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The World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine (WADEM; Madison, Wisconsin USA) is a multi-disciplinary professional association whose mission is the global improvement of prehospital and emergency health care, public health, and disaster health and preparedness. In April 2017, the biennial general meeting of the World Congress for Disaster and Emergency Medicine (WCDEM) endorsed the WADEM Climate Change Position Statement, which was subsequently published in Prehospital and Disaster Medicine in July 2017. This special report examines literature used and reviews the process of development of this Position Statement as a product of WADEM.

Cuthbertson J, Archer F, Robertson A. Special report: WADEM climate change position statement.

This paper investigates the benefits of international cooperation under uncertainty about global warming through a stochastic dynamic game. We analyze the benefits of cooperation both for the case of symmetric and asymmetric players. It is shown that the players’ combined expected payoffs decrease as climate uncertainty becomes larger, whether or not they cooperate. However, the benefits from cooperation increase with climate uncertainty. In other words, it is more important to cooperate when facing higher uncertainty. At the same time, more transfers will be needed to ensure stable cooperation among asymmetric players.

This article analyzes the international law obligations that arise in relation to nationally determined contributions (NDCs). It argues that distinct and concurrent obligations arise from two separate sources. On the one hand, treaty obligations arise under the Paris Agreement, which imposes an obligation of conduct on parties: they must take adequate measures towards the realization of the mitigation targets contained in their NDCs. On the other hand, communications such as NDCs may constitute unilateral declarations that also create legal obligations. These unilateral declarations impose obligations of various types, which may extend beyond mitigation. For example, they may specify measures of implementation or demand the achievement of a particular result. The potential ‘double-bindingness’ of NDCs should be a central consideration in the interpretation of international law obligations regarding climate change.

REDD+ – an incentive mechanism to reduce deforestation and associated greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries – was developed under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and subsequently included in the Paris Agreement. Its early implementation activities have highlighted the role of certain intergovernmental actors: REDD+financing initiatives, including the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility and Forest Investment Programme, and UN-REDD, a collaborative programme involving three agencies of the United Nations. By setting conditions for the provision of support for REDD+, these initiatives have actively and influentially engaged in REDD+rule making. This article focuses on the regulatory landscape for REDD+and examines rules developed under the UNFCCC and elaborated by the REDD+financing initiatives, using examples from the Latin American region. The analysis shows that informal lawmaking plays a more relevant role in REDD+rule making than international formal law, and has demonstrated legal and practical effects. However, informality can also tilt power relations between donor and recipient countries, which could jeopardize the legitimacy of transnational rule making.

The effectiveness of adaptation strategies is crucial for reducing the costs of climate change. Using plot-level data from a specifically designed survey conducted in Pakistan, we investigate the productive benefits for farmers who adapt to climate change. The impact of implementing on-farm adaptation strategies is estimated separately for two staple crops: wheat and rice. We employ propensity score matching and endogenous switching regressions to account for the possibility that farmers self-select into adaptation. Estimated productivity gains are positive and significant for rice farmers who adapted, but negligible for wheat. Counterfactual gains for non-adapters were significantly positive, which is potentially a sign of transactions costs to adaptation. Other factors associated with adaptation were formal credit and extension, underscoring the importance of addressing institutional and informational constraints that inhibit farmers from improving their farming practices. The findings provide evidence for the Pakistani Planning and Development Department's ongoing assessment of climate-related agricultural losses.

Using a variety of optical satellite scenes, this study quantifies the change in the areal extent of 1773 glaciers across Northern Ellesmere Island between ~1999 and ~2015. Our results show that the regional ice coverage decreased by 1705.3 km2 over the ~16-year period, a loss of ~5.9%. Ice shelves had the greatest losses relative to their size, of ~42.4%. Glaciers feeding into ice shelves reduced in area by 4.7%, while tidewater glaciers reduced in area by 3.3%. Marine-terminating glaciers with floating ice tongues reduced in area by 4.9%, and 19 of these 27 ice tongues disintegrated, causing these glaciers to retreat to their grounding lines. Land-terminating glaciers lost 4.9% of their 1999 area, including the complete loss of three small ice caps (<1.5 km2). Our study highlights the high sensitivity of the ice cover of Northern Ellesmere Island to recent climate warming and the continued losses that are likely to occur in the future. In particular, the ice masses most susceptible to further losses are marine-terminating glaciers with floating termini and small land-terminating ice caps at low elevations.

