Climate Sense

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Adaptation to climate change: the role

of organizations with atmospheric expertise

Professor Petteri Taalas, Director-General, Finnish Meteorological Institute

he potential impact of human emissions on climate,

especially the impact of carbon dioxide, has been known

for more than a century. Indeed, the Swedish physicist

Arrhenius first published his concerns on the subject in 1896.

The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on

Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007 concluded that human induced climate

warming is already taking place and it has recorded that over the past

century the global average surface temperature has risen by 0.74ºC. This

warming is expected to increase until 2060, with development thereaf-

ter highly dependent on success in the reduction of the greenhouse gas

emissions. According to the International Energy Agency, the growth

of greenhouse gas emissions from 2000 to 2007 has exceeded IPCC’s

maximum estimates by about 20 per cent. If this excessive growth

continues, the 2007 IPCC climate change scenarios will be significantly

off-target. Because of this, IPCC is now working to establish a new basis

for its Fifth Assessment Report on emission and climate scenarios.

Climate change is expected to have severe impacts on the well-being

of humans and the world economy. This was demonstrated in the 2006

Stern report, which was carried out by the UK government. Increases in

the frequency and extent of drought, flooding, poor air quality episodes,

tropical storms, forest fires and heat waves will all effect human lives.

Other meteorological changes that will adversely affect human beings

include: increased sea-level rise; melting of glaciers and related prob-

lems in water discharge; and melting of permafrost and collapse of

Arctic infrastructures.

Climate change will lead to negative economic impacts in many parts

of the world. It could also create some local positive effects too, but due

to the global nature of the economy, no areas will remain unaffected in

the long-term.

Proper preparatory planningmay soften the negative impacts caused by

climate change. For this to happen, national and regional level adaptation

reviews need to be carried out. In response to this, IPCChas already gone

to the effort of producing global circulation-basedmodels (GCMs) based

on emission data. These may be used for understanding and projecting

climate change in the coming decades and centuries. Using lower and

middle atmospheric physics and chemistry, oceans, cycles of carbon and

nitrate compounds, aerosols and other biosphere-atmosphere interac-

tion metrics, the GCMs can calculate climate parameter probabilities.

Limitations in computer power, however, have meant that the resolution

of these projections is coarse – calculations cannot be made accurately

at resolutions greater than 100 kilometres. Unfortunately, this is unsat-

isfactory for national or regional adaptation studies. Hydrological and

coastal changes or changes in mountainous areas, for example, cannot

be calculated accurately based simply on GCM outputs.

There is a need, therefore, to be able to run fine scale (5-20 kilo-

metre resolution) regional models using GCM calculations. This

process is called downscaling. Regional models are

typically based on weather forecasting model physics,

but in this instance they may also be used for calculat-

ing fine mesh climate parameters such as temperature,

precipitation, humidity, wind, radiation, waves, snow/

ice cover, frost, evaporation and forest fire risk. Using

these models, countries can define what parameters

they want to measure to get information that is rele-

vant to them. The result is a 10- to 100-year forecast,

which then forms the basis for estimating the impacts

of climate change on various sectors in an individual

country.

Sectors affected by climate change vary from country

to country, although the following are the most common:

• Agriculture

• Forestry

• Infrastructures

• Transport

• Energy

• Nature

• Tourism

• Health and human well-being

• Water resources.

Depending on the country, the importance of weather

on the economy varies by up to 50 per cent. Once socio-

economic studies are conducted across all sectors, we

can estimate the full impact of climate change; not just

negative, but positive – in some cases climate change

may offer new opportunities such as the opening up of

Arctic shipping or easier access to natural resources. It

is essential these studies be carried out so that national

adaptation strategies can be formed.

There is a particular need for the preparation of

national adaptation strategies in developing countries

and countries in economic transition. This will require

a degree of collaboration between developed and devel-

oping country specialists. This kind of collaboration

could be funded through national and international

development programmes with such organizations as

the World Bank, regional development banks and the

European Commission. We could also look to private

sector and specific foundation funding to provide

opportunities in realising climate change adaptation

studies. In addition, there is the Climate Adaptation

Fund, which is being prepared as a part of the COP15

meeting in Copenhagen, scheduled to take place in

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