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- Megadrought and Megadeath in 16th Century Mexico
- The native population collapse in 16th century Mexico was a demographic catastrophe with one of the highest death rates in history. Recently developed tree-ring evidence has allowed the levels of precipitation to be reconstructed for north central Mexico, adding to the growing body of epidemiologic evidence and indicating that the 1545 and 1576 epidemics of cocoliztli (Nahuatl for "pest") were indigenous hemorrhagic fevers transmitted by rodent hosts and aggravated by extreme drought conditions.
- Creating an Alaska Climate Impact Assessment Commission: Legislative Resolve Number 49
- This legislation establishes a commission to assess the impact of climate change on the economy, population, and landscape of Alaska.
- Highways of a Global Traveler: Tracking Tropospheric Ozone
- On the stage of global change, ozone plays the role of both hero and villain. This brief document discusses about the tracking of Tropospheric Ozone, where ozone forms and where it travels have become key concerns for international health and economic policy-making.
- The Sustainable Sites Initiative: Guidelines and Performance Benchmarks
- This guide describes how to develop a site in a way that does the least damage to the ecosystem, and provides maximum ecological benefits, including improved air quality, storm water treatment, and energy efficiency.
- Climate Change and Insurance: An Agenda for Action in the United States
- This report is the first report of its kind that attempts to overlay a detailed distillation of climate change science with U.S. insurance industry activities around climate change. This report aims to go beyond an investigation of only hurricanes to also address the implications for the U.S. insurance industry of other impacts of climate change including forest fires, floods, and storm surge (although storm surge is not commercially insured, this report describes how government insurance backstops interact intimately with commercial insurance products and with consumer perception of risk). The report finds that U.S. insurers are far ahead of many of their overseas counterparts in assessing current catastrophic (cat) risk through sophisticated cat risk modeling that is based on historical weather events; however, U.S. insurers appear to lag behind their European peers who have begun to conduct studies of climate change and are beginning, though slowly, to incorporate future climate change scenarios into cat risk models, particularly for flooding.
- The Economics of Climate Change in Southeast Asia: A Regional Review
- The study examines climate change issues in Southeast Asia, with a particular focus on Indonesia,Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.The study is intended to enrich the debate on the economics of climate change that includes the economic costs and benefits of unilateral and regional actions. It seeks to raise awareness among stakeholders of the urgency of the grave challenges facing the region, and to build consensus of the governments, business sectors, and civil society on the need for incorporating daptation and mitigation measures into national development planning processes.
- Policy Issues In Implementing Effective Application Of Weather Services To The Management Of The Nation's Highway System: Position Papers
- This document contains positions papers of a policy forum for weather and highways developed by the Atmospheric Policy Program American Meteorological Society in coordination with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) with additional support from the National Science Foundation (NSF). In this document (Panel 3), panelists discuss policy issues affecting the use of weather information in managing the U.S. Highway System.
- Present And Near-Term Potential In Applying Weather Information To Improve The Highway System: Position Papers
- This document contains positions papers of a policy forum for weather and highways developed by the Atmospheric Policy Program American Meteorological Society in coordination with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) with additional support from the National Science Foundation (NSF). In this document (Panel 1), panelists describe proposals to improve the U.S. Highway System with weather information.
- Public (Federal, State, Local) And Industrial Development Of Strategies And Plans To Effectively Respond To Weather Information: Position Papers
- This document contains positions papers of a policy forum for weather and highways developed by the Atmospheric Policy Program American Meteorological Society in coordination with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) with additional support from the National Science Foundation (NSF). In this document (Panel 2), panelists discuss strategies to respond to weather and climate information. There are many opportunities to improve the highway system through an inclusive approach, taking into account the strengths of the research community, the private sector and the state and federal practitioners. As a first step, the weather community must better understand the mission and expectations of the highway manager and the highway manager must be able to understand the limitations and near term improvements of the weather community.
- Weather and Highways: Report of a Policy Forum
- This report of a policy forum on "Weather and Highways" presents recommendations that, if implemented, could offer considerable benefits to the safety of the nation's traveling public and the national economy by supporting the effective application of weather information services to the operation of our road systems. The AMS Atmospheric Policy Program developed this forum to address the issues connected with effective use of road weather information. The participants included nearly 100 public, private, and academic representatives of weather information providers; transportation managers and users; and policy makers knowledgeable about the nation's highway system.
