Climate Adaptation Research Research Articles

Unpacking “Social Vulnerability” and “Equity”: Critical Insights From Stormwater Climate Adaptation Research in the US Gulf Coast

AbstractThis paper assesses how the concepts of social vulnerability and equity are discursively constructed in co‐production research settings with a co‐created decision support tool. The data was collected during workshops (32 communities represented) and interviews (24 communities represented) with stormwater managers and stakeholders (SMS) working in small cities, counties/parishes, and villages and towns within 100 miles of the US Gulf Coast. Findings from participant observation of workshops show that SMS express similar viewpoints regarding indicators of social vulnerability to climate‐related hazards, often defining vulnerable people as less physically mobile or as having few monetary resources. Individuals articulated “community” through a lens of homeownership and often described their relationship to residents as strained. Findings from interviews reveal divergent viewpoints on the imperative and rationale for integrating social vulnerability data into stormwater assessments and planning. Interviews also generated more critical reflection than was present in workshops regarding racial disparities in flood hazard exposure. A key insight from this article is that tools and team composition matter but there is nuance in the degree to which they matter considering a range of contextual factors. The article argues that co‐production teams must plan for alternatives and different scenarios given the messiness of co‐production in practice and that research is needed to reveal the conditions under which specific tools matter for equity in terms of both process and outcomes.

Expert engagement in setting a climate adaptation research agenda

AbstractIn order to initiate the actionable science needed to support effective conservation under climate change, we engaged researchers and other experts in refining and prioritizing a climate adaptation research agenda that was originally developed via dialogue with natural resource managers. Experts identified topics that were missing or underrepresented in an initial practitioner‐defined list of science topics, and then scored topics according to the state of knowledge, the feasibility of research, and the potential that research might change management. Our process capitalizes on the complementarity between the expertise of practitioners and the expertise of researchers and other non‐practitioners, improves the transparency and legitimacy of the agenda‐setting process, and reveals the challenges public agencies have in focusing on some research topics.

Women are under-represented in adaptation policy research and are more likely to emphasise justice topics

Abstract This paper is the first to analyse the role of women authors in fostering justice-relevant topics in climate adaptation research. As representation, citation and payment patterns remain gender-biased across scientific disciplines, we explore the case of climate science, particularly adaptation, as its most human-oriented facet. In climate research and policy, there has been a recent surge of interest in climate justice topics: mentions of justice have increased almost tenfold in IPCC Working Group 2 reports between the latest assessment cycles (AR5 and AR6). We conduct a systematic examination of the topic space in the adaptation policy scholarship. As it is a vast and rapidly growing field, we use topic modelling, an unsupervised machine learning method, to identify the literature on climate justice and related fields, as well as to examine the relationship between topic prevalence and the gender of the authors. We find climate change adaptation policy research to be male dominated, with women holding 38.8% of first and 28.8% of last authorships. However, we observe topic-specific variability, whereby the share of female authors is higher among publications on justice-relevant topics. Female authorship is highly linked to topics such as Community, Local Knowledge, and Governance, but less to Food Security and Climate Finance. Our findings corroborate the evidence that female authors play a significant role in advancing the research and dialogue on the relationship between climate change and areas that have meaningful impact on lives of women and other marginalised groups.

Evaluation of daily precipitation modeling performance from different CMIP6 datasets: A case study in the Hanjiang River basin

