Framing Climate Change Research Articles

DISARM Early Warning System for Wildfires in the Eastern Mediterranean

This paper discusses the main achievements of DISARM (Drought and fIre ObServatory and eArly waRning system) project, which developed an early warning system for wildfires in the Eastern Mediterranean. The four pillars of this system include (i) forecasting wildfire danger, (ii) detecting wildfires with remote sensing techniques, (iii) forecasting wildfire spread with a coupled weather-fire modeling system, and (iv) assessing the wildfire risk in the frame of climate change. Special emphasis is given to the innovative and replicable parts of the system. It is shown that for the effective use of fire weather forecasting in different geographical areas and in order to account for the local climate conditions, a proper adjustment of the wildfire danger classification is necessary. Additionally, the consideration of vegetation dryness may provide better estimates of wildfire danger. Our study also highlights some deficiencies of both EUMETSAT (Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites) and LSA-SAF (Satellite Application Facility on Land Surface Analysis) algorithms in their skill to detect wildfires over islands and near the coastline. To tackle this issue, a relevant modification is proposed. Furthermore, it is shown that IRIS, the coupled atmosphere-fire modeling system developed in the frame of DISARM, has proven to be a valuable supporting tool in fire suppression actions. Finally, assessment of the wildfire danger in the future climate provides the necessary context for the development of regional adaptation strategies to climate change.

Uncovering a Climate Catastrophe? Media Coverage of Australia’s Black Summer Bushfires and the Revelatory Extent of the Climate Blame Frame

The Black Summer of 2019/2020 saw the forests of southeast Australia go up in flames. The fire season started early, in September 2019, and by March 2020 fires had burned over 12.6 million hectares (Werner and Lyons). The scale and severity of the fires was quickly confirmed by scientists to be "unprecedented globally" (Boer et al.) and attributable to climate change (Nolan et al.). The fires were also a media spectacle, generating months of apocalyptic front-page images and harrowing broadcast footage. Media coverage was particularly preoccupied by the cause of the fires. Media framing of disasters often seeks to attribute blame (Anderson et al.; Ewart and McLean) and, over the course of the fire period, blame for the fires was attributed to climate change in much media coverage. However, as the disaster unfolded, denialist discourses in some media outlets sought to veil this revelation by providing alternative explanations for the fires. Misinformation originating from social media also contributed to this obscuration. In this article, we investigate the extent to which media coverage of the 2019/2020 bushfires functioned both to precipitate a climate change epiphany and also to support refutation of the connection between catastrophic fires and the climate crisis.

Cities and the governance framing of climate change

AbstractThe article examines cross‐discourse of the EuropeanMobilityWeek (EMW) campaign launched at the European level and analyses how it is adapted in six European cities. The objective is to unveil a governance framing that unmasks how cities shape their climate leadership discourse according to their governance aspirations and capacity. By looking at the adaptations across cities' discourses, this research acknowledges the need to confront the limitations and challenges that cities encounter to effectively contribute to global climate governance. It suggests that a governance framing exposes these challenges by showing the different realities of cities when they highlight particular governance modes in their discourse. The methodology combines critical discourse analysis and corpus techniques to analyse a total of 18 campaigns in different temporal, geographical and political contexts. EMW's discourse issued at European level is used as the reference corpus to examine how cities reframe their discourse by weakening or strengthening two governance modes characterised as an action‐taking approach that focuses on the steering role of government, and a decision‐making approach that highlights the city's interdependencies in a societal context. Learning more about discourse as a vindicator of governance modes in urban climate governance can contribute to a better understanding of how climate transitions are actually put into practise. The research suggests that climate leadership attributed to cities is in fact a complex and dynamic reality that has to be cautiously examined in order to understand the challenges of climate transitions.

