Skeptical Science New Research for Week #46, 2019

Gem of nature, moral hazard, or attractive nuisance?

It's hard to miss the inherent tension in Welling & Abegg's Following the ice: adaptation processes of glacier tour operators in Southeast Iceland:

The growing recognition that global climatic change is a pressing reality and that its impacts on humans and ecological systems are inevitable makes adaptation a core topic in climate change research and policymaking. The glacier tourism sector that is highly sensitive towards changing climatic conditions is among the most relevant in this respect. This study aims to examine empirically how adaptation to climate change impacts is practiced by small- and middle-scale glacier tour operators. Data was collected by means of a set of semi-structured interviews with the managers or owners of nine small- or middle-scale tour companies operating in the Vatnajökull National Park in Southeast Iceland and observations of glacier sites where the respondents’ companies are operating. The results indicate that all entrepreneurs consider climate change to be a real phenomenon that affects their present daily operations, but they perceive these implications not as significant threats to their business. The interaction of operator’s attributes of agency such as firsthand experiences, risk perceptions, and abilities to self-organize, with structural elements of the glacier destination system such as economic rationales and hazard reduction institutions, has shaped and consolidated operators’ adaptation processes in the form of a wait-and-see strategy combined with ad hoc reactive adaptation measures and postponed or prevented proactive long-term adaptation strategies.

Emphasis ours. We may safely assume that the vast majority of visitors to these glaciers are arriving on Iceland via aircraft. Enough said. 

75 Articles:

Observations of global warming and effects

A reversal in global terrestrial stilling and its implications for wind energy production

Spatiotemporal changes in China's terrestrial water storage from GRACE satellites and its possible drivers

Tibetan Plateau's lake level and volume changes from NASA's ICESat/ICESat?2 and Landsat missions

Recent glacier and lake changes in High Mountain Asia and their relation to precipitation changes (open access)

Missing Hydrological Contribution to Sea Level Rise

The dynamic response of sea ice to warming in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago

Northern Hemisphere greening in association with warming permafrost

Spring Aleutian Low weakening and surface cooling trend in northwest North America during recent decades

Ice Sheet Elevation Change in West Antarctica from Ka?band Satellite Radar Altimetry

Decadal Changes in the Interannual Variability of Heatwaves in East Asia Caused by Atmospheric Teleconnection Changes (open access)

Substantial meltwater contribution to the Brahmaputra revealed by satellite gravimetry (open access)

Decadal changes in the leading patterns of sea level pressure in the Arctic and their impacts on the sea ice variability in boreal summer (open access)

Quantifying fire trends in boreal forests with Landsat time series and self-organized criticality

Distinguishing changes in the Hadley circulation edge

Long?term change of total cloud cover and its possible reason over South China during 1960–2012 (open access)

Modeling global warming & global warming effects

Surface warming and atmospheric circulation dominate rainfall changes over tropical rainforests under global warming

The role of zonally averaged climate change in contributing to inter-model spread in CMIP5 predicted local precipitation changes (open access)

Does ENSO regularity increase in a warming climate? (open access)

Real world and tropical cyclone world. Part I: high-resolution climate model verification (open access)

Azimuthally averaged wind and thermodynamic structures of tropical cyclones in global climate models and their sensitivity to horizontal resolution (open access)

Effect of prescribed sea surface conditions on the modern and future Antarctic surface climate simulated by the ARPEGE atmosphere general circulation model (open access)

Sensitivity of the Greenland mass and energy balance to uncertainties in key model parameters (open access)

The Future of Midlatitude Cyclones (open access)

Climate Models as Guidance for the Design of Observing Systems: the Case of Polar Climate and Sea Ice Prediction

Predicting future climate at high spatial and temporal resolution

Multimodel Ensemble Projection of Meteorological Drought Scenarios and Connection with Climate Based on Spectral Analysis

Humans dealing with our global warming

More Evidence of Psychological Reactance to Consensus Messaging: A Response to van der Linden, Maibach, and Leiserowitz (2019) (open access)

Committed Participation or Flashes of Action? Mobilizing Public Attention to Climate on Twitter, 2011–2015 (open access)

The development of partisan polarization over the Green New Deal

The missing middle of climate services: layering multiway, two-way, and one-way modes of communicating seasonal climate forecasts

Climate change adaptation among poultry farmers: evidence from Nigeria (open access)

Simulating Behavioral Influences on Community Flood Risk under Future Climate Scenarios

Urbanization and climate change jointly shift land surface phenology in the northern mid-latitude large cities

Assessing climate change and adaptive capacity at local scale using observed and remotely sensed data

Value chain climate resilience and adaptive capacity in micro, small and medium agribusiness in Jamaica: a network approach (open access)

Following the ice: adaptation processes of glacier tour operators in Southeast Iceland

Climate risk assessments and science?based targets: A review of emerging private sector climate action tools

Embodied emissions in rail infrastructure: a critical literature review (open access)

Guidance on emissions metrics for nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement (open access)

Carbon footprint, renewable energy, non-renewable energy, and livestock: testing the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis for the Arab world

Adapting scenarios for climate adaptation: Practitioners’ perspectives on a popular planning method

Explaining “Carbon” in Community Sequestration Projects: a Key Element in the Creation of Local Carbon Knowledges (open access)

>>>>>>>>>> ‘Is global warming affecting the weather?’ Evidence for increased attribution beliefs among coastal versus inland US residents (open access)

Key technological enablers for ambitious climate goals: insights from the IPCC special report on global warming of 1.5 °C (open access)

“Pollution Pods”: The merging of art and psychology to engage the public in climate change

Can a low-carbon development path achieve win-win development: evidence from China’s low-carbon pilot policy

Evaluating the efficiency of carbon emissions policies in a large emitting developing country

Prediction of energy?related CO2 emissions in multiple scenarios using a least square support vector machine optimized by improved bat algorithm: a case study of China

CO2 capture and mineralization using carbide slag doped fly ash

The roles of risk aversion and climate-smart agriculture in climate risk management: evidence from rice production in the Jianghan Plain, China

Biology and global warming

Agency plans are inadequate to conserve US endangered species under climate change

A meta-analysis of global fungal distribution reveals climate-driven patterns (open access)

Uncertainty sources in simulated ecosystem indicators of the 21st century climate change (open access)

Amphibian and reptile phenology: the end of the warming hiatus and the influence of the NAO in the North Mediterranean

Natural history collections document biological responses to climate change

There is an inverse relationship between the capacity of climate change refugia and species adaptation potential

GHG sources and sinks, flux

Acceleration of global N2O emissions seen from two decades of atmospheric inversion

N2O increasing faster than expected

Road crossings increase methane emissions from adjacent peatland

Increased lateral transfer of soil organic carbon induced by climate and vegetation changes over the southeast coastal region of China

A road map for improving the treatment of uncertainties in high?resolution regional carbon flux inverse estimates

Environmental controls on ecosystem-scale cold season methane and carbon dioxide fluxes in an Arctic tundra ecosystem (open access)

Temporary and net sinks of atmospheric CO2 due to chemical weathering in subtropical catchment with mixing carbonate and silicate lithology (open access)

Inter-model comparison of global hydroxyl radical (OH) distributions and their impact on atmospheric methane over the 2000–2016 period (open access)

Nano-modified CO2 for enhanced deep saline CO2 sequestration: A review and perspective study

Evidence for large carbon sink and long residence time in semi?arid forests based on 15?year flux and inventory records

Where old meets new: An ecosystem study of methanogenesis in a reflooded agricultural peatland

Increased deep soil respiration detected despite reduced overall respiration in permafrost peat plateaus following wildfire (open access)

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Posted by Doug Bostrom on Tuesday, 19 November, 2019


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