To effectively compare and analyze daily precipitation modeling capabilities across different CMIP6 datasets, our study introduces a novel method to compare daily precipitation models across CMIP6 datasets in the Hanjiang River Basin (HRB). We quantify indicators such as precipitation distribution, temporal correlation, wet-dry detection, extreme value error, and spatio-temporal variability, enabling a comprehensive rating of precipitation accuracy. It has been found that while both CMIP6(CP6) and NEX-GDDP-CMIP6 (GCP6) models show similar simulation accuracy, GCP6 excels in several aspects like distribution, temporal correlation, extreme value simulation, and spatial variability, yet lags in wet-dry detection and temporal change. Notably, using the comprehensive rating score (CRS) analysis, significant differences in precipitation simulation accuracy exist between models, particularly CP6, with variations of up to 0.22 (51.2%) between the highest and lowest scores. Among the top ten models, GCP6 occupies four positions such as MRI-ESM2-0, GFDL-CM4, MPI-ESM1-2-HR, and TaiESM1, while CP6 holds the remaining six like CanESM5, EC-Earth3-Veg, MPI-ESM1-2-HR, GFDL-CM4, MRI-ESM2-0, and IPSL-CM6A-LR. These findings not only offer a clear understanding of the simulation performance of CMIP6 datasets across various precipitation characteristics, but also quantitatively compare the modeling capabilities of different models for watershed precipitation through CRS. This aids climate adaptation research, hydrological forecasting, and flood management in the basin.

From mitigation to adaptation: Problematizing climate change in the maritime transport industry

AbstractThe literature on climate change in the maritime transport industry has grown rapidly in the last few years. Yet as the research agenda has progressed, scientific debates have become more isolated and fragmented, making it difficult to translate new findings into broader policy debates. This article draws on problematization methodology to help organize the scientific debate on maritime emissions and to identify analytical gaps and challenges. We argue that scholars investigate shipping's emission problem from four distinct analytical perspectives— (1) international laws and regulations, (2) markets and economics, (3) engineering and technology, and (4) authority and legitimacy. Each of these perspectives problematizes maritime emissions in specific ways, leading to different policies and strategies to address the problem. We call for better integrating these four literatures and highlight three crosscutting areas and problems for future research. First, developing institutions that facilitate market and engineering solutions; second, integrating climate mitigation and adaptation research; and third, focusing on justice concerns to ensure an equitable green transition in the maritime industry.This article is categorized under: Climate, History, Society, Culture > Thought Leaders Policy and Governance > International Policy Framework Policy and Governance > Private Governance of Climate Change

Applying recent advances in climate adaptation research to urban heat risk management

AbstractThere is unequivocal evidence that anthropogenic climate change is supercharging temperature and precipitation regimes globally. One of the clearest signals of this is seen in current and projected increases in extreme heat, understood as changes in temperature maximums, longer duration heatwaves, and higher night‐time temperatures. Extreme heat has substantial impacts on socio‐ecological systems through direct impacts on human health and labor productivity, crop yields and water security; and second‐order impacts on infrastructure functioning and hazards (e.g., increased fire and drought incidence). These impacts are differentiated and mediated by preexisting vulnerabilities based on who you are, what you do, where you live, and your capacities to prepare for, prevent, cope with and adapt to heat exposure. Nowhere are these increasing and differentiated impacts of heat more visible than in populous, rapidly urbanizing regions. Governments across the world are piloting and implementing heat management strategies, which are variously called heat‐health plans, heat action plans, heat resilience strategies, and so forth. We argue that such actions and policy agendas can benefit from theoretical advances in the climate change vulnerability and adaptation literature. We synthesize five theoretical advances to highlight the need for suites of actions sequenced in pathways that are more sensitive to trade‐offs, center equity as a normative goal of effective adaptation, acknowledge uncertainty and preexisting differential vulnerabilities, leverage lessons from participatory adpatation planning, and are forward‐looking and preparatory actions. We consolidate these advances and develop an approach to inform urban heat risk management.This article is categorized under: Climate, Nature, and Ethics > Climate Change and Global Justice Climate and Development > Urbanization, Development, and Climate Change The Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge > Climate Science and Decision Making

Five tensions in climate adaptation research

Climate change adaptation is a maturing field of research imbued with many complexities and tensions. In this article, we outline five tensions that we observe in our own adaptation research. These are between: adaptation as a research topic and practical challenge; uncertainty in adaptation research and decision-makers' desire for certainty; the global scope of adaptation research and its highly context-specific nature; the newness of climate adaptation research and its push to address old problems; adaptation as a specialization and the need for all researchers to engage. Our aim is to encourage critical discussion and reflection among researchers about how adaptation research is positioned within, shaped by and influences social and institutional settings. Given its emplaced character, adaptation research needs to attend to its content and context.