Reproductive load modulates drought stress response but does not compromise recovery in an invasive plant during the Mediterranean summer

Despite summer drought may challenge plant survival in Mediterranean-type ecosystems, the role of reproductive load on drought stress and recovery has been poorly studied in invasive plants, most particularly under natural field conditions. In this study, a highly plastic clonal invasive species, Carpobrotus edulis was used to explore a putative differential response to drought between reproductive (senescent) ramets and non-reproductive ramets. Furthermore, fruit removal was used to assess how alterations on the source-sink dynamics influence plant performance during drought stress and recovery. We examined the variations in chloroplast pigments, antioxidants, lipid peroxidation and cytokinins in leaves of non-reproductive and reproductive ramets (either with intact or fruit-removed ramets) in response to summer drought stress and recovery after rains under Mediterranean field conditions. Results showed that although both ramet types within a C. edulis patch recovered at the end of the summer, increased photoprotective investment was found in leaves from reproductive ramets, thus indicating an increased photoprotective demand associated with reproduction at the ramet level. This response was associated with differentiated cytokinin contents in leaves of reproductive ramets compared to those of non-reproductive ramets. Although leaf senescence was not reversed by the fruit removal, leaves recovered their chlorophyll content after rainfall during late summer in parallel with the accumulation of cytokinins. In conclusion, C. edulis shows a huge plasticity in drought stress responses with a marked compartmentation at the ramet level, which helps at least in part to an efficient recovery from unpredictable water shortage periods in the current frame of climate change.

Examining the impact of climate change film as an educational tool

Purpose The aim of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of film in communicating issues related to climate change. While previous studies demonstrate an immediate effect of a film post-screening, this study also considered if a film can inspire long-term effects, and if supplemental educational information plays a role on participant understanding. Design/methodology/approach Using surveys, we assessed undergraduate students’ climate change responses pre-, immediately-post, and 9-weeks post watching the climate change documentary The Human Element (Prod. Earth Vision Institute, 2018). In the 9-week interim before the final survey, half of the participants received weekly information on climate change via a custom website, while the other half served as a control. Nonparametric statistical tests were completed in SPSS to determine significant changes across all three surveys. Findings Friedman tests and Wilcoxon Signed Ranks tests demonstrate statistically significant self-reported impacts on climate change responses such as of motivation, concern, and understanding immediately post-screening. At 9-weeks, 3 × 2 Mixed ANOVAs demonstrate that the group that received the website reported statistically significantly higher understanding than those in the control group. However, the website has no statistically significant effect on other responses like motivation and concern. Originality/value These results highlight the important power of film’s visual appeals in framing climate change. We also show that there is a long term effect of film on participant understanding. The study also prompts questions about current models of climate change education, which emphasize objective understanding, often without viable support structures to help students’ concern and motivation to act.

Deliberative framing: opening up discussions for local-level public engagement on climate change

Impacts from climate change will significantly affect local governance, and efforts to develop adaptation and mitigation policies will require widespread public support. However, public engagement, and discussions of climate change, remains limited. A new approach to public engagement titled, deliberative framing, can help bridge political divides and provide opportunities to discover innovative policy options. This paper reviews deliberative democracy and framing where they have been applied to examine public engagement on climate change. Integrating insights from these fields can help develop a practice of deliberative framing for managing climate change mitigation and adaptation actions at local scales, to complement national and international efforts. This could assist with community-based agenda setting toward greater justice and the public good. Challenges include building capacity for reflexivity, communication, and public engagement among government actors, recognizing there are different ways to frame climate change and designing deliberative forums that are more inclusive of disparate groups and often underrepresented minorities.

Palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental evolution of the Lower Pleistocene Arda River succession

The Arda River marine succession, cropping out in western Emilia (northern Italy) represents an excellent site to study past ecosystems dynamics in the frame of Early Pleistocene climate change and tectonic activity. This one-day excursion leads the participants to discover the palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental evolution of the Lower Pleistocene Arda River marine section, unraveled through an integrated use of sedimentological, palaeoecological (molluscs and trace fossils) and geochemical tools. Upsection, the succession was deposited in progressively shallower water and colder climate during phases of advance of fan deltas affected by hyperpycnal flows. It culminates at the top with clast supported alluvial conglomerates and freshwater/terrestrial biota indicating a sea level drop and the establishment of a continental environment. It is very rich in fossils: in the marine part molluscs, brachiopods, corals and echinoderms, besides well preserved trace fossils, are abundant; whereas in the continental part a mammal fauna and freshwater/terrestrial molluscs are occasionally found. Sclerochemical analyses undertaken on bivalve shells indicate that seawater temperature seasonality was the main variable of climate change within the study area during the Early Pleistocene. In particular, strong seasonality and low winter palaeotemperatures were assumed to be the main drivers for the widespread establishment of Arctica islandica populations in the palaeo-Adriatic Sea around 1.80 Ma. During the excursion not only fossils are shown, but also interesting biocalcarenitic bodies with a complex geometry cropping out in the town of Castell'Arquato. The excursion is complemented by the visit to the Giuseppe Cortesi geological and palaeontological museum, housing vertebrate and invertebrate fossil collections.

