Climate Network Research Articles

The treatment of climate change impacts and adaptation in the environmental impact assessment of the standard Gauge railway project in Tanzania

ABSTRACT Transport remains one of the essential infrastructures, crucial for socio-economic development. However, climate change threatens the transport infrastructure development gains already achieved globally. The incorporation of climate change and adaptation capabilities into environmental impact assessment (EIA) processes has been extensively discussed and linked to enhanced project climate resilience. However, a considerable research gap remains unexplored, and that is assessing whether and how EIA has been used to climate-proof development proposals in Africa. This study examined how climate change impacts and adaptation capabilities featured in the EIA of a major transport infrastructure project in Tanzania. It draws on reviewing the project’s environmental impact statement (EIS) using review criteria derived from the literature. The findings revealed that all EIA stages addressed climate change in one way or another, with some of the criteria more comprehensively treated than others. A closer examination unveiled several good practices, which evidence appreciation for climate science and considerable strength in climate change preparedness. The results highlight EIA’s potential to steer climate efforts among vulnerable communities systematically. This paper will contribute to the international discussion on this issue and offer a basis for further research towards deeper engagement between the actors within EIA, transport planning and climate networks.

Multi-level climate change planning: An analysis of the Italian case

As recognized by the Paris Climate Agreement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), local and subnational regions are crucial actors to achieve international mitigation and adaptation commitments. Scientific literature and empirical evidence point at multi-level climate governance as a crucial factor to engage subnational levels in the achievement of national and international objectives. This work focuses on the multi-level climate governance arrangements in Italy to investigate how Italian regions/provinces/cities are contributing to the achievement of national commitments. To this purpose, the paper undertakes a review of the climate policies of different tiers of government adopted to date and of the interrelationships among them. The results of the analysis show that the effective coordination between the different government levels should be strengthened to further incentivize and support initiatives at the local level. Results also show the relevant role played by international regional and city climate networks in boosting local and regional climate planning in Italy.

A climate network perspective on the intertropical convergence zone

Abstract. The intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) is an important component of the tropical rain belt. Climate models continue to struggle to adequately represent the ITCZ and differ substantially in its simulated response to climate change. Here we employ complex network approaches, which extract spatiotemporal variability patterns from climate data, to better understand differences in the dynamics of the ITCZ in state-of-the-art global circulation models (GCMs). For this purpose, we study simulations with 14 GCMs in an idealized slab-ocean aquaplanet setup from TRACMIP – the Tropical Rain belts with an Annual cycle and a Continent Model Intercomparison Project. We construct network representations based on the spatial correlation patterns of monthly surface temperature anomalies and study the zonal-mean patterns of different topological and spatial network characteristics. Specifically, we cluster the GCMs by means of the distributions of their zonal network measures utilizing hierarchical clustering. We find that in the control simulation, the distributions of the zonal network measures are able to pick up model differences in the tropical sea surface temperature (SST) contrast, the ITCZ position, and the strength of the Southern Hemisphere Hadley cell. Although we do not find evidence for consistent modifications in the network structure tracing the response of the ITCZ to global warming in the considered model ensemble, our analysis demonstrates that coherent variations of the global SST field are linked to ITCZ dynamics. This suggests that climate networks can provide a new perspective on ITCZ dynamics and model differences therein.

Public–Private Partnerships for Climate Technology Transfer and Innovation: Lessons from the Climate Technology Centre and Network

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Paris Agreement, and a number of important agreements call on the United Nations (UN) to strengthen a relationship with the private sector to develop and transfer climate technology in global action on climate change. The Technology Mechanism (TM) is anchored in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change as a key enabler for the attainment of the Goals of the Paris Agreement. The growing interest for collaboration with the private sector sets new ambitions for the UN Climate Technology Centre and Network (CTCN). The active engagement of the private sector is critical for successful technology transfer and successful innovation. This paper reviews and analyses the role of the private sector in facilitating technology transfer in CTCN’s Technical Assistance. Furthermore, the shared interest for partnership between the CTCN and the private sector was evaluated by analysing in-depths interviews with major CTCN stakeholders. Based upon this analysis, several recommendations are made on how to enhance public–private partnerships in order to strengthen private sector participation in climate technology transfer activities with a special focus on technology–push and market–pull innovation.