Varieties of approaches to constructing physical climate storylines: A review

AbstractThe physical climate storyline (PCS) approach is increasingly recognized by the physical climate research community as a tool to produce and communicate decision‐relevant climate risk information. While PCS is generally understood as a single concept, different varieties of the approach are applied according to the aims and purposes of the PCS and the scientists that build them. To unpack this diversity of detail, this article gives an overview of key practices and assumptions of the PCS approach as developed by physical climate scientists, as well as their ties to similar approaches developed by the broader climate risk and adaptation research community. We first examine varieties of PCSs according to the length of the causal chain they explore, and the type of evidence used. We then describe how they incorporate counterfactual elements and the temporal perspective. Finally, we examine how value judgments are implicitly or explicitly included in the aims and construction of PCSs. We conclude the discussion by suggesting that the PCS approach can further mature in the way it incorporates the narrative element, in the way it incorporates value judgments, and in the way that the evidence chosen to build PCSs constrains what is considered plausible.This article is categorized under: Assessing Impacts of Climate Change > Scenario Development and Application Climate, History, Society, Culture > Technological Aspects and Ideas Paleoclimates and Current Trends > Modern Climate Change

Legal Ecologies der Klimawandelanpassung

Abstract. Accelerating and more comprehensive legislation and litigation indicate a new significance of law in recent years within climate change politics. However, this development has been scarcely reflected upon in German-language geographical research on climate change adaptation, which primarily focuses on climate adaptation politics and policies. In order to illuminate these issues, this article engages with the political and legal scientific debates on juridification; reflects these in the context of climate adaptation; and traces the processes of juridification of climate policies in the German context from a historical perspective. Intersecting with insights from legal geography, this contribution introduces the concept of „Legal Ecologies of Climate Change Adaptation“ as a novel and legally nuanced perspective. Within human geographic climate adaptation research, this perspective opens up new theoretical and conceptual interests, empirical domains, and possibilities for interdisciplinary collaboration.

Operationalizing cultural adaptation to climate change: contemporary examples from United States agriculture.

It has been proposed that climate adaptation research can benefit from an evolutionary approach. But related empirical research is lacking. We advance the evolutionary study of climate adaptation with two case studies from contemporary United States agriculture. First, we define 'cultural adaptation to climate change' as a mechanistic process of population-level cultural change. We argue this definition enables rigorous comparisons, yields testable hypotheses from mathematical theory and distinguishes adaptive change, non-adaptive change and desirable policy outcomes. Next, we develop an operational approach to identify 'cultural adaptation to climate change' based on established empirical criteria. We apply this approach to data on crop choices and the use of cover crops between 2008 and 2021 from the United States. We find evidence that crop choices are adapting to local trends in two separate climate variables in some regions of the USA. But evidence suggests that cover cropping may be adapting more to the economic environment than climatic conditions. Further research is needed to characterize the process of cultural adaptation, particularly the routes and mechanisms of cultural transmission. Furthermore, climate adaptation policy could benefit from research on factors that differentiate regions exhibiting adaptive trends in crop choice from those that do not. This article is part of the theme issue 'Climate change adaptation needs a science of culture'.

Climate adaptation research priorities and funding: a review of US federal departments’ climate action plans

ABSTRACT National-level governments are directing and funding climate adaptation research, which is essential to informing effective and equitable adaptation practices. We sought to understand how United States (US) federal agencies prioritize, direct, and fund research related to climate adaptation and climate resilience through analyzing climate action plans created in 2021 by 13 agencies who are members of the US Global Change Research Program. We examine: (1) agencies’ stated climate adaptation research priorities; (2) how agencies address collaboration, outreach, accessibility, and usability of research outcomes; and (3) agencies’ adaptation research funding opportunities. We argue that certain research needs, justice and equity considerations, and interdisciplinary research should be emphasized to a greater degree. While adaptation research capacity and funding opportunities are expanding, they remain inadequate for the scale of research needed.