Nuclear war, climate change, and medical activism

Nuclear war, climate change, and medical activism

Youth Mobilization to Stop Global Climate Change: Narratives and Impact

Galvanized by Greta Thunberg’s idea for Friday school strikes, “climate strikes” emerged in 2018 and 2019 as a form of youth social movement demanding far-reaching action on climate change. Youths have taken various actions to combat climate change, but academics have not paid sufficient attention to youth climate mobilization. This study thus examines the questions of what has motivated youth to mobilize and how they have shaped global climate politics and governance. This study focuses particularly on the narrative of youth activists to address their understanding of climate change and their ideas regarding how to respond to it. Youth collective action has succeeded in problematizing global climate inaction and inertia and in framing climate change from a justice perspective, but activists have faced limitations in converting their moral legitimacy into the power required for sweeping changes. Overall, this study demonstrates the emergence of young people as agents of change in the global climate change arena and the urgency of engaging them in climate change governance and policymaking.

Why carbon pricing is not sufficient to mitigate climate change—and how “sustainability transition policy” can help

Carbon pricing is often presented as the primary policy approach to address climate change. We challenge this position and offer “sustainability transition policy” (STP) as an alternative. Carbon pricing has weaknesses with regard to five central dimensions: 1) problem framing and solution orientation, 2) policy priorities, 3) innovation approach, 4) contextual considerations, and 5) politics. In order to address the urgency of climate change and to achieve deep decarbonization, climate policy responses need to move beyond market failure reasoning and focus on fundamental changes in existing sociotechnical systems such as energy, mobility, food, and industrial production. The core principles of STP can help tackle this challenge. Many are eager to take more substantive policy steps to address climate change, but pricing carbon pricing alone won’t be sufficient. Image credit: Shutterstock/Shawn Goldberg. Realizing deep decarbonization at the pace necessary to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change has emerged as a pressing challenge for policymakers (1). As a result, the debate about appropriate policy responses has intensified. Many experts and societal actors see carbon pricing as the primary way forward (2⇓–4). Some even use it to argue against other policies, such as fuel efficiency standards. Viewed as the most efficient approach to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, carbon pricing incentivizes actors to seek the lowest-cost abatement options for their specific circumstances. Consequently, many economists argue that carbon pricing should be the cornerstone of a climate policy response. We question this reasoning. Carbon pricing faces five major issues that limit its use for accelerating deep decarbonization. First, carbon pricing frames climate change as a market failure rather than as a fundamental system problem. Second, it places particular weight on efficiency as opposed to effectiveness. Third, it tends to stimulate the optimization of existing systems rather than transformation. Fourth, it … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: daniel.rosenbloom{at}utoronto.ca. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1

Linking health justice, social justice, and climate justice

Linking health justice, social justice, and climate justice

Contesting human rights and climate change at the UN Human Rights Council

Climate change is one of the defining problems of our time. The relationship between climate change and human rights is receiving increased attention by stakeholders, including the UN and its primary human rights body, the Human Rights Council. Discussions on the relationship between climate change and human rights are hotly contested. This article is concerned with how states advocate for or against climate change and human rights at the Council. Participant observation on climate change resolutions from 2006 to 2019 through the UN's webTV archives are used to illustrate how states frame climate change. Although passed without a vote, significant contestation occurs over the content of each resolution. During explanations of the vote, Member States make some form of three claims – using one of three dominant framings. The first focuses on equity and development. The second frames the relationship between human rights and climate change: climate change is either constructed as a problem undermining human rights or as generating a responsibility for states to protect human rights when responding to it. The final argument's framing revolves around the mandate of the Council to discuss climate change as a human right. This article helps shed light on theories of norm contestation and on the strategies and frames used in advocating for the relationship between human rights and climate change and its construction – and significance – in the UN Human Rights Council.

