Year: 2019
Type: article
Abstract: Climate science seeks to make statements of confidence about what has happened, and what will happen (conditional on scenario). The approach is effective for the global, thermodynamic aspects of climate change, but is ineffective when it comes to aspects of climate change related to atmospheric circulation, which are highly uncertain. Yet, atmospheric circulation strongly mediates climate impacts at the regional scale. In this way, the confidence framework, which focuses on avoiding type 1 errors (false alarms), raises the prospect of committing type 2 errors (missed warnings). This has ethical implications. At the regional scale, however, where information on climate change has to be combined with many other factors affecting vulnerability and exposure-most of which are highly uncertain-the societally relevant question is not 'What will happen?' but rather 'What is the impact of particular actions under an uncertain regional climate change?' This reframing of the question can cut the Gordian knot of regional climate change information, provided one distinguishes between epistemic and aleatoric uncertainties-something that is generally not done in climate projections. It is argued that the storyline approach to climate change-the identification of physically self-consistent, plausible pathways-has the potential to accomplish precisely this.
Author: Theodore G. Shepherd
Institution: University of Reading
Language: English
Subfield: Global and Planetary Change
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Climate action
Open Access status: hybrid
Funder: H2020 European Research Council
Award: G3783942280
OpenAlex ID: W2945570949