Adapting to the Impacts Posed by Climate Change: Applying the Climate Change Risk Indicator (CCRI) Framework in a Multi-Modal Transport System

Climate change has threatened the infrastructure, operation, policymaking, and other pivotal aspects of transport systems with the accelerating pace of extreme weather events. While a considerable amount of research and best practices have been conducted for transport adaptation to climate change impacts, there is still a wide gap in the systematic assessment of climate risks on all-round transport modes (i.e., road, rail, sea, and air) with a comprehensive review and a quantitative scientific framework. This study aimed to critically review studies on how the transport sector has adapted to the impacts posed by climate change since the dawn of the 21st century. To support climate risk assessment in comprehensive transport systems, we developed a Climate Change Risk Indicator (CCRI) framework and applied it to the case of the British transport network. Focusing on a multi-modal transport system, this offers researchers and practitioners an invaluable overview of climate adaptation research with the latest tendency and empirical insights. Meanwhile, the developed CCRI framework elaborates a referable tool that enables decision-makers to employ objective data to realise quantitative risk analysis for rational transport adaptation planning.

Production of knowledge on climate change perception – actors, approaches, and dimensions

Abstract. Research on perceptions of climate change impacts contributes to understanding motivations for adaptation action and increases the legitimacy of climate adaptation research and policy. The body of literature on climate change perception (CCP) is extensive. Given that the perception of climate change is commonly presented as being dependent on an individual's sociocultural and spatial contexts and that climate change is an abstract concept with different dimensions of meaning, this paper systematizes the research in an actor-centered manner. Using a systematic literature review, the abstracts from 821 interdisciplinary studies on CCP were coded and statistically analyzed. The results show that predominantly knowledge about the CCP of vulnerable groups of actors and regions was generated using quantitative methods. Impacts at the collective and institutional levels of CCP were rarely explored. This indicates an individualizing perspective of research on climate adaptation of vulnerable actors. Conclusions for future research are drawn.

The “Nuts and Bolts” of Doing Coproduction: Exploring Implementation Decisions in Climate Adaptation Research with Stakeholders

Abstract Developing local climate adaptation strategies that respond to weather and climate extremes is increasingly salient. Coproducing knowledge and climate adaptation strategies can be an important approach to ensuring that they are context specific, meet community needs, and are deemed usable by local decision-makers. Most of the guidance for coproduction has focused on important, overarching themes and ethical considerations like trust, iteration, and flexibility; these are incredibly valuable, but little attention has been focused on specific, highly consequential research decisions that researchers must make that shape project outcomes. Here, we reflect on our experience in a pilot project coproducing climate adaptation knowledge and strategies in six rural communities. We identify eight questions that researchers coproducing science with communities will need to grapple with when designing and conducting research and discuss some of the related trade-offs of each. Topics include community recruitment, champion selection, participant makeup, geography, clarifying expectations, timing, prioritization, and next steps. The questions are broadly applicable to knowledge coproduction and important especially as greater attention is being given to the ethics of doing this work, the power relations, and the potential risk associated with it. We hope that these questions can guide a dialogue for others and motivate explicit discussions of trade-offs involved in planning research that is coproduced with communities. We call for more of this type of self-reflection and sharing across our research community to deepen our knowledge and hopefully lead to a more rapid improvement in outcomes across the many efforts underway today to cocreate climate knowledge for adaptation.

Quality of the thermal environment of urban courtyards in arid and semi-arid cities. Case of the city of Ouragla

This work deals with the quality of urban thermal environment in an arid context of the city of Ouargla, in the south-east of Algeria.The focus has long been on interior ambiences, while city producers are being asked, in the light of new sustainability data, to make more tangible improvements by ensuring acceptable standards in urban living. . The present work is part of this perspective and aims to improve the microclimatic quality of outdoor spaces. The study examines the response strategies in terms of climate adaptation research, especially in the summer period, and tries to evaluate the thermal regulation measures relating to criteria for attenuating energy heating due to intense diurnal solar radiation, which continues with a rise in temperature at night caused by heat loss under the effect of nocturnal radiation. And this by essentially taking into account the impact of the geometric parameters which consist of the profile of the built form expressed by the ratio of the height of the geometric form to its spatial extent defining different configurations at court in relation to different solar orientations.The objective is to assess whether such configurations can be the subject of models of organization of cities in an arid context.Field experimentation led to interesting results from a scientific point of view and likely to shed new light on the contribution of traditional urban form to passive strategies.