- Montana Greenhouse Gas Inventory and Reference Case Projections 1990-2020
- The Center for Climate Strategies (CCS) prepared this report under contract to the Montana Department of Environment Quality (MDEQ). The report contains an inventory and forecast of the state’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from 1990 to 2020.
- The Path to Carbon Dioxide-Free Power: Switching to Clean Energy in the Utility Sector
- This report examines the policies and measures needed to accelerate the use of those technologies and dramatically reduce U.S. heat-trapping gas emissions by 2020. The goal is to set the nation on the path to achieving zero-carbon electricity by mid-century.
- The American Way to the Kyoto Protocol: an Economic Analysis to Reduce Carbon Pollution. A Study for World Wildlife Fund
- This report presents a study of policies and measures that could dramatically reduce US greenhouse gas emissions over the next two decades. It examines a broad set of national policies to increase energy efficiency, accelerate the adoption of renewable energy technologies, and shift energy use to less carbon-intensive fuels. The policies address major areas of energy use in residential and commercial buildings, industrial facilities, transportation, and power generation.
- Clean Energy: Jobs for America’s Future
- This study analyzes the employment, macroeconomic, energy and environmental impacts of implementing the Climate Protection Scenario.
- Global Change and Mountain Regions: The Mountain Research Initiative
- The strong altitudinal gradients in mountain regions provide unique and sometimes the best opportunities to detect and analyse global change processes and phenomena. Meteorological, hydrological, cryospheric and ecological conditions change strongly over relatively short distances; thus biodiversity tends to be high, and characteristic sequences of ecosystems and cryospheric systems are found along mountain slopes. The boundaries between these systems experience shifts due to environmental change and thus may be used as indicators of such changes. The higher parts of many mountain ranges are not affected by direct human activities. These areas include many national parks and other protected environments. They may serve as locations where the environmental impacts of climate change alone, including changes in atmospheric chemistry, can be studied directly. Mountain regions are distributed all over the globe, from the Equator almost to the poles and from oceanic to highly continental climates. This global distribution allows us to perform comparative regional studies and to analyse the regional differentiation of environmental change processes as characterised above. Therefore, within the IGBP an Initiative for Collaborative Research on Global Change and Mountain Regions was developed, which strives to achieve an integrated approach for observing, modelling and investigating global change phenomena and processes in mountain regions, including their impacts on ecosystems and socio-economic systems.
- Texas' Global Warming Solutions: A Study for World Wildlife Fund
- This report outlined and evaluated a plan through which the United States could reduce its annual carbon-dioxide emissions by about 654 million metric tons of carbon (MtC) by 2010, 36 percent below businesses-usual projections for that year. This brings 2010 emissions to 14 percent below 1990 emissions, thereby exceeding the reductions required under the Kyoto Protocol of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The study also found that these reductions could be obtained with net economic savings, almost 900,000 net additional jobs, and significant decreases in pollutant emissions that damage the environment, and are harmful to human health, especially of children and elderly.
- New England's Global Warming Solutions: A Study for World Wild life Fund
- This report presents a detailed analysis of the energy impacts, carbon and pollutant emissions reductions, and economic benefits in New England of the national policies and measures analyzed in America’s Global Warming Solutions. That study indicated that the region would reap about one sixth of the net national employment created. As two years have passed since that study was begun, time has been lost for pursuing and implementing the policies and measures evaluated along the same temporal path. Now, achieving such benefits by 2010 would require an even more aggressive set and schedule of policies, or else the benefits would occur somewhat later in time. Nonetheless, these results show that a truly aggressive national policy commitment to the problem of climate change could achieve large near-term carbon emissions reductions along with environmental and economic gains.
- Forests and Emissions: A contribution to the Eliasch Review
- This report discusses the impacts of deforestation and reforestation on carbon emissions and carbon storage, and how change in land cover will affect future trends in climate change and carbon levels.
- Recent Greenhouse Gas Concentrations
- Gases typically measured in parts per million (ppm), parts per billion (ppb) or parts per trillion (ppt) by volume are presented separately to facilitate comparison of numbers.