The lithostratigraphy, age and human occupation of the Late Glacial and Holocene aeolian succession of a Late Palaeolithic Ahrensburg site in the excavation Geldrop-A2 (municipality of Heeze-Leende) have been investigated. The exposure revealed a stacked sequence of aeolian sand units and intercalated soils (Older Coversand II, Younger Coversand I (YCI), Usselo Soil, Younger Coversand II (YCII), Holocene podzol, drift sand). Fourteen optically stimulated luminescence dates on quartz and three radiocarbon dates provide the age control of the aeolian deposition (coversands, drift sand), landscape stability (soils) and human occupation. The upper part of the YCI unit was dated to the early Late Glacial. The well-developed Usselo Soil was formed during a phase of landscape stability during the late Allerød interstadial and onset of the Younger Dryas stadial. During the Younger Dryas, low aeolian dunes were formed locally (YCII), as a response to landscape instability due to cooling and vegetation decline. In the fine-grained lower part of the YCII unit an initial soil testifies to a decadal to centennial period of landscape stability. An Ahrensburg site in the upper part of this initial soil was dated at 10,915±35 BP (c. 12,854–12,789 cal BP). The lithostratigraphic position, radiocarbon dates of the underlying Usselo Soil and a possibly old-wood effect of up to 200 years suggest that Ahrensburg occupation of the dune environment occurred during the early Younger Dryas, shortly after c. 10,750 BP (12,750 cal BP). Landscape stability and podzol soil formation dominated the early and middle Holocene periods. Drift-sand deposition, probably related to human land use and vegetation decline, occurred in a 200-year period from the 16th to the 18th centuries.

The cold, wet climate of the Arctic has led to the extraordinary preservation of archaeological sites and materials that offer important contributions to the understanding of our common cultural and ecological history. This potential, however, is quickly disappearing due to climate-related variables, including the intensification of permafrost thaw and coastal erosion, which are damaging and destroying a wide range of cultural and environmental archives around the Arctic. In providing an overview of the most important effects of climate change in this region and on archaeological sites, the authors propose the next generation of research and response strategies, and suggest how to capitalise on existing successful connections among research communities and between researchers and the public.

Interactions of fluvial and eolian processes are prominent in dryland environments and can significantly change Earth surface morphology. Here, we report on sediment records of eolian and fluvial interactions since the last glacial period, in the semiarid area of northwest China, at the limit of the Southeast Asian monsoon. Sediment sequences of last glacial and Holocene terraces of the Yellow River are composed of channel gravels, overlain by flood sands, eolian dunes, and flood loams. These sequences, dated by optically stimulated luminescence, record interlinks between fluvial and eolian processes and their response to climate change. Sedimentologic structures and grain-size analysis show flood loams, consisting of windblown sediment, deposited from floodwater suspended sediment. The gravel and sand were deposited during cold periods. During transitions from cold to warm phases, the river incised, and dunes were formed by deflation of channel and floodplain deposits (>70 and 21–16 ka). Dunes also formed at ~0.8 ka, probably after human intervention. After dune formation, flood loam covered dunes without erosion during peak discharges at the beginning of the subsequent warm period. The fluctuations of the Southeast Asian monsoon as a moisture-transporting agent have perhaps been the driving force for interactions between fluvial and eolian processes in this semiarid environment.

In this paper we develop tools and intuition for portfolio optimization for multiple conservation objectives. We show it is more efficient to optimize a conservation portfolio for multiple goods jointly, allowing planners to exploit information about multiple dimensions of correlations between goods. We identified a new type of correlation that is important for optimal conservation planning of multiple objectives under uncertainty: scenario correlation between objectives in a given part of the landscape. The conservation planner faces a different kind of problem if the objectives at hand respond similarly rather than differently to climate shocks in subregions of the planning area.

