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Which adaptation is possible? Climate Service Center meets in Potsdam

02/17/2014 - Renowned scientists met at the annual conference of the Climate Service Center last week on Potsdam´s Telegraph Hill. Under the motto “Society under climate change: Which adaptation is necessary, possible, and sustainable?” the issue of adaptation was in the focus for two days – since even if global warming was limited to two degrees Celsius, the impacts would already be significant. The Climate Service Center (CSC) of the Helmholtz Center Geesthacht, whose offices are located in Hamburg, is funded by the Federal Government.

The European Emissions Trading System: options for reform

02/11/2014 - The most crucial instrument of European climate policy, the Emissions Trading System (ETS), is currently questioned to deliver the desired results as the sum to pay per ton of carbon is dwindling. To move beyond a narrow discussion of the adequate allowance price level, the association of European national academies of applied sciences Euro-CASE along with the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) is convening a high-level workshop in Brussels this week. It aims at exploring options for a reform, and to do so by embedding the discussion about the ETS in the context of its interaction with national policies as well as public finance.

Inducing climate-smart global supply networks: Nature Commentary

06/02/2014 - Extreme weather events like super-typhoon Haiyan and hurricane Sandy can have major negative impacts on the world economy. So far, however, the effects on global production and consumption webs are missing from most assessments. This is a serious deficit, argues Anders Levermann from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research: “World markets as well as local economies are highly interlinked and rely on global supply chains – adaptation therefore requires a global perspective, not just a local one.” In a Nature Commentary he proposes a community effort to collect economic data on the new website zeean.net. The aim is to better understand economic flows and to thereby induce a transformation of our supply chains into a stable, climate-smart network that renders our societies less vulnerable to future climate impacts.

Coastal flood damage and adaptation costs investigated

02/04/2014 - Without increased coastal protection, between one and ten out of 200 people per year could be affected by flooding by the end ouf our century. In such a scenario of unmitigated climate change, the damages induced by sea-level rise without adaptive measure could be expected to be between 1.2 and 9.3 percent of economical activity. These are some results of a yet unprecedentedly broad analysis now published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Building dikes would cost substantial amounts of money – yet much less than the damages by flooding without protection, according to the analysis.

Edenhofer speaks at Munich Security Conference

01/31/2014 - Ottmar Edenhofer discusses “Climate Change as a Challenge for International Politics” at the 50th Munich Security Conference. From crop failure due to climate change to scarcity of resources or migration flows – the potential risks of climate change for stability, development and security are in the focus of the event with renowned experts and decision makers.

“Global problems require globally coordinated science”: First German Future Earth Summit

01/27/2014 - The ten-year research programme “Future Earth”, an initiative of leading international scientific organizations bringing together existing programmes on global environmental change, starts its first German summit in Berlin today. More than 230 experts from natural and social sciences as well as engineering, the humanities and law will discuss new, interdisciplinary approaches or research in three core areas: Dynamic Planet, Global Development, and the Transition towards Sustainability. They aim at providing knowledge needed to tackle the most urgent challenges of the 21st century related to global sustainability through open and collaborative processes in partnership with society and users of science.

World Bank launches online course on climate change

01/27/2014 - The World Bank is launching its first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) based on the report “Turn down the Heat – Why a 4°C warmer world must be avoided” conducted by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). The online course offers a curriculum of four weeks of learning about climate change, from observed changes and impacts of the past to a 4°C warmer world, with leading experts as lecturers, among them PIK director Hans Joachim Schellnhuber and Stefan Rahmstorf, chair of PIK’s research domain Earth System Analysis.

Global food markets: Climate impacts would be more costly than bioenergy effects

01/15/2014 - Ambitious greenhouse-gas mitigation consistent with the 2 degrees target is likely to require substantial amounts of bioenergy as part of the future energy mix. Though this does not come without risks, global food markets would be affected much more by unmitigated climate change than by an increased bioenergy demand, a study led by scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) now finds. Agricultural prices could be about 25 percent higher in 2050 through direct climate impacts on crop yields in comparison to a reference scenario without climate change. By way of contrast, a high bioenergy demand as part of a scenario with ambitious mitigation appears to raise prices only about 5 percent.

Climate change puts forty percent more people at risk of absolute water scarcity: study

12/16/2013 - Water scarcity impacts people’s lives in many countries already today. Future population growth will increase the demand for freshwater even further. Yet in addition to this, on the supply side, water resources will be affected by projected changes in rainfall and evaporation. Climate change due to unabated greenhouse-gas emissions within our century is likely to put 40 percent more people at risk of absolute water scarcity than would be without climate change, a new study shows by using an unprecedented number of impact models. The analysis is to be published in a special issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that assembles first results of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISI-MIP), a unique community-driven effort to bring research on climate change impacts to a new level.

Networks in the climate system: novel approach by young scientist awarded

12/10/2013 - For his pioneering research on complex networks in our climate system a young scientist of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) received a prestigious prize. He was awarded by the American Geophysical Union (AGU) at a meeting in San Francisco attended by more than 22,000 earth and space scientists this week. By applying mathematical analysis to, for instance, data from drills in the deep-sea, he detected how shifts in African climate some million years ago influenced the fate of modern man’s ancestors.