/06. Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
50. Vellinga, M. & Wood, R. A. 2002 Global climatic impacts of a collapse of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation. Climatic Change 54, 251-267.
51. Wilks, D. S. 2001 A skill score based on economic value for probability forecasts. Meteorol. Appl. 8, 209-219.