Polycentric urban climate governance: Creating synergies between integrative and interactive governance in Oslo

AbstractCities have emerged as important agents and sites in climate governance interventions, experimentations and networks. Drawing upon two strains of climate governance and collaborative governance literature, respectively, this article adopts a polycentric approach to the analysis of Oslo's urban climate governance. It unpacks the relationships between urban leadership, climate goal‐setting and institutional design, and reveals how these variables condition the employment of a combination of integrative and interactive governing instruments that foster both self‐governance and co‐creation in climate responses. The article argues that broad and long‐term political support facilitates the adoption of ambitious climate goals, utilization of regulatory powers, and the design and operations of innovative hybrid mixes of integrative and interactive governing instruments. The hybrid combination of instruments is what provides the basis for synergistic, predictable and dynamic forms of self‐governance and co‐created linkages among public and private ‘units’ within the wider urban climate governance ecosystem. Trans‐local and transnational networks play an important role in building such capacities for urban climate governance. Local processes of co‐creation and networked experimentations are ‘scaling up’ to change policies at city, national and international levels. The empirical observations from Oslo have implication for theories of polycentric urban climate governance and for the promise and limitations of co‐creation in the climate arena. The analysis draws upon qualitative interviews with close to 50 public and private stakeholders and policy document studies.

Spatiotemporal patterns of synchronous heavy rainfall events in East Asia during the Baiu season

Abstract. Investigating the synchrony and interdependency of heavy rainfall occurrences is crucial to understand the underlying physical mechanisms and reduce physical and economic damages by improved forecasting strategies. In this context, studies utilizing functional network representations have recently contributed to significant advances in the understanding and prediction of extreme weather events. To thoroughly expand on previous works employing the latter framework to the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) system, we focus here on changes in the spatial organization of synchronous heavy precipitation events across the monsoon season (April to August) by studying the temporal evolution of corresponding network characteristics in terms of a sliding window approach. Specifically, we utilize functional climate networks together with event coincidence analysis for identifying and characterizing synchronous activity from daily rainfall estimates between 1998 and 2018. Our results demonstrate that the formation of the Baiu front as a main feature of the EASM is reflected by a double-band structure of synchronous heavy rainfall with two centers north and south of the front. Although the two separated bands are strongly related to either low- or high-level winds, which are commonly assumed to be independent, we provide evidence that it is rather their mutual interconnectivity that changes during the different phases of the EASM season in a characteristic way. Our findings shed some new light on the interplay between tropical and extratropical factors controlling the EASM intraseasonal evolution, which could potentially help to improve future forecasts of the Baiu onset in different regions of East Asia.

COVID-19 Stay-at-Home Orders Result in a Decrease in the Number of Missing Daily Precipitation Observations

AbstractThe number of missing daily climate data observations reported by U.S. stations in the Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN) is assessed since mid-March 2020 when most states implemented lock-down requirements in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Compared to the same period March15-April 30 in previous years, an interesting pattern of missing data emerges. For stations in the citizen-science Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS) the percentage of missing data declined by approximately 5%, with the largest declines typically in states most affected by the pandemic. Conversely, at NWS Observer Network stations, missing data observations did not show a systematic increase or decrease. Presumably the as a result of stay-at-home orders CoCoRaHS observers were away from home less frequently and thus were able to maintain a series of uninterrupted observations. At CoCoRaHs stations, a reduction in the number of missing weekend observations was noted during the stay-at-home period.

Climate network approach reveals the modes of CO2 concentration to surface air temperature.

Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is expected to be the main factor of global warming. The relation between CO2 concentrations and surface air temperature (SAT) has been found related to Rossby waves based on a multi-layer complex network approach. However, the significant relations between CO2 and SAT occur in the South Hemisphere that is not that much influenced by human activities may offer not enough information to formulate targeted carbon reduction policies. Here, we address it by removing the effects of the Rossby waves to reconstruct CO2 concentrations and SAT multi-layer complex network. We uncover that the CO2 concentrations are strongly associated with the surrounding SAT regions. The influential regions of CO2 on SAT occur over eastern Asia, West Asia, North Africa, the coast of North American, and Western Europe. It is shown that CO2 over Siberia in phase with the SAT variability in eastern East Asia. Indeed, CO2 concentration variability is causing effects on the recent warming of SAT in some middle latitude regions. Furthermore, sensitive parameters that CO2 impacts SAT of top 15 carbon emissions countries have been identified. These countries are significantly responsible for global warming, giving implications for carbon emissions reductions. The methodology and results presented here not only facilitate further research in regions of increased sensitivity to the warming resulting from CO2 concentrations but also can formulate strategies and countermeasures for carbon emission and carbon reduction.

