date: Fri May 14 14:03:15 2004 from: Mike Hulme subject: Fwd: Arctic climate change: seeking contributions to a report to: nick Brooks Nick, You could perhaps include this as a brief mention in the Annex E - other initiatives on dangerous CC research. WWF are doing this one. I have refused the commission - but if you were interested in earning 2,000 let me know. Mike Date: Thu, 13 May 2004 17:45:32 +0200 Subject: Arctic climate change: seeking contributions to a report From: Lynn Rosentrater To: m.hulme@uea.ac.uk X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.553) X-UEA-MailScanner-Information: Please contact the ISP for more information X-UEA-MailScanner: Found to be clean Dear Professor Hulme, I am coordinating a project for a large, international NGO and writing to assess your interest and availability in a project we are doing on arctic climate change. WWF, the conservation organization, is preparing a report on dangerous climate change and is looking for a researcher to address the question of how much the arctic region would warm if global mean temperature were to increase 2°C since pre-industrial times. In its simplest form I see this project as a data mining exercise to browse the IPCC scenario archives, identify a suite of runs where the globe has warmed on average 2°C, and then describing the patterns of arctic climate at that point in time. We would like to commission you to write a fully referenced paper on this topic. The paper should be no longer than 4500 words, include an abstract, an introduction, up to six figures or tables, content sections with brief subheadings, and a bibliography. Manuscripts in draft form would be due July 15, 2004 and are expected to be in final form by September 1, 2004. Contributors will receive an honoraria of 2,000 Euros. I have pasted a brief summary of the project at the end of this message. Would you be available to contribute to this report? Please let me know of a convenient time to reach you by telephone so we might discuss our commission in greater detail. If previous commitments prevent you from contributing, I would appreciate your suggestions for other researchers who I might approach. I look forward to hearing from you. Sincerely, Lynn Rosentrater, LDR Consulting Rødstuveien 6, N-0572 Oslo Norway tel: +47 930 93 818 email: LDR@MAC.COM WWF is a global conservation organization acting locally through a network of family offices. This project is being developed out of WWFs International Arctic Programme in Oslo, Norway for WWFs global climate campaign. For more information please visit our web sites: [1]http://www.ngo.grida.no/wwfap/ [2]http://www.panda.org/climate/ About the project Evidence and Implications of Dangerous Climate Change in the Arctic: The central question behind Article 2 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is what level of climate change should be avoided in order to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. The convention specifies that such a level should be achieved within a time-frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner. Dangerous anthropogenic interference can therefore be interpreted as that leading to climate change within a time frame insufficient to allow ecosystems or social-economic systems to adapt thus leading to significant damage to those systems. Several recent studies have shown that global warming is altering the distribution and abundance of plant and animal species worldwide. A primary concern for wild species and their ecosystems is the rapid rate of both observed and projected changes. Arctic ecosystems are strongly constrained by temperature, and are expected to be markedly influenced by global warming. In many cases, threshold changes will occur in physical systems shifting from permanently frozen to periodically thawed thereby propagating ecosystem wide effects. Understanding what constitutes dangerous climate change is of increasing importance for scientific analysis and policy debate. WWF, the conservation organization, believes that in order to avert dangerous climate change, global mean warming should be limited to a peak increase of less than 2°C above pre-industrial times. Peaking at less than 2°C will not prevent major damages, but the option of avoiding a 2°C increase will disappear within the next decade unless urgent action is taken. What we're planning: WWF would like to create a sense of urgency for its policy work promoting renewable energy solutions by assembling a broad array of evidence providing a convincing case of dangerous climate change in the Arctic. To that end we seek researchers to tackle the following questions: 1. What does a 2°C global target mean for the Arctic in terms of a regional temperature increase? 2. How will sea ice respond to a 2°C global increase in temperature? 3. What are the expected changes in vegetation and ecosystem shifts? 4. How will the diversity, ranges, and distribution of species be effected by such an increase? 5. What are some of the indigenous perspectives on rising temperatures and dangerous climate change? Papers and essays addressing these questions will be assembled into a report that will be launched at the ACIA International Scientific Symposium Climate Change in the Arctic, 9-12 November 2004 in Reykjavik, Iceland. Information for prospective authors: Individual contributions to the report will consist of papers of up to 4500 words addressing one of the questions listed above and fully referenced from the peer-reviewed press. The papers include an abstract, an introduction, up to six figures or tables, content sections with brief subheadings, and a bibliography. Drafts of the manuscript are due July 1, 2004 and are expected to be in final form by September 1, 2004.