Although there is increasing evidence for a sixth mass extinction, relatively few plants have been officially declared extinct (<150 are categorized as Extinct on the IUCN Red List). The Red List, although the data are neither perfect nor comprehensive, is perhaps the most reliable indicator of extinction and extinction threat. Here, data collated from the Red List, of Extinct plant species and of Critically Endangered plant species with populations in decline, are examined to address three questions: (1) How do background, continental, and island plant extinction rates compare? (2) Are biological and physical island parameters associated with plant extinction? (3) Are any plant traits associated with extinction and if so do these differ between islands and continents? The background rate for plant extinction is estimated to be 0.05–0.13 E/MSY (extinctions per million species-years) and the Red List data are above these background rates and also above a higher extinction rate of 0.15 E/MSY. The data indicate that plant extinctions are dominated by insular species. The Red List extinction data are associated with lower competitive ability and lower climate change velocities, and anthropogenic factors. Analyses using only Critically Endangered species whose populations are in decline (arguably the species most at risk of extinction in the near future) largely mirrors this pattern and suggests that drivers of plant extinction may have an inertia that could last well into the future.

Agricultural water use accounts for more than 95% of the total water consumption in the extreme arid region of the Tarim River Basin. Understanding the variation of agricultural water demand (AWD) and its attributions is therefore vital for irrigation management and water resource allocation affecting the economy and natural ecosystems in this high water-deficit region. Here spatial–temporal variations of AWD based on weighted crop water requirement (ETc) were estimated using the Penman–Monteith equation and the crop coefficient approach. Then the contributions of meteorological factors and planting structure (i.e. proportions of crop acreages) to AWD variations were quantified based on traditional methods and numerical experiment (i.e. a series calculation of AWD based on different input data). Results indicated that AWD decreased during 1960–1988 at a rate of 2.76 mm/year and then started to increase at a high rate of 9.47 mm/year during 1989–2015. For the first period (1960–1988), wind speed (uz), maximum humidity (RHmax) and sunshine duration (n) were the most important factors leading to decreased AWD, while for the second period the evolution of planting structure was the most significant factor resulting in the rapid increase of AWD, followed by the minimum temperature (Tmin), uz and RHmax. The evolution of planting structure alone would lead to an increase rate for AWD of 7.1 mm/year while the climatic factor would result in an increase rate of 1.9 mm/year during 1989–2015.

Temporal changes in soils of forest landscapes of the forest-steppe zone—Haplic Luvisols and Greyzemic Phaeozems—under the impact of Holocene climate changes (natural factor) and long-term cultivation (anthropogenic factor) were studied on level interfluves of the Central Russian Upland. These soils were developed from covering loesslike loam of varying thickness. To study soil evolution under the impact of climate changes, soil chronosequences of archaeological sites—paleosols buried under ramparts of ancient settlements and background surface soils of adjacent areas—were analyzed. The time of the soil burying was determined via the 14C dating of charcoal from thin twigs sampled in the material of ramparts immediately above the surface of buried soils. According to 14C dates, the paleosols were buried in the interval from 2450±40 to 1150±110 BP. Before the Subatlantic period, these paleosols developed under grassland (steppe), which is proved by their properties typical of steppe soils and by the presence of paleokrotovinas—the features created by the burrowing activity of steppe animals (mole rats)—in the studied profiles. The 14C dates of the total organic carbon of humus in the dark gray filling of a paleokrotovina from a Phaeozem buried at the depth of 140–150 cm under the rampart of 1150±110 BP in age ranged from 6080±150 to 2810±60 BP. The evolution of steppe Chernozems into forest Phaeozems and Luvisols took place in the Late Holocene. The anthropogenic evolution of forest Luvisols and Phaeozems under the impact of long-term (more than 150–230 years) plowing was analyzed in the soil agrochronosequences that included background soils under native forest vegetation and their arable analogs with different durations of cultivation. It was concluded that this evolution is directed towards Chernozemic pedogenesis, i.e., it proceeds in the direction opposite to the natural trend of pedogenesis in the Late Holocene. This process takes place despite the traditional practice of limited application of organic fertilizers in arable farming in the studied region. A decrease in the mean residence time (MRT) of total organic carbon (TOC) in the old-arable soils is considered a consequence of the formation and accumulation of fresh humus material in the profiles of cultivated soils—one of the major processes in the transformation of arable forest soils into Chernozems. The accumulation of carbonates and an increase in their 14C age take place in the arable soils in comparison with their forest analogs. In the agrochronosequence from the Polyana site, the 14C age of carbonates at the depth of 170–180 cm reaches 8000±100, 8270±150, and 9150±100 BP under the forest, 100-year-old plowland, and 150-year-old plowland, respectively. This can be explained by the ascending migration of ancient carbonates from the parent material in suspensions. In the analogous Samarino agrochronosequence, the 14C age of carbonates from the depth of 90–100 cm comprised 6500±90, 7150±100, and 12,360±230 BP, respectively. Thus, the studied forest-steppe soils have a polygenetic nature specified by a complicated history of pedogenesis under the impact of both natural (climate-driven forest invasion into steppe) and anthropogenic (deforestation and land plowing) factors.

