Christopher B. Field is an American scientist and researcher, who has contributed to the field of climate change. The author of more than 200 scientific publications, Field's research emphasizes impacts of climate change, from the molecular to the global scale. His work includes major field experiments on responses of California grassland to multi-factor global change, integrative studies on the global carbon cycle, [1] and assessments of impacts of climate change on agriculture. [2] Field's work with models includes studies on the global distribution of carbon sources and sinks, and studies on environmental consequences of expanding biomass energy. [3]
Field is the founding director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology. [4] Field received his PhD from Stanford University in 1981 and has been at the Carnegie Institution for Science since 1984. Field is also a Professor of Biology and Environmental Earth System Science at Stanford University, [3] the Faculty Director of Stanford's Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, and a member of the US National Academy of Sciences. He was a coordinating lead author for the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Field has testified before House and Senate committees and has appeared on media from NPR's “Science Friday” to BBC's “Your World Today.” In September 2008, Field was elected co-chair of Working Group 2 of the IPCC, along with Vicente Barros. [5] In 2009, Field was one of ten recipients of the 15th Annual Heinz Award with special focus on the environment. [6] [7]
Also Field received the 2013 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Climate Change for discovering the importance of ecosystems and their effective management in the battle against climate change. Field's work has allowed to quantify the global climate impact of deforestation, agriculture and other changes in vegetation cover. And vice versa. It has helped predict how climate change will impact on land ecosystems. For 2022 he was awarded the Japan Prize in the category "Biological Production, Ecology/Environment". [8]
Field currently serves as a co-chair of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's "Working Group II, impacts, adaptation, vulnerability." [9] In February 2015, the US State Department announced his candidacy to be IPCC Chair. [10]
Chris Field's lab at Carnegie Science focuses on ecological research from the ecosystem- to the global scale. [11] Much of the work emphasizes understanding drivers and impacts of global environmental change on various ecosystems, including grasslands and oceans. The Field Lab is also currently working on biomass energy production. [12]
Former notable Ph.D. students that Chris Field advised are: [13]
Former notable postdoctoral scholars that Chris Field advised are:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an intergovernmental body of the United Nations. Its job is to advance scientific knowledge about climate change caused by human activities. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) established the IPCC in 1988. The United Nations endorsed the creation of the IPCC later that year. It has a secretariat in Geneva, Switzerland, hosted by the WMO. It has 195 member states who govern the IPCC. The member states elect a bureau of scientists to serve through an assessment cycle. A cycle is usually six to seven years. The bureau selects experts to prepare IPCC reports. It draws the experts from nominations by governments and observer organizations. The IPCC has three working groups and a task force, which carry out its scientific work.
There is a strong scientific consensus that the Earth is warming and that this warming is mainly caused by human activities. This consensus is supported by various studies of scientists' opinions and by position statements of scientific organizations, many of which explicitly agree with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) synthesis reports.
Drew Shindell is a physicist and a climate specialist and professor at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment. He is listed as an ISI Highly Cited Researcher. He was a chapter lead of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) October 8, 2018 Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C as well as on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fifth Assessment Report in 2013. He has testified on climate issues before both houses of the US Congress, at the request of both parties. His research concerns natural and human drivers of climate change, linkages between air quality and climate change, and the interface between climate change science and policy. He has been an author on more than 200 peer-reviewed publications and received awards from Scientific American, NASA, the EPA, and the NSF.
Climate change affects the physical environment, ecosystems and human societies. Changes in the climate system include an overall warming trend, more extreme weather and rising sea levels. These in turn impact nature and wildlife, as well as human settlements and societies. The effects of human-caused climate change are broad and far-reaching. This is especially so if there is no significant climate action. Experts sometimes describe the projected and observed negative impacts of climate change as the climate crisis.