Firms’ Adaptation Strategies to Climate Change: A Literature Review

Climate change will impose high costs on different societal actors, including firms and organizations, forcing them to adapt to this new situation. Although the relevance of implementing adaptation strategies is widely recognized, studies on firms’ adaptation to climate change are still in their infancy. This study aims to identify the most suitable management theories for climate adaptation research, with a special interest in ski tourism that is one of the most vulnerable ones to climate change’s impacts. Here we conduct a literature review. First, there is a review of the management and organizational theories used in climate research. Second, we inform about the studies that have used the theories that were found in the first part. Results show that the majority of literature is focused on mitigation strategies and related to the corporate dimension. The most frequently studied industries are the ones under high institutional pressures like oil and gas, energy, and transportation. And the theories representing the different adaptation responses that organizations could adopt as a result of the direct climate change pressures are the resource-based view and resource dependence theory. But only the last one was used in previous research to analyze firms’ adaptation to climate change.

Strengthen climate adaptation research globally

More international incentives and coordination are needed

Distinct pathways to stakeholder use versus academic contribution in climate adaptation research

AbstractChallenges facing societies around the globe as they plan for and adapt to climate change are so large that usable, research‐driven recommendations to inform management actions are urgently needed. We sought to understand factors that influence the variation of academic contribution and use of collaborative research on climate change. We surveyed researchers (n = 31), program‐leaders (n = 5), and stakeholders (n = 81) from projects supported by a federally funded network across the United States. Our results suggest that peer‐reviewed publications do not lead to use, but frequency of meetings with stakeholders significantly increased use. Overall, the factors needed for projects to have high degrees of academic contributions are distinct from those needed to be useful to stakeholders. Furthermore, leadership perceptions of use of projects were significantly different from users. Our quantitative results can inform future requests for proposals and better enable researchers using collaborative approaches to conduct science that is more often used by stakeholders.

Construction of Climate Adaptability Evaluation Indicator System for Urban Spaces in the Severe Cold Zones of China—A Case Study on the Central Area of Harbin

Climate adaptation research should consider both climate change and regional climate contexts. Research evaluating the regional climate adaptability of urban spaces helps identify weaknesses of climate resilience in spatial planning. This paper constructs a climate adaptation evaluation indicator system for cities in the severe cold zones of China, and evaluates the temporal-spatial changes of climate adaptability in the central area of Harbin. The evaluation outcome reveals that the overall climate adaptability of the study area generally improved from 2008 to 2017 despite staying at a relatively lower level. There are significant differences in spatial pattern and development of spatial elements of climate adaptability by districts. Accordingly, this paper proposes countermeasures supporting future decision-making on climate adaptation planning for the study area, offering a reference for other cities in the severe cold zones of China.

The risks of invisibilization of populations and places in environment-migration research

Recent years have seen an increase in the use of secondary data in climate adaptation research. While these valuable datasets have proven to be powerful tools for studying the relationships between people and their environment, they also introduce unique oversights and forms of invisibility, which have the potential to become endemic in the climate adaptation literature. This is especially dangerous as it has the potential to introduce a double exposure where the individuals and groups most likely to be invisible to climate adaptation research using secondary datasets are also the most vulnerable to climate change. Building on significant literature on invisibility in survey data focused on hard-to-reach and under-sampled populations, we expand the idea of invisibility to all stages of the research process. We argue that invisibility goes beyond a need for more data. The production of invisibility is an active process in which vulnerable individuals and their experiences are made invisible during distinct phases of the research process and constitutes an injustice. We draw on examples from the specific subfield of environmental change and migration to show how projects using secondary data can produce novel forms of invisibility at each step of the project conception, design, and execution. In doing so, we hope to provide a framework for writing people, groups, and communities back into projects that use secondary data and help researchers and policymakers incorporate individuals into more equitable climate planning scenarios that “leave no one behind.”