Because their assets and income represent such a small share of national wealth, the impacts of climate change on poor people, even if dramatic, will be largely invisible in aggregate economic statistics such as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Assessing and managing future impacts of climate change on poverty requires different metrics, and specific studies focusing on the vulnerability of poor people. This special issue provides a set of such studies, looking at the exposure and vulnerability of people living in poverty to shocks and stressors that are expected to increase in frequency or intensity due to climate change, such as floods, droughts, heat waves, and impacts on agricultural production and ecosystem services. This introduction summarizes their approach and findings, which support the idea that the link between poverty and climate vulnerability goes both ways: poverty is one major driver of people's vulnerability to climate-related shocks and stressors, and this vulnerability is keeping people in poverty. The paper concludes by identifying priorities for future research.

Social institutions such as the water-powered grain mills of Ottoman Cyprus are elaborately interconnected with a wide range of human and non-human players, from millers and villagers to water, gradient, stone and climate. When participants recognize their mutual dependencies and operate according to social and environmental limits, then following Ivan Illich we can call these watermills convivial tools. The European-owned sugar plantations, mills and refineries of medieval Cyprus, by contrast, divided and alienated their workforce, and their demands for water, labour, soil and fuel surpassed what their landscape and society could provide. They are, then, unconvivial tools. Conviviality is always precarious: it needs continual negotiation, conflict and compromise, as well as an acceptance of the mutual dependence of all participants, non-human and human. This politics of conviviality is particularly urgent in times of social and ecological crisis.

Many NGOs pride themselves with their ability to use grassroots participatory approaches when working with economically disadvantaged farmers. I asked whether current participatory approaches could be relied on to promote sustainable agriculture among subsistence farmers in Ghana's Upper-West Region. To ascertain this, I employed Arnstein's (2015) ladder of citizen participation as a theoretical basis. A two-phase exploratory sequential mixed method design was also used. Phase one consisted of a qualitative comparative analysis of the various participatory approaches of two purposively sampled NGOs using FGDs and in-depth interviews. In phase two, themes from phase one guided the formulation of a structured questionnaire, which ascertained the differences in grassroots participatory approaches between the two identified NGOs and how these differences influenced the likelihood of their respective beneficiary farmers adopting sustainable agronomic practices using chi-square and logistic regression. Findings show statistically significant associations between grassroots participation and farmers’ adoption of sustainable agronomic practices. The findings suggest that farmers who were engaged in higher levels of Arnstein's (2015) typology of participation were more likely to adopt sustainable agronomic practices than those who minimally participated. This suggests that development interventions can be most beneficial to the grassroots when intended beneficiaries fully participate in them.

