Empirical evidence for large-scale abrupt changes in ecosystems such as lakes and vegetation of semi-arid regions is growing. Such changes, called regime shifts, can lead to degradation of ecological services. We study simple ecological models that show a catastrophic transition as a control parameter is varied and propose a novel early warning signal that exploits two ubiquitous features of ec...

Climate Strategies aims to assist governments in solving the collective action problem of climate change. Sponsors include departments from European governments and other stakeholders. This paper was produced as part of a wider project investigating international support for domestic climate policies. All papers are available at www.climatestrategies.org About Climate Strategies Climate Strateg...

Predicting how species distributions might shift as global climate changes is fundamental to the successful adaptation of conservation policy. An increasing number of studies have responded to this challenge by using climate envelopes, modeling the association between climate variables and species distributions. However, it is difficult to quantify how well species actually match climate. Here,...

Whereas the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) affects weather and climate variability worldwide, the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) represents the dominant climate pattern in the North Atlantic region. Both climate systems have been demonstrated to considerably influence ecological processes. Several other large-scale climate patterns also exist. Although less well known outside the field o...

This paper provides a historical overview of the development and mainstreaming of global agendas on climate risk management and climate services from the vantage point of the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), and present two examples that illustrate how efforts to mainstream these agendas shaped both the institute and the broader communities that it sought to engag...

Climate change is an increasingly salient issue for societies and policy-makers worldwide. It now raises fundamental interdisciplinary issues of risk and uncertainty analysis and communication. The growing scientific consensus over the anthropogenic causes of climate change appears to sit at odds with the increasing use of risk discourses in policy: for example, to aid in climate adaptation dec...

I. Climate Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210 R A. Basic Concepts and Historical Patterns . . . . . . . . 210 R B. Climate-Change Trends and Projected Impacts at the Global Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212 R C. Climate-Change Trends and Projected Impacts in the Pacific Northwest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....