Framing climate change and health: New Zealand's online news media.

Climate change is a major threat to public health worldwide. Conversely, well-designed action to mitigate climate change offers numerous opportunities to improve health and equity. Despite this, comprehensive climate action has not been forthcoming within New Zealand. The media plays an important role in shaping public opinion and support for policy change. Previous literature has suggested that certain types of framing may be more effective than others at encouraging support for climate action and policy. This includes positive, personally relevant framing, as well as key journalistic tools which appear counter-intuitive, such as an increase in human interest stories and 'sensationalist' framing. We undertook a qualitative thematic analysis of climate change and health media coverage in two online New Zealand news outlets to understand how the issue was framed, and how it may be framed more effectively to encourage climate action. We compared the framing used by journalists in mainstream media outlet the New Zealand Herald Online (NZHO) with that of contributors to independent news repository site Scoop. Content in both outlets emphasized the threat unchecked climate change poses to health, which overshadowed the positive health opportunities of climate action. The NZHO was more prone to negative framing, and more likely to favour stories which could be sensationalized and were international in scope. We considered the possible effectiveness of the framing we found for attracting greater media attention and encouraging support for climate action and policy.

Whose everyday climate cultures? Environmental subjectivities and invisibility in climate change discourse

Public climate conversations are inattentive to how differences in social location and culture shape people’s knowledge of and responses to climate change. Instead, emphases on climate apathy and climate skepticism overrepresent privileged sensibilities, marginalizing those who fall outside of what Black feminist theorist Audre Lorde calls “the mythical norm” (1987). In so doing, predominant approaches obscure forms of climate engagement that do not resemble researcher identified pro-environmental behaviors. In order to illustrate relationships between social location, culture, and response to climate change, we apply the notion of environmental subjectivities in a secondary analysis of climate engagement in two communities, one of which resembles and one of which lies outside the “mythical” norm. Both members of the Karuk Tribe and urban homesteaders frame climate change as symptoms of unsustainable political-economic structures. Yet differences in the structural location of each community result in divergent understandings of and practices in relation to the changing climate. These divergent community understandings and practices cannot be explained by individual preferences or cultural differences alone. Instead, the concept of environmental subjectivities (1) calls attention to the situated knowledges of climate change that emerge in relation to differences of indigeneity, race, and class, (2) relates community environmental practices to interlocking power structures, and (3) illustrates how elite narratives obscure the role of the colonial, settler, capitalist state in the generation of climate emissions.

Activating the legacy motive mitigates intergenerational discounting in the climate game

Climate change will have dangerous impacts on future generations. Accordingly, people in the present have an obligation to make sacrifices for the benefit of future others. However, research on temporal and social discounting shows that people are short-sighted and selfish—they prefer immediate over delayed benefits, and they prefer benefits for themselves over others. Discounting over long-term time horizons is known as intergenerational discounting, and is a major obstacle to climate action. Here, we examine whether persuasive messages that activate the legacy motive—the desire to build a positive legacy—can increase the willingness of current actors to make sacrifices for future generations. Using a climate change public goods game, we find that when the benefits of cooperation accrue to decision makers in the present, high levels of cooperation are sustained, whereas when the benefits accrue to future generations, intergenerational discounting makes cooperation elusive. Crucially, when the legacy motive is activated—by promoting death awareness, feelings of power asymmetry, and intergenerational reciprocity—intergenerational discounting is attenuated, and cooperation is restored. Our results suggest climate action can be fostered by framing climate change as an intergenerational dilemma, and by crafting persuasive messages that activate people’s drive to leave a positive legacy.

