Providing key advice to the UK government on avoiding  climate change
Walker Institute scientists are part of a UK programme, called AVOID, to provide key advice to the UK government on avoiding dangerous climate change. The programme is led by the Met Office and is funded by DECC and Defra.
Avoiding the most serious climate change impacts requires informed mitigation policies. This requires information about emission reductions, the impacts that can be avoided and the cost. Scientists within the AVOID programme are working together to provide evidence and research needed by stakeholders to underpin climate change negotiations and to inform future mitigation and adaptation policy. They are also putting in place a framework to allow further integration and communication of scientific and socio-economic research on climate change.
Calculating avoided impacts
During the first year of the programme, 2009, the aim was to provide targeted evidence and guidance on the climate impacts and economic consequences of potential mitigation policies, ahead of COP15. To meet this aim, AVOID has modelled the climate change impacts that can be avoided by reducing emissions instead of following a business as usual path for a number of sectors.
The main involvement of our scientists during this first year was on the implications of mitigation policies on food and water.
Main conclusions:
- mitigation reduces, but does not eliminate the impacts of climate change on flood risk, water resource scarcity, and crop productivity. The effects vary between sectors and regions, but even stringent mitigation aiming to limit the warming to 2 degrees C may only avoid between a half and two-thirds of impacts by the end of the century
- the earlier emissions begin to be reduced, the greater the avoided impacts on food and water
- the benefits of reducing emissions may be difficult to identify until the 2050s, and become progressively larger through the century.
The actual impacts of climate change on food and water, and therefore the absolute effects of
specific climate policies, are difficult to quantify precisely, because they depend on changes in local
weather. Whilst different climate models simulate broadly the same patterns of change in global and large-scale
climate, they can produce different projections of change at local and regional scales. But some broad patterns
are reasonably consistent.
WATER
Fluvial flooding The greatest increase in fluvial flood risk is generally projected to occur in south and east Asia. Climate policy reduces the impacts of climate change on fluvial flood risk by between 40 and 70% by the end of the century, depending on region and the strength of the climate policy. |
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Water resources The areas exposed to the greatest risk of increased water scarcity due to climate change are around the Mediterranean, in parts of southern Africa, Central Asia, and Central America, with changes across south Asia largely depending on how climate change affects the South Asian monsoon. A climate policy aiming at 2 degrees C would avoid approximately half of the impacts by the end of the century - in terms of numbers of people exposed to increased water stress - and a less stringent policy would reduce impacts by between a quarter and a third. |
FOOD
Land suitability for cultivation
The suitability of land for cultivation depends upon climate, topography and soil properties. Climate change tends to increase land suitable for cultivation at high latitudes (due to higher temperatures), but decreases suitability in many dry tropical and subtropical regions (due to lower moisture availability). Climate mitigation reduces the effect of climate change on land suitability. For example, early reduction of emissions decreases the area which becomes unsuitable by over 60% by 2080. |
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Food production
The effects of climate mitigation on food production have been calculated for soybean, a major global crop used for producing both protein and oil. Climate change leads to a reduction in soybean yield and production. Mitigation reduces this decrease in production slightly.
The consequences of climate mitigation on production reflect a complex relationship between climate change and CO2 concentration. For example, avoided impacts for 2050 are greater when emissions peak in 2030 compared to a peak in 2016. This is because the balance between the effects of CO2 fertilisation and increased temperature is favourable for soybean growth. At the end of the century the percentage of avoided impacts is greater than at 2050.
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