More about the Network
Although there is now almost universal agreement that human activities will cause at least some significant global warming, there is much greater uncertainty over the likely economic impact of such changes at the regional level. Yet such information is badly needed for political decision makers to determine what mitigating actions to take in particular areas, such as improving sea defences, or planting different types of crops and so on.
This ESF Network has been set up to tackle this by studying the European Arctic, chosen as the focus for research for two main reasons. First, although not itself a heavily populated region, any changes in the Arctic will have a significant impact on the climate of Europe as a whole. Secondly, global climate models have already indicated that future warming will be particularly pronounced in the Arctic, more so than in temperate and tropical regions, and more so also than in the Antarctic. Sea ice and snow cover in the Arctic will be reduced to a much greater extent than in the Antarctic, causing a feedback effect through increased absorption of solar short wave radiation by the ocean.
The challenge for the Network is firstly to determine the extent of the climate changes, and then to assess their impact.
The need for a clearer picture of the likely impact of global change at the regional level has become particularly pressing after recent agreements by the industrialised countries to limit carbon dioxide emissions. To achieve further progress, particularly in developing countries, more detailed arguments based on the direct impact on the people concerned will be needed to provide sufficient motivation for any material sacrifices that will have to be made.
To resolve what this impact is likely to be, progress is needed at two levels. First, it is necessary to model climate change more accurately at the regional level. This will be done both by developing new regional climate models or extending existing ones, and also by interpolating or downscaling from global models. Although there is some doubt over the reliability of regional models, given that uncertainties tend to increase as the spatial scale decreases, they have the great advantage that smaller scale features such as soil type, surface topography, and land-sea contrast can be modelled much more realistically.
Secondly, the socio-economic and environmental impact of these anticipated changes needs to be determined. Current socio-economic models do allow for the impact of small incremental climate change in some specific socio-economic sectors to be determined. However they do not do a good job of ascertaining what affect larger climate changes may have across several different socio-economic components. To improve such socio-economic models it is necessary to associate regional climate changes with a full range of socio-economic parameters. This process will certainly benefit from improved dialogue between researchers in each of the two areas. Indeed, this may lead to the development of new models that predict the socio-economic consequences of larger climate changes in a scientifically sound way.
