The mountain of science examining climate change continues to grow rapidly, and the evidence of its real-world impacts is ever more apparent.
In March, the latest IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report warned of dramatic changes affecting human health, natural ecosystems, and global and local economies.
But even as determined action to mitigate and adapt to climate change becomes more urgent, significant geographic gaps remain in the research underlying these assessments.
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We have improved with each evaluation cycle, but it is still something that needs a lot of work; not only to get people into the room, but also to ensure that they are heard when they are in the room. Read also : With the end of Roe, the United States is getting closer to civil war.
Debra Roberts, Professor, University of KwaZulu-Natal
It’s a problem recognized by Dr. Caroline Wainwright, a researcher at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London who studies climate variability and change in tropical regions. He said regions like Europe “have definitely been studied more than places in Africa,” with the result that we don’t have a full picture of what’s going on.
Namita Chakma, a geography professor at Burdwan University in India, agrees, saying scientific analysis on India is lacking due to the dearth of data collected daily from weather stations “and the lack of continuity in long-term climate data.” term. sets It is also difficult to study climate variables at the micro-regional level”.
There is also not enough information to assess the full human and social costs of extreme weather events. While some studies have looked at economic and infrastructure impacts, deaths, and hospitalizations, they are generally limited to wealthier countries in the global North.
For example, Harrington refers to a global database that records mortality linked to extreme weather events; deaths recorded in Asia, Africa, South America and the Caribbean were only a small fraction despite those regions accounting for 85 percent of the world’s population. “Some parts of the world have much stronger monitoring systems to track the impacts of these types of events,” he said.
The result is a significant underestimation of climate change damages in low- and middle-income countries.
Dr. Friederike Otto, Senior Lecturer at the Grantham Institute and an expert in attribution science, is also a co-author of the Environmental Research: Climate study. She said not having this information denies countries the knowledge to plan properly, make the best use of limited resources, and improve people’s chances of living safely and adapting to a changing climate.
For example, Wainwright points out that in East Africa there is great uncertainty about whether the climate will become wetter or drier, which affects state and community planning.
Barriers to research
This problem has been bubbling under the surface of climate science for a few years. Read also : Pop-up bike lanes evaluated with high-tech and low-tech strategies in New Jersey.
Part of the problem is the dearth of scholarly literature published outside of the global north. When Reuters published a “hot list” of the 1,000 “most influential” climate scholars in 2021, it provoked a backlash from researchers because it included too few scientists from the global south.
However, research by Carbon Brief into the backgrounds of around 1,300 authors involved in the 100 most cited climate change research papers between 2016 and 2020 found a similar pattern. It also discovered significant imbalances within the regions; eight of the ten African authors were from South Africa. And when it comes to top authors, none of the top 100 articles was led by a scientist from Africa or South America. Of the seven articles led by Asian authors, five were from China.
Language can be a barrier, as can local research capacity.
A 2018 paper published in Nature Climate Change, which examined the obstacles facing Africa’s young climate scientists, found that inadequate facilities, underfunded research, inaccessible data, and underdeveloped academic writing skills undermined efforts to combat climate change on the continent.
Dr. Victor Dike, a researcher at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences who specializes in extreme weather events in Africa and East Asia, said researchers in Africa may not have the time or funds available to publish articles in high-profile journals and don’t always have the resources to keep up with the latest science and policy. “It would be difficult for anyone to make a significant contribution in that regard.”
Dike points out that researchers in China are incentivized to publish in high-impact journals with cash bonuses from their institutions.
Wainwright also highlights the limitations in short- and long-term weather forecasting, saying this affects day-to-day farming and utility planning. The Environmental Research: Climate paper points to examples in South Africa, where corruption denies funding to weather reporting facilities, leading to massive data gaps in a good forecasting network, and drought-prone Somalia, where regime changes disordered have interrupted data collection.
Furthermore, regions such as East Africa have high natural variability, making it difficult to study changes in their climate. And they can be affected by atmospheric phenomena such as La Niña, which complicate climate predictions.
The researchers say the geographic gaps also stem from the fact that scientific efforts around the world are not valued equally, as research in the global south is often aimed at solving highly local problems. Debra Roberts, interim head of the Sustainable and Resilient Cities Initiatives Unit in Ethekwini Township in South Africa, said much of the climate work being done at the city level is unwritten. “Very often, a lot of that knowledge is in people’s heads.”