- Antarctic fact-file
- Antarctica is a continent for science. All countries working in Antarctica carry out scientific research, in a surprising range of physical and biological sciences, from the vastness of space to the minute scale of micro-organisms. Activities are regulated by the Antarctic Treaty, which has been in force since 1959 and is signed by all countries operating there. The Treaty reserves the continent for peaceful purposes, and all military and industrial activities are banned.
- Climate change
- The Earth's climate has not been constant over geological time. This record is contained in ice, which has built up as snowfall accumulated in distinct yearly layers. Pockets of air trapped between the snow crystals contain traces of past atmospheres, which in turn tell us about the climate at the time the snow formed. Glaciologists collect this record by drilling ice cores and then use sensitive chemical techniques to analyse the layers.
- The ozone hole
- Discovery of the hole in the ozone layer showed that human activity can have major, and often unexpected impacts on the planet. The destruction of ozone in the stratosphere high above the planet's surface has been brought about as the result of the widespread use of chemicals which under normal conditions are chemically inert and harmless
- Understanding ecosystems
- Plants and animals live in environments which change over different periods of time. Some changes happen each year with the seasons, whilst others take hundreds or even millions of years. As these changes occur, living organisms respond in different ways. To cope with the changing seasons, individuals can change their physiology or behaviour, for instance by hibernating or migration. In response to longer-scale change, species may adapt through evolutionary change. If they cannot, they must either move away or become extinct.
- The Surface Ocean - Lower Atmosphere Study: Science Plan and Implementation Strategy
- SOLAS (Surface Ocean - Lower Atmosphere Study) is a new international research initiative that has as its goal: To achieve quantitative understanding of the key biogeochemical-physical interactions and feedbacks between the ocean and the atmosphere, and of how this coupled system affects and is affected by climate and environmental change. Achievement of this goal is important in order to understand and quantify the role that ocean-atmosphere interactions play in the regulation of climate and global change. The domain of SOLAS is focussed on processes at the air-sea interface and includes a natural emphasis on the atmospheric and upper-ocean boundary layers, while recognising that some of the processes to be studied will, of necessity, be linked to significantly greater height and depth scales. SOLAS research will cover all ocean areas including coastal seas and ice covered areas. A fundamental characteristic of SOLAS is that the research is not only interdisciplinary (involving biogeochemistry, physics, mathematical modelling, etc.), but also involves closely coupled studies requiring marine and atmospheric scientists to work together. Such research will require a shift in attitude within the academic and funding communities, both of which are generally organised on a medium-by-medium basis in most countries.
- AB 32 Fact Sheet - California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006
- Establishes first-in-the-world comprehensive program of regulatory and market mechanisms to achieve real, quantifiable, cost-effective reductions of greenhouse gases (GHG).
- Illinois Commodity/Waste Generation and Characterization Study
- This study was conducted to find ways to reduce waste and increase recycling and composting in Illinois. The report contains data on the composition of residential and commercial waste from around the state and makes recommendations for future consideration.
- What Can Be Learned From Champions of Ozone Layer Protection for Urban and Regional Carbon Management in Japan?
- The document contains the opening addresses of the conveners and presentation slides of the presenters in the Tokyo Office of the National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) event. The conference was organized around the idea of introducing two important groups to each other to stimulate new ideas to break through barriers for carbon management, a major environmental and social challenge in the 21st Century.
- The Economic Effects of EU-Wide Industry-Level Emission Trading to Reduce Greenhouse Gases: Results from PRIMES Energy Systems Model
- In preparation of the Green Paper on greenhouse gas emissions trading within the European Union, the cost implications of EU-wide emissions trading carbon dioxide were estimated by E3-Lab with their PRIMES energy systems model. According to the report, if each EU member States implemented its target under the Burden sharing agreement individually, the total annual cost for the EU to reach the Kyoto target would be 9.0 billion Pound.
- The Bali Action Plan: Key Issues in The Climate Negotiations: Summary for Policy Makers
- To assist policy makers in understanding the complex issues under discussion in the negotiating process, UNDP commissioned a series of background briefing papers on the key issues under the four main "building blocks" of the current international negotiations -- mitigation, adaptation, technology and finance -- as well as land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF). This document contains summaries for policy makers of these briefing papers.
- Climate Change in Indonesia Implications for Humans and Nature
- The report highlights that annual rainfall in the world’s fourth most populous nation is already down by 2 to 3 per cent, and the seasons are changing.