Impact of a climate network: The role of intermediaries in local level climate action

Local governments have set highly ambitious greenhouse gas emission reduction targets on a strategic level, in some cases influenced by intermediary networks. Yet, the quantitative impacts of climate strategies or the sharing of best practices on emissions still remain largely unknown. The aim of this study was to examine the impact of an intermediary network on municipal greenhouse gas emissions. This was done through an econometric analysis of the emissions of municipalities that are members of the Finnish Hinku (Towards Carbon Neutral Municipalities) network, and through comprehensive qualitative interviews conducted in 40 of those municipalities. Our quantitative results show that Hinku network membership has successfully led to the lowering of greenhouse gas emission levels in participating municipalities. The qualitative interviews suggest that this is due to systematic local level climate work, enhanced by network membership. The network functions as an intermediary in two ways: by providing expertise and enabling peer-support. In addition, it has also succeeded in legitimising local level climate action. Ambitious local level climate action can also affect the ambition of national climate policy, which in turn may reflect on the amount resources allocated to local climate action.

Using Bayesian Networks to Investigate the Influence of Subseasonal Arctic Variability on Midlatitude North Atlantic Circulation

AbstractRecent enhanced warming and sea ice depletion in the Arctic have been put forward as potential drivers of severe weather in the midlatitudes. Evidence of a link between Arctic warming and midlatitude atmospheric circulation is growing, but the role of Arctic processes relative to other drivers remains unknown. Arctic–midlatitude connections in the North Atlantic region are particularly complex but important due to the frequent occurrence of severe winters in recent decades. Here, dynamic Bayesian networks with hidden variables are introduced to the field to assess their suitability for teleconnection analyses. Climate networks are constructed to analyze North Atlantic circulation variability at 5-day to monthly time scales during the winter months of the years 1981–2018. The inclusion of a number of Arctic, midlatitude, and tropical variables allows for an investigation into the relative role of Arctic influence compared to internal atmospheric variability and other remote drivers. A robust covariability between regions of amplified Arctic warming and two definitions of midlatitude circulation is found to occur entirely within winter at submonthly time scales. Hidden variables incorporated in networks represent two distinct modes of stratospheric polar vortex variability, capturing a periodic shift between average conditions and slower anomalous flow. The influence of the Barents–Kara Seas region on the North Atlantic Oscillation is found to be the strongest link at 5- and 10-day averages, while the stratospheric polar vortex strongly influences jet variability on monthly time scales.

A Pathway for Carbon Capture and Storage in Iran: An International Climate Change Law Perspective

Developing countries that are rich in fossil fuels are now designing their climate mitigation plans with carbon capture and storage specifically in mind. These techniques allow them to utilize their fossil fuel-based revenue while also complying with their mitigation commitments. Carbon capture and storage, which are ideally supposed to be deployed in developing countries, with financial support for doing so coming from developed countries, has been proposed by Iran in its intended nationally determined contribution. This article explains the opportunities open to Iran, as a developing country, for the implementation of carbon capture and storage in the event that it ratifies the Paris Agreement. There are number of mechanisms and bodies under the UN climate regime that would help carbon capture and storage get off the ground in Iran, of which the Climate Technology Centre and Network and the Green Climate Fund are the most obvious. Article 6 also has great potential for carbon capture and storage within the Paris Agreement regime. Iran could harness the opportunities available under the Agreement, provided its national Parliament ratifies it: something that has not happened so far due to political controversies.

The Paris Agreement’s Technology Framework and the Need for ‘Transformational Change’

Enhanced technology development and transfer have important roles to play in the achievement of the goals of the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement addresses the need for enhanced technology outcomes, both substantively and procedurally. Substantively, the Agreement endorses a holistic approach to the technology cycle, with a new emphasis on innovation and early-stage deployment. Procedurally, the Agreement channels technology cooperation through transnational institutions by adopting and strengthening the roles of the existing UNFCCC technology bodies – the Technology Executive Committee (TEC) and Climate Technology Centre and Network (CTCN) (the two components of the UNFCCC Technology Mechanism). The key instrument for implementing these substantive and procedural outcomes is the Technology Framework established in the Paris Agreement, negotiated over three years and adopted by Parties at the 2018 Katowice conference. This article will examine how the Paris Agreement has changed UNFCCC technology governance. It will highlight the significance of the Paris technology provisions, identify the main political and legal considerations in the negotiation of the Technology Framework, and comment on the framework’s legal status, substance and implementation, with a focus on the roles of the TEC and CTCN. The article will explore the potential for the Technology Framework to contribute to transnational cooperation and action on climate technology.