New stories for a more conscious, sustainable society: claiming authorship of the climate story

Sustainability philosophers claim that we are at an impasse of stories, finding ourselves in a blank chapter between the old and the new. The old story, characterized by separation, technological dominance and human superiority over nature, is unfolding in an ecological crisis giving space for a new narrative defined by inter-being, cooperation and balance. It has been put forward that this crisis is climate change, a phenomenon that epitomizes the old, while holding the potential to act as a bridge to the new. Our study shows the benefits of framing climate change as a problem of story and how the dominant story we have told about climate change can be changed. Based on an approach called “Rising strong”, we address the question of how sustainability students relate to the story on climate change, how they conceptualize and situate it within a bigger narrative, and identify barriers and catalysts for authorship. The results show a clear lack of personal authorship, a feeling of disconnection to the climate story and a disbelief in any revolutionary endings, yet still a slight belief in co-authorship. Catalysts that can help to claim back authorship were identified to be positive emotions (e.g., empathy and hope), integral thinking, creation of space for creativity and co-creation. Barriers were scientific rationality and complexity alongside perceived negative emotions, such as shame and self-doubt. One of the most crucial findings was the re-occurring theme of joint engagement for story-transitioning. This point to the urgent need for both increased co-creation as well as the creation of conditions needed to enable people to engage in such processes.

Climate Change Frame Production: Perspectives from Government Ministers and Senior Media Strategists in Ireland

ABSTRACTResearch into media frames has focused extensively on the frames found in media texts, while the frame production processes which occur prior to publication have been relatively neglected. Little is known, for instance, about the framing strategies deployed by elite actors in order to influence media coverage of their chosen issue. Taking the case of elite, government-level communication concerning climate change in Ireland, this research presents data from a series of in-depth interviews with two Green Party government ministers, and their senior media advisors, concerning their approach to communicating with journalists about climate change. The interview subjects framed their communications intuitively rather than strategically, but the ways in which they discussed the presentation of their policies maps onto existing frame typologies. The ministers and their advisors employed disparate approaches to communicating about climate change, and they lacked a coherent and disciplined framing strategy. This paper concludes that ministers’ efforts to persuade the media to adopt their preferred framing of climate change was negatively affected by the internal conflict over how best to frame the issue, and argues that the failure to resolve the internal frame competition may be just as important as the external competition to influence journalistic framings.

Construction Workers in a Climate Precarious World

This paper examines climatic heat stress as a question of workplace health and safety in relation to at-risk and precarious labour. First, we argue that precarity is usefully understood as a phenomenon that is both generalised (all work is precarious given the function of labour under capitalism) and differentiated (experienced differently across geography, labour process and employment status). We frame climate change and labour relations as internally related and argue that climate change needs to be incorporated into the notion of precarity. Second, we explore the experience of construction workers in New South Wales, Australia, and consider the industry as a potential site of organising over both labour conditions and global warming. We conclude that climate change exacerbates precariousness, disrupting all work and intensifying and extending individual risk in various ways. Further, these experiences present a potential site to simultaneously act on both global warming and labour conditions.

What may we hope for? Education in times of climate change

What may we hope for? Education in times of climate change

Simulation of Climate Change Impact on A Coastal Aquifer under Arid Climate. The Tadjourah Aquifer (Republic of Djibouti, Horn of Africa)

The Republic of Djibouti has an area of 23,000 km2, a coastline 370 km long and a population of 820,000 inhabitants. It experiences an arid climate characterized by high daytime temperatures and low and irregular rainfall (average of 140 mm/year), resulting in continuous periods of drought. These difficult climatic conditions and the absence of perennial surface water have progressively led to an intensive exploitation of groundwater to meet increasing water demands in all sectors (drinking water, agriculture and industries). In coastal areas, seawater intrusion constitutes a significant additional risk of groundwater degradation. This study is focused on the coastal aquifer of Tadjourah which supplies water to the city of Tadjourah, currently comprising 21,000 inhabitants. The main objective of this work is to assess the current resources of this aquifer; its capacity to satisfy, or not, the projected water demands during coming years; and to analyze its vulnerability to seawater intrusion within the frame of climate change. Three RCPs (Representative Concentration Pathway) were used to simulate different climate scenarios up to 2100. The simulated rainfall series allowed to deduce the aquifer recharge up to 2100. The code Seawat was used to model seawater intrusion into the aquifer, using the recharge data deduced from the climate scenarios. The results indicate that the risk of contamination of the Tadjourah coastal aquifer by seawater intrusion is high. The long-term and sustainable exploitation of this aquifer must take into consideration the impact of climate change.