cc: Mike Hulme date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 16:51:05 +0100 from: Mick Kelly subject: Re: Project thoughts to: "jim.paine" Dear James I've now had time to discuss the proposal with Mike Hulme who has done most work here on climate scenarios and we reckon you need to do some serious thinking! Basically, the problem is that to do better than has been done before in this area probably requires a lot more time and investment that you've estimated. Main point is that this kind of analysis has been done before by Hank Shuggart and others who have used, eg, the Holdridge classification to identify areas of stress on existing climate-determined habitats on a global basis and identified areas, including reserves, at risk. To do better, i.e. to make any impact at Kyoto, requires quite a substantial project. Using rates of change alone (rather than some climate-ecosystem model) is somewhat different but neglects the precip. contribution to moisture availability side which is likely to be crucial in many areas and the conclusions would therefore be vulnerable to criticism. But what is a critical rate of change in precipitation? One approach would be to compare the projected rates for both temperature and precip. with the past record (probably derived from model control simulations) and then argue that what has not been experienced in the past is probably likely to cause damage. This would be original and is definitely worth doing. But... it's a lot more work! And I suspect it would not reveal that many areas at risk in the near-term as the past rates of change can be quite large. A less critical point is that there is absolutely no chance that the Kyoto conference will result in deep cuts. It can't because the developing nations are excluded and there is no way the indust. nations will agree to much more than a slight strengthening and extension in time of the current commitments. So you are only left with one scenario really as the current commitments, even with some strengthening, are little different from what would have happened without a climate treaty. I know this sounds negative but it's the reality of the current situation. But that's maybe not a major problem as the way to pitch the analysis is to argue that precautionary action must be taken now to protect reserves etc against the inevitable (given current emission controls) change in climate. To go this route would probably involve CRU in at least a couple of months of work, i.e. a fair amount of money!, and I'm not even sure it's manageable in time for Kyoto - and I have a feeling that the results would not be zappy enough to support a real splash there anyway as there would be so many caveats. For example, there are many uncertainties in the climate projections which would have to be covered and would dilute the main story. Now - you could do the work you propose by accessing the Hadley Centre climate projections we have here in the Unit through the Link Project, set up by the DoE to provide impact analysts with input data for studies just such as you propose. That data would come free, but I'm not sure I'd advise you to go this alternative route unless you're confident you have in-house backup on the climate side. There is, thinking about it, a whole other way to highlight the climate change-biodiversity link which would to use the GIS databases you have to identify areas at risk from biodiversity loss in the present-day and then access projections for a few illustrative areas and draw out the link that way. Again, in terms of comparision with the past variability. That might cut the workload somewhat but I still reckon you could double you projected cost and still run into completion problems by year's end. Frankly, the most useful and practical thing to do might be to commission a review of work in this area backed up by maps of areas at risk from your GIS databases and some climate projections from us without actually attempting to do any fresh analysis linking the biodiversity risk areas and the climate projections explicitly. I think we may be able to commit to that final option but we are very nervous about taking anything more ambitious on given the timing. And even that won't be cheap at our end if we are doing anything other than providing data. Hope I've balanced the negative comments with some constructive suggestions! I do think that there is a very good scientific project lurking here which we could develop over a longer timescale - and we'd like to do that - but I can't really see that targetting the work at Kyoto is going to be feasible. OK - over to you. I'm away till early next week now but will pick this up again then. Best wishes Mick