wombat library's List: Climate change - Australia - Local

This amalgamation (aligned as far as possible with existing NRM boundaries) preserves the detail of existing climatic zones and permits a coherent future projection to be described for each. Information about the 8 Clusters and 15 Sub-Clusters can also be accessed from this webpage by following links from the relevant Super-Clusters

On 27 January CSIRO released new climate projections, delivering the best available science on the likely future climate for all regions of Australia. The projections, developed in collaboration with the Bureau of Meteorology, address four potential greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions scenarios and consider future climate for eight clusters of natural resource management (NRM) regions. They provide a critical source of information for decision making across government, industry, business and the NRM sector. 

This paper focuses on learning from existing cross-border governance arrangements with a view to strengthening and improving climate change adaptation within the Australian context. Using an institutional learning framework, the research offers a critical analysis of two Australian cross-border cases: (1) the Murray-Darling Basin, and (2) the Australian Alps. The research findings focus on the issues of geographic (place), administrative (space) and political (territory) fragmentation as key concepts that underpin integrated environmental planning and management in practice. There are significant implications for climate change adaptation in evolving cross-border regions at scale that this paper highlights.

CSIRO climate projections for South Australia for 2030 and 2070 predict:
*higher temperatures including more extreme hot days, with spring and summer warming more than winter and autumn
*associated health and mortality impacts on an ageing population, and increasing energy demand for air-conditioning
*decreased rainfall in agricultural regions (especially in winter and spring)
*greater frequency and severity of drought with decreased flows in water supply catchments
*increased flood risk (despite drier average conditions)
*shifts in conditions affecting our food production and biodiversity
*increased incidence or severity of bushfires
*damage to infrastructure, for example from coastal erosion, flooding and extreme heat.

A new smartphone application aims to help coastal Australians assess if they are at risk from the affects of climate change.

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The Coastal Ecosystems Response to Climate Change Synthesis Report (CERCCS) app will provide projections, impacts and adaptation options for coastal Australia.

The Griffith University Australian Rivers Institute (ARI) says it will help people navigate through the heavy science and make decisions about climate change.

ARI researchers Wade Hadwen and Samantha Capon developed the app.

Dr Hadwen says the idea evolved from a 350 page report they wrote about the impact of climate change on the coastline.

"We figured that very few people would actually bother reading that," he says.

"We wanted to try and turn that into a more useful kind of tool, something that was accessible mobile and digital."

The application contains three main components:

The emu-wren, with its delicate filagreed tail, would go. So too would the master of disguise, the ground parrot - victims of increased fire in Australia's south-east.

And the palm cockatoo could disappear from its tropical toehold.

They are among 396 native birds likely to suffer as a result of climate change, according to the first analysis of global warming's effects on Australian birds.

Of 1232 Australian bird species and subspecies, one-quarter would do badly when exposed to the effects of climate change later this century, the report finds.
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It calls for funds now, for what would eventually be a $940 million program to safeguard birds from Cape York to Tasmania.

''A billion dollars over 50 years for conserving Australia's birds in the face of climate change is paltry compared to the cost of biodiversity loss,'' the report states.

The report used a median of 18 climate models to identify changes to the ''climate space'' of the birds - rainfall, temperature and food availability.

Most at risk are birds of the northern tropics, which may lose their already tenuous rainforest habitat.

Changes to inshore marine food supplies are particularly likely to strike species hard off the NSW coast and may drastically change the habitat of endemic Norfolk and Lord Howe island birds.

The report, Climate Change Adaptation Strategies for Australian Birds, found sea level rises will push other shorebirds, such as the pied oystercatcher and beach stone-curlew, out of nesting space when they are already under pressure from introduced predators and human use of the coasts.

Report co-author Glenn Ehmke said the findings stood as a template for other groups of Australian fauna, such as mammals or reptiles.

Lead author Stephen Garnett, of Charles Darwin University, laid out a roadmap for bird protection, including immediate action to identify refuges within the landscapes of highly exposed species.

These might be mountains and rivers, which could buffer birds from extremes of temperature and fire. There could also be greater protection of beaches and wetlands that act as ''stepping stones'' for migratory shorebirds.

''In most cases, doing more of what we do at the moment, such as fire management, weed and feral animal control and, for marine birds, controls on fishing, will be the best approach to helping Australian birds cope with climate change," Professor Garnett said.

Samantha Vine, conservation manager at BirdLife Australia, said that, without action, more intensive and costly breeding programs may have to be mounted.

''If we do nothing, many [birds] will simply slip away and be lost forever,'' she said.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/400-native-species-in-danger-20130525-2n3pf.html#ixzz2URk0ZOr7

Two decades ago, an article was published in Global Environmental Change proposing the importance of
place attachments, at local and global scales, for understanding human responses to climate change
(
Feitelson, 1991
). Despite concluding that '
studies of individual's attachment to place may provide
important inputs for strategies to enhance the prospects for sharing the globe
' (p. 406, 1991), the article
remainsoverlooked.This articletakes upandextendsFeitelson'sargumentformore systematicresearch
on place attachments and climate change. First, the paper critically reviews interdisciplinary literature
on place attachment and the related concept of place identity, drawing on scholarship in human
geography, environmental and social psychology. The review identifies a lack of cross-disciplinary
dialogue, as well as several limitations to the ways that scalar aspects have been researched. Second,
climate change research, encompassing adaptation, mitigation and communication that has
incorporated place related attachments and identities is critically reviewed; in particular, emerging
research on the role of 'psychological distance' is critiqued. The article concludes with five
recommendations for future research: to capture place attachments and identities at global as well
as local scales; to integrate qualitative and quantitative methods that capture constructions of place as
well as intensityof attachments and identifications; toinvestigate links between attachments, identities
and collective actions, particular 'NIMBY' resistance to adaptation and mitigation strategies; to apply
greater precision when investigating spatial frames of risk communication; and to investigate links
between global attachments and identities,environmental worldviewsand climate changeengagement.
Finally, the implications of such research for evaluating area-based climate interventions are discussed