Establishing a Municipal Climate Network in Atlantic Canada

Communities in Canada have influence over nearly 50% of Canadian greenhouse gas emissions and stand on the frontlines of climate change impacts. In order to meet energy objectives, continued coordinated action at the municipal level is essential. However, many municipal governments are constrained with regard to both human and financial capacity. These constraints reduce the ability of communities to seek out the necessary information on best practices and available funding to drive needed changes. The Municipal Energy Learning Group in Nova Scotia serves as a resource for knowledge mobilization among municipal staff and for these staff members to gather relevant information, learn about successful plans, visit projects in action, and network with their colleagues. For the past three years, with support from the Nova Scotia Department of Energy and Mines, QUEST (Quality Urban Energy Systems of Tomorrow) has experimented with various methods of bringing municipal staff from different local governments together, including webinars, facilitated peer-to-peer meetings, workshops, and study tours. Facilitating this group has allowed for an identification of trends in the barriers and opportunities faced by municipalities with regard to climate change, but also in the effectiveness of this model in delivering benefits to the members. The use of inspiration and celebration of success has been an important factor in affecting change. Also, the involvement of representatives from multiple departments has shown that everyone has valuable experience to share and increased engagement and knowledge transfer. The Municipal Energy Learning Group (MELG) in Nova Scotia serves as a resource for knowledge mobilization among municipal staff and for these staff members to gather relevant information, learn about successful plans, visit projects in action and network with their colleagues. For the past three years, with support from the Nova Scotia Department of Energy and Mines, QUEST (Quality Urban Energy Systems of Tomorrow) has experimented with various methods of bringing municipal staff from different local governments together, including webinars, facilitated peer-to-peer meetings, workshops and study tours. Facilitating this group has allowed for an identification of trends in the barriers and opportunities faced by municipalities with regard to climate change, but also in the effectiveness of this model in delivering benefit to the members. The use of inspiration and celebration of success has been an important success factor in affecting change. Also, the involvement of representatives from multiple departments has shown that everyone has valuable experience to share, and increased engagement and knowledge transfer.

Evaluation of Daily Precipitation from the ERA5 Global Reanalysis against GHCN Observations in the Northeastern United States

Precipitation is a primary input for hydrologic, agricultural, and engineering models, so making accurate estimates of it across the landscape is critically important. While the distribution of in-situ measurements of precipitation can lead to challenges in spatial interpolation, gridded precipitation information is designed to produce a full coverage product. In this study, we compare daily precipitation accumulations from the ERA5 Global Reanalysis (hereafter ERA5) and the US Global Historical Climate Network (hereafter GHCN) across the northeastern United States. We find that both the distance from the Atlantic Coast and elevation difference between ERA5 estimates and GHCN observations affect precipitation relationships between the two datasets. ERA5 has less precipitation along the coast than GHCN observations but more precipitation inland. Elevation differences between ERA5 and GHCN observations are positively correlated with precipitation differences. Isolated GHCN stations on mountain peaks, with elevations well above the ERA5 model grid elevation, have much higher precipitation. Summer months (June, July, and August) have slightly less precipitation in ERA5 than GHCN observations, perhaps due to the ERA5 convective parameterization scheme. The heavy precipitation accumulation above the 90th, 95th, and 99th percentile thresholds are very similar for ERA5 and the GHCN. We find that daily precipitation in the ERA5 dataset is comparable to GHCN observations in the northeastern United States and its gridded spatial continuity has advantages over in-situ point precipitation measurements for regional modeling applications.

