Climate change velocity underestimates climate change exposure in mountainous regions

Climate change velocity is a vector depiction of the rate of climate displacement used for assessing climate change impacts. Interpreting velocity requires an assumption that climate trajectory length is proportional to climate change exposure; longer paths suggest greater exposure. However, distanc...

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Veröffentlicht in:Nature communications Jg. 7; H. 1; S. 12349 - 8
Hauptverfasser: Dobrowski, Solomon Z., Parks, Sean A.
Format: Journal Article
Sprache:Englisch
Veröffentlicht: London Nature Publishing Group UK 01.08.2016
Nature Publishing Group
Nature Portfolio
Schlagworte:
704/106/694/2739
704/106/694/2786
704/158/2165
Climate change
Environmental assessment
Environmental impact
Exposure
Humanities and Social Sciences
Mountain regions
Mountains
multidisciplinary
open climate campaign
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Velocity
United States > US
North America
Montana
ISSN:2041-1723, 2041-1723
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Zusammenfassung:Climate change velocity is a vector depiction of the rate of climate displacement used for assessing climate change impacts. Interpreting velocity requires an assumption that climate trajectory length is proportional to climate change exposure; longer paths suggest greater exposure. However, distance is an imperfect measure of exposure because it does not quantify the extent to which trajectories traverse areas of dissimilar climate. Here we calculate velocity and minimum cumulative exposure (MCE) in degrees Celsius along climate trajectories for North America. We find that velocity is weakly related to MCE; each metric identifies contrasting areas of vulnerability to climate change. Notably, velocity underestimates exposure in mountainous regions where climate trajectories traverse dissimilar climates, resulting in high MCE. In contrast, in flat regions velocity is high where MCE is low, as these areas have negligible climatic resistance to movement. Our results suggest that mountainous regions are more climatically isolated than previously reported. Climate change velocity describes organism exposure to a modified climate, but as a distance-based metric, fails to consider that trajectories traverse dissimilar environments. Here, the authors calculate minimum cumulative exposure, finding that mountainous regions are particularly vulnerable.
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ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/ncomms12349