IMPACTS WORLD 2013 - International conference on climate change effects

The IMPACTS WORLD 2013 conference aims to develop a new vision for climate impacts research by laying the foundations for regular, community-driven syntheses of climate change impact analyses. It will bring together leading scientists and decision makers from local to international levels. more

IMPACTS WORLD 2013 is a discussion-based conference designed to tackle four fundamental challenges:

1. Do the pieces fit together?

Climate change will have impacts in a wide range of sectors belonging to both the natural and socio-economic sphere.

• How can we improve our understanding of interactions and feedbacks between sectors and of cascading effects across sector boundaries?
• Which mechanisms, sectors and regions have not been the subject of significant research efforts so far? How do we close these research gaps?

2. Can we be sure?

Usability and credibility of climate impacts research depends heavily on an understanding of the robustness of impact projections. 

• How can we improve the observational basis for impacts already being experienced?
• How can we ensure a rigorous validation and quality-check of impacts models and quantify the various contributions to uncertainty?

3. Do we need a million case studies?

For informed decision making, details of climate impacts must be provided at the appropriate geographic scale. From a global perspective, hot spots should be identified. Knowledge should be aggregated based on regional studies. 

• How can we establish representative sets of comparative regional case studies?
• What are appropriate metrics to compare the same sector across different regions or different sectors in the same region?

4. Is anybody listening?

Research provides crucial information to global, regional, national and local policy makers and practitioners, to help in devising effective mitigation and adaptation policies. 

• How can we make our research results intelligible and concise, especially for policy and decision makers and the wider public?

Website: http://www.climate-impacts-2013.org/