Reconstruction of network connectivity by the interplay between complex structure and dynamics to discover climate networks

Characterizing network connectivity from measures of correlation and causality is of utmost importance to study the Earth’s climate system through the statistical analysis of collective dynamics. A major challenge is to infer functional connectivity from the observations, and different methods were applied to linear and nonlinear dynamics simulated from different complex topologies widely observed in empirical systems to quantify the limits on reconstruction of functional connectivity. Climate networks were constructed from the global air temperature on the grid points of surface and pressure level of 850 hPa in monthly time step based on the robust statistical analysis with the null hypothesis of uncorrelated dynamics. Mutual information method was chosen after examining on the artificial cases consisting of desirable features of the climate system utilizing complex networks. Analyzing imbalanced results persuaded further investigation as cross-validation to have a satisfied comparison against ground truth with the employed statistical tools. The results indicated that the interplay between the structure and dynamics led to very important differences in reconstructing the underlying network connectivity, especially when different methods were considered, even under the most rigorous statistical tests. Analyzing structural characteristics of the constructed climate network on the surface level unraveled large-scale climate oscillations with the significant connectivities over the oceans. It was also noticed that the constructed climate network on the pressure level revealed more extended connectivities providing useful information to identify underlying physical interactions between ocean and atmosphere with coupling pattern on different pressure levels.

ClimActor, harmonized transnational data on climate network participation by city and regional governments

Cities and regions have become increasingly engaged in global climate change governance. They are pledging their own climate mitigation targets and participating in membership networks that typically are transnational in nature and engage thousands of subnational governments. Researching these growing trends in participation has been difficult due to the disparate and inconsistent nature of this self-reported data. To facilitate future analyses of these actors, we introduce ClimActor, the largest harmonized global dataset of more than 10,000 city and regional governments participating in networks like the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy, C40 Cities for Climate Leadership, ICLEI Local Leaders for Sustainability, among others. We include key contextual information on each actor’s population, geographic location, and administrative jurisdiction to facilitate disambiguation of potential overlaps in actions or emissions. We also provide a series of cleaning functions based on phonetic and fuzzy string matching algorithms within an open-source R package to make it easy for anyone to immediately use the ClimActor dataset with other relevant data.

A Suggested Business Model Development Strategy for the Ethiopia Transport Sector: Public Private Partnership (PPP)-based Climate Technology Center and Network (CTCN) Technical Assistance (TA) and Official Development Assistance (ODA)

A Suggested Business Model Development Strategy for the Ethiopia Transport Sector: Public Private Partnership (PPP)-based Climate Technology Center and Network (CTCN) Technical Assistance (TA) and Official Development Assistance (ODA)

A Strategy for Responding to New Market Mechanisms based on the Technology Demands of Developing Countries: A Comparison of Technology Needs Assessment (TNA), Technical Assistance (TA) of the Climate Technology Center and Network (CTCN), and Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) in Six Priority Partner Countries

Developing countries continue to seek technological and financial support from the international community to more effectively respond to climate change. Through the Paris Agreement, many countries pledged to develop and implement a voluntary ‘Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC),’ and accordingly the demand for developing and transferring climate technology in developing countries is expected to expand further. In this regard, the present study discusses policy implications associated with accomplishing a national NDC by comparing the climate technology demands of developing countries and the present status of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). For this, technology needs assessments (TNAs) and Climate Technology Center Network Technical Assistance (CTCN TA) data were used to understand the technology demands of developing countries and to determine the present status of the CDM regarding technology demands for developed countries. To this end, six countries among South Korea’s priority partner countries were selected-Vietnam, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Chile, Peru, and Mongolia. The results of this study can be used to establish a response strategy for new market mechanisms based on the technology demands of developing countries in the future, and can further provide implications for the development of domestic advanced climate technology companies.

What Leads to the Success of Climate Technology Centre and Network Pro Bono Technical Assistance?

What Leads to the Success of Climate Technology Centre and Network Pro Bono Technical Assistance?

ClimateCharts.net – an interactive climate analysis web platform

ABSTRACT This article describes the conception and implementation of a web platform which uses special charts and maps for climate monitoring and analysis. At first it gives an overview of related web applications and their advantages and limitations. This is followed by a basic introduction of current technologies and methods for working with climate data, geospatial web services and visualization techniques. Finally, the implementation based on prior defined requirements is presented and its strengths and limitations are discussed. The application provides several basic charts for climate analysis, as well as a more complex one which uses a standardized visualization concept which is suitable for comparing different local climates (Walter-Lieth-Standard). The charts are based on different interpolated datasets with global coverage as well as data from the Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN). Overall, the application enables users to generate individual historical climate charts from the beginning of the twentieth century until present day.