Even the IPCC is not truly representative. Roberts, who is also an honorary professor of life sciences at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and co-chair of IPCC working group II, said there is an ongoing battle to ensure enough researchers from the global south are working on international reports. “We have improved with each evaluation cycle, but it is still something that needs real work; not only to get people into the room, but also to ensure that they are heard when they are in the room.”
The technology can be both a boon to climate science and another barrier.
Wainwright notes that most climate models have been developed in the global north “and therefore generally better represent the climate in those regions.” Dick agrees. Having examined several different data sets, he does not believe that they fully capture the spatial distribution of rainfall or its variability in West Africa.
Artificial intelligence is also a challenge. A paper exploring machine learning tools in the UK found they can support climate adaptation policy research by rapidly processing large volumes of policy text. But they only work with digitized data, “which in many parts of the world is a severe limitation.”
Programs are trying to build climate science capacity in the global south, including the United Nations World Meteorological Organization’s regional training center in Nanjing and the UK Research and Innovation-funded GCRF African Swift work, which aims to improve prognosis in Africa.
But there is still much work to be done.
Dike recently received a grant from the Chinese government to work in West Africa. He said such funding is necessary and welcome, but also rare. He adds that funding bodies (government or business) have their own strategic or commercial interests that do not necessarily align with research gaps or the needs of local communities. “They want to solve their own problems.”
He would like a general improvement in the quality of research in Africa and sees mentoring and training as a means of addressing this. Collaboration is also critical, he said, in helping researchers read articles and work with datasets they might not otherwise have access to.
Dike speaks wistfully of going back to work in Nigeria. “When I was doing my doctorate, I had a burning zeal to go back to Africa to contribute to science. But when you get there, you may not be able to get your good manuscript published. There are many problems facing scientists in Africa.”
This article was originally published on China Dialogue under a Creative Commons license.
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The output gap is an economic measure of the difference between an economy’s actual output and its potential output. Potential output is the maximum amount of goods and services that an economy can produce when it is most efficient, that is, at full capacity.
What is the gap between the time of production and the time of consumption?
There is no time gap between production and consumption of services. That is why they are produced and consumed simultaneously.
How long do we have to stop climate change?
Climate Change Report: Earth Has 11 Years to Avoid Worst Case Scenarios – NPR. Climate Change Report: Earth has 11 years to avoid worst-case scenarios Carbon dioxide emissions are rebounding after a dip in 2020, and researchers say that at current rates, the “carbon budget” is still on the rise. it will run out in about 11 years.
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Is it too late to stop the climate change?
Without major action to reduce emissions, global temperature is on track to rise 2.5°C to 4.5°C (4.5°F to 8°F) by 2100, according to the latest estimates. Thwaites Glacier. Credit: NASA. But it may not be too late to avoid or limit some of the worst effects of climate change.
How long do we have to stop climate change 2021?
While the benefits to air quality would come quickly, it could take 20 to 30 years for global temperatures to stabilize, according to the IPCC Working Group I report, Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis, approved on Friday by 195 member governments of the IPCC. , through a virtual approval session that took place…
Is It Too Late to Stop Climate Change 2021?
The August 2021 report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed that there is no chance of undoing the damage already caused by global warming, with climatologist Linda Mearns stating: “It is guaranteed it will get worse.
What is climate barrier?
Coastal decision makers face challenges and constraints to action as they plan for adaptation to climate change and sea level rise. Any challenge or restriction that may hinder or stop adaptation progress, but can be overcome with determined effort, is called a barrier.
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What is climate resistance?
Climate resilience is defined as the “social, economic, and ecosystem capacity to cope with a hazardous event, trend, or disturbance.”
What does climate vulnerability mean?
According to the IPCC (2007) definition, vulnerability in the context of climate change is “the degree to which a system is susceptible to and unable to cope with the adverse effects of climate change, including climate variability and extremes.
What is the biggest barrier to climate change?
1) Economic and Financial: Catalyzing the 2,300 proposed priority actions will cost about $6.8 billion. That means access to finance is the biggest hurdle for cities to take more climate action.