The economic analysis of climate change explains how economic thinking, tools and techniques are applied to calculate the magnitude and distribution of damage caused by climate change. It also informs the policies and approaches for mitigation and adaptation to climate change from global to household scales. This topic is also inclusive of alternative economic approaches, including ecological economics and degrowth. In a cost–benefit analysis, the trade offs between climate change impacts, adaptation, and mitigation are made explicit. Cost–benefit analyses of climate change are produced using integrated assessment models (IAMs), which incorporate aspects of the natural, social, and economic sciences. The total economic impacts from climate change are difficult to estimate, but increase for higher temperature changes.
Land use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF), also referred to as Forestry and other land use (FOLU) or Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU), is defined as a "greenhouse gas inventory sector that covers emissions and removals of greenhouse gases resulting from direct human-induced land use such as settlements and commercial uses, land-use change, and forestry activities."
Climate Change 2007, the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was published in 2007 and is the fourth in a series of reports intended to assess scientific, technical and socio-economic information concerning climate change, its potential effects, and options for adaptation and mitigation. The report is the largest and most detailed summary of the climate change situation ever undertaken, produced by thousands of authors, editors, and reviewers from dozens of countries, citing over 6,000 peer-reviewed scientific studies. People from over 130 countries contributed to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, which took six years to produce. Contributors to AR4 included more than 2,500 scientific expert reviewers, more than 800 contributing authors, and more than 450 lead authors.
Climate risk is the potential for negative consequences for human or ecological systems from the impacts of climate change. It refers to risk assessments based on formal analysis of the consequences, likelihoods and responses to these impacts and how societal constraints shape adaptation options. However, the science also recognises different values and preferences around risk, and the importance of risk perception.
In ecology, resilience is the capacity of an ecosystem to respond to a perturbation or disturbance by resisting damage and recovering. Such perturbations and disturbances can include stochastic events such as fires, flooding, windstorms, insect population explosions, and human activities such as deforestation, fracking of the ground for oil extraction, pesticide sprayed in soil, and the introduction of exotic plant or animal species. Disturbances of sufficient magnitude or duration can profoundly affect an ecosystem and may force an ecosystem to reach a threshold beyond which a different regime of processes and structures predominates. When such thresholds are associated with a critical or bifurcation point, these regime shifts may also be referred to as critical transitions.
Kenneth Caldeira is an American atmospheric scientist. His areas of research include ocean acidification, climate effects of trees, intentional climate modification, interactions in the global carbon cycle/climate system, and sustainable energy.
The Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the fifth in a series of such reports and was completed in 2014. As had been the case in the past, the outline of the AR5 was developed through a scoping process which involved climate change experts from all relevant disciplines and users of IPCC reports, in particular representatives from governments. Governments and organizations involved in the Fourth Report were asked to submit comments and observations in writing with the submissions analysed by the panel. Projections in AR5 are based on "Representative Concentration Pathways" (RCPs). The RCPs are consistent with a wide range of possible changes in future anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Projected changes in global mean surface temperature and sea level are given in the main RCP article.
In earth science, global surface temperature is calculated by averaging the temperatures over sea and land.
Dr. C. Vernon Cole was a soil scientist known primarily for his work on nutrient cycling in agroecosystems. He was a member of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Second Assessment report, and the lead author of Chapter 23 “Agricultural Options for Mitigation of Greenhouse Gas Emissions”. The IPCC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.
The contributions of women in climate change have received increasing attention in the early 21st century. Feedback from women and the issues faced by women have been described as "imperative" by the United Nations and "critical" by the Population Reference Bureau. A report by the World Health Organization concluded that incorporating gender-based analysis would "provide more effective climate change mitigation and adaptation."
James "Jim" Ferguson Skea CBE FRSE sk-EE is a British academic. He is currently Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for its seventh assessment cycle, and a Professor of Sustainable Energy at Imperial College London. Before being elected as Chair, Skea was Co-Chair of Working Group III of the IPCC. He was a founding member of the UK Government's Committee on Climate Change and currently chairs Scotland's Just Transition Commission. He was a co-author of the IPCC 2018 Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C. In July 2023, Skea was elected as Chair the IPCC.
Elisabeth Holland is an American climate scientist who focuses on how the carbon and nitrogen cycles interact with