Significant salinity anomalies have been observed in the Arctic Ocean surface layer during the last decade. Our study is based on an extensive gridded dataset of winter salinity in the upper 50 m layer of the Arctic Ocean for the periods 1950–1993 and 2007–2012, obtained from ~20 000 profiles. We investigate the interannual variability of the salinity fields, identify predominant patterns of anomalous behavior and leading modes of variability, and develop a statistical model for the prediction of surface-layer salinity. The statistical model is based on linear regression equations linking the principal components of surface-layer salinity obtained through empirical orthogonal function decomposition with environmental factors, such as atmospheric circulation, river runoff, ice processes and water exchange with neighboring oceans. Using this model, we obtain prognostic fields of the surface-layer salinity for the winter period 2013–2014. The prognostic fields generated by the model show tendencies of surface-layer salinification, which were also observed in previous years. Although the used data are proprietary and have gaps, they provide the most spatiotemporally detailed observational resource for studying multidecadal variations in basin-wide Arctic salinity. Thus, there is community value in the identification, dissemination and modeling of the principal modes of variability in this salinity record.

Aspects of species life histories may increase their susceptibility to climate change. Owing to their exclusive reliance on environmental sources of heat for incubation, megapodes may be especially vulnerable. We employed a trait-based vulnerability assessment to weigh their exposure to projected climate variables of increasing temperatures, fluctuating rainfall and sea level rise and their biological sensitivity and capacity to adapt. While all 21 species were predicted to experience at least a 2 °C increase in mean annual temperature, 12 to experience a moderate or greater fluctuation in rainfall and 16 to experience rising seas, the most vulnerable megapodes are intrinsically rare and range restricted. Species that employ microbial decomposition for incubation may have an adaptive advantage over those that do not and may be more resilient to climate change. The moderate microclimate necessary for mound incubation, however, may in some areas be threatened by anthropogenic habitat loss exacerbated by warmer and seasonally drier conditions. As with many avian species, little is known about the capacity of megapodes to adapt to a changing climate. We therefore recommend that future research efforts investigate megapode fecundity, gene flow and genetic connectivity at the population level to better determine their adaptive capacity.

Two small glaciers on James Ross Island, the north-eastern Antarctic Peninsula, experienced surface mass gain between 2009 and 2015 as revealed by field measurements. A positive cumulative surface mass balance of 0.57 ± 0.67 and 0.11 ± 0.37 m w.e. was observed during the 2009–2015 period on Whisky Glacier and Davies Dome, respectively. The results indicate a change from surface mass loss that prevailed in the region during the first decade of the 21st century to predominantly positive surface mass balance after 2009/10. The spatial pattern of annual surface mass-balance distribution implies snow redistribution by wind on both glaciers. The mean equilibrium line altitudes for Whisky Glacier (311 ± 16 m a.s.l.) and Davies Dome (393 ± 18 m a.s.l.) are in accordance with the regional data indicating 200–300 m higher equilibrium line on James Ross and Vega Islands compared with the South Shetland Islands. The mean accumulation-area ratio of 0.68 ± 0.09 and 0.44 ± 0.09 determined for Whisky Glacier and Davies Dome, respectively, is similar to the value reported for Vega Island and within the range of typical values for high-latitude glaciers.

Light-absorbing impurities (LAI) can darken snow and ice surfaces, reduce snow/ice albedo and accelerate melt. Efforts to allocate the relative contribution of different LAI to snow/ice albedo reductions have been limited by uncertainties in the optical properties of LAI. We developed a new method to measure LAI spectral reflectance at the submicron scale by modifying a Hyperspectral Imaging Microscope Spectrometer (HIMS). We present the instrument's internal calibration, and the overall small influence of a particle's orientation on its measured reflectance spectrum. We validated this new method through the comparison with a field spectroradiometer by measuring different standard materials. Measurements with HIMS at the submicron scale and the bulk measurements of the same standard materials with the field spectroradiometer are in good agreement with an average deviation between the spectra of 3.2% for the 400–1000 nm wavelength range. The new method was used (1) to identify BC (black carbon), mineral dust including hematite and the humic substances present in an environmental sample from Plaine Morte glacier and (2) to collect the individual reflectance spectra of each of these types of impurity. The results indicate that this method is applicable to heterogeneous samples such as the LAI found in snow and ice.