- Final Vermont Greenhouse Gas Inventory and Reference Case Projections, 1990-2030
- This report estimates the anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sinks for Vermont from 1990-2030.
- Assessment and Review of the Climate Change Policy Programme, Interim Report
- This interim report provides an assessment and review of the Japanese Climate Change Policy Programme.
- Mitigation Technology Challenges: Considerations for National Policy Makers to Address Climate Change
- This report summarizes the scope of the technology challenge needed to address climate change; the mitigation options and likely global costs; the trends in financing sustainable energy investments; and the status and issues relating to a selective set of technologies likely to be of particular interest to developing countries.
- Marine Pollution Control Act
- This law was passed by the Republic of China (Taiwan) in order to control marine pollution, protect public health, and sustainably use marine resources.
- Organic Act of the Environmental Protection Administration, Executive Yuan
- This law was passed by the government of the Republic of China (Taiwan) to establish the Environmental Protection Administration.
- Waste Disposal Act
- This law was passed by the government of the Republic of China (Taiwan) to improve environmental sanitation and public health through the regulation of waste disposal.
- Air Pollution Control Act
- This law was passed by the Republic of China (Taiwan) to control air pollution and protect the environment and human health.
- Basic Environment Act
- This law, passed by the government of the Republic of China (Taiwan), sets environmental policy for Taiwan and stipulates that economic and technological development will emphasize environmental protection based on long-term national interests, and that development must be sustainable in the interest of future national security and quality of life.
- Drinking Water Management Act
- This law was passed by the Republic of China (Taiwan) to safeguard public health by protecting drinking water resources from pollution by dumping, logging, industry, nuclear waste, ranching, recreation, mineral exploration and extraction, transportation, and other activities.
- Environmental Impact Assessment Act
- This law was passed by the government of the Republic of China (Taiwan) to protect the natural environment from some of the negative effects of economic growth.
- Regulations Governing Water Pollution Control Measure Plans and Permit Application Review
- This law was passed by the government of the Republic of China (Taiwan) to protect human health and the environment by controlling water pollution.
- Toxic Chemical Substances Control Act
- This law was passed by the government of the Republic of China (Taiwan) to protect human health and the environment by controlling the production and handling of toxic chemicals.
- China’s Scientific & Technological Actions on Climate Change
- Text outlining a plan distributed by a number of agencies in China describing how the government will address specific science and technological actions related to China's National Climate Change Programme (CNCCP). The sections detail the current status of climate change; China's achievements in science and technology on this issue; guidelines, principles, and targets; key tasks to address the issue; and measures to enforce the actions.
- Engrossed Substitute House Bill 0397
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- British Columbia Climate Action for 21st Century
- The report fulfills the Greenhouse Gas Reductions Target Act requirements with respect to the progress, action and plans to achieve the emissions reduction targets.
- Proposed Early Actions to Mitigate Climate Change in California
- This document describes the Air Resources Board (ARB or Board) staff’s analysis and recommendations for discrete early action measures to reduce global warming emissions. These measures will become part of the State’s comprehensive strategy for achieving greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions under Assembly Bill 32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006
- Climate and Global Change Interagency Inventory Data Sheet
- The Climate and Global Change Interagency Inventory Data Sheet is a working document (dated August 2002) that includes information provided by federal agencies regarding their climate and global change research activities.
- Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan Executive Summary: Building a Course for Greater Climate Understanding
- This document describes a research strategy for developing improved knowledge of climate variability and change and the potential impacts on the environment and on human lives. It also provides for the development of resources and tools that will empower policy-makers with the knowledge necessary for making decisions.
- Fiscal Year 2005- 2006 Accelerated Research on Global Climate Observations Fact Sheet
- Coincident with the release of the Climate Change Science Program strategic plan, the Administration announces plans for the acceleration of select high priority research projects and climate observations. These activities contribute to filling critical knowledge gaps identified in the plan (aerosols, oceans and the natural carbon cycle). The selected investments have been coordinated among the agencies to maximize the overall impact. Funding will be reallocated from lower priority areas to enable these critical investments.
- Climate Change Science Program Overview and Management
- This program identifies the following criteria of interest: scientific or technical quality; relevance to reducing uncertainties and improving decision support tools; track record of consistently good past performance and identified metrics for evaluating future progress; and cost and value.