Founded in 2009, the Climate Change: Impacts & Responses Knowledge Community is brought together by a common concern for the science of, and social responses to, climate change.
The International Conference Climate Change: Impacts & Responses attendees include leaders in the field, as well as emerging scholars, who travel to the conference from all corners of the globe and represent a broad range of disciplines and perspectives. A variety of presentation options and session types offer opportunities for attendees to share their work, discuss key issues in the field, and build relationships with attendees.
2017 Special Focus – Communicating and Collaborating for Resilient Solutions to Climate Change
It is becoming increasingly important for scientists to communicate their findings effectively to those informing and formulating policy. Climate change, arguably the most serious challenge facing mankind, requires exceptional abilities to communicate complex science, whilst managing the uncertainties that characterise it.
With growing pressure for policy makers, practitioners, civil society organisations, businesses and members of the public to change their own practices to reduce greenhouse gases and adapt to impacts of climate change, scientists are under increasing pressure to engage with these audiences effectively.
The 2017 International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts and Responses will bring together a cohort of individuals from across academia, policy, NGOs and the practitioner community to explore this challenge through the following questions:
How can scientific evidence be better communicated to more efficiently inform decision making on climate change? How can the social and natural sciences work together to inform communication and collaboration on climate change?
How can cross-sectorial and cross-stakeholder collaboration lead to better evidence, science communication and more resilient responses to climate change? What evidence is there of communication and collaboration across scales: household, community, local, national, regional and international levels?
The Ninth International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts & Responses features research addressing the following annual themes
Theme 1: Scientific Evidence
What is evidence is there of climate change?
Paleoclimatology: the earth’s climate in a long view
Climate change today: examining the data
Ice cap reduction and glacial melt
Sea level change
Floods, drought, forest fires, hurricanes, and other sporadic events
Albedo or measuring the earth’s reflectiveness
Meteorology and climate informatics
Equilibria and disequilbria: change processes and countervailing tendencies
Climate measurement processes, methodologies, and technologies
Reading complex, dynamic, and unstable systems
Developing local and global climate models
Change scenarios: slow, rapid, abrupt, or episodic
Theme 2: Assessing Impacts in Divergent Ecosystems
What are the impacts of climate change on natural environments?
Ocean currents and el Niño
Riverine ecosystem impacts
Mountain ecosystem impacts
Coastal ecosystem impacts
Marine ecosystem impacts
Forest and grassland ecosystem impacts
Impacts on wilderness and protected areas
Impacts on specific biomes
Impacts on biodiversity, potential extinctions
Hardiness zone migration
Regional variations: temperature and rainfall
Theme 3: Human Impacts and Impacts on Humans
What evidence is there that human activity has contributed to climate change, and what are the impacts of climate change on human life?
Anthropogenic factors in climate change: determining the relative contribution of natural and human causes
Impacts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases
Land use patterns, agriculture, and livestock husbandry and deforestation as factors in climate change
Impacts on humans: agriculture, fish stocks, food supply, health
Human settlements and sea level rise
Impacts on humans: water supply, desertification
Impacts on humans of intense weather events, natural disasters, and ecological surprises
Impacts of climate change in the developing world
Theme 4: Technical, Political, and Social Responses
How do scientists, technologies, policy makers, and community members respond to climate change?
Anthropogenic factors in climate change: determining the relative contribution of natural and human causes
Environmental policies in response to climate change
Controversy and denial: politics, the media, and scientists with dissenting views
The international politics of climate change
The past, present, and future of international agreements
Education and awareness for management of global climate change
Protected areas and preservation of biodiversity: “corridoring” and other strategies
Strategies for sustainability
Human adaptive strategies
Technologies of mitigation: carbon dioxide sequestration, solar shades, and other processes
Alternative and renewable energy sources: technologies, policies, and strategies
Carbon taxes, offsets, and trading
Emission standards
Climate ethics and the precautionary principle
Eco-development, eco-efficiency
More information http://www.wfeo.org/events/international-conference-climate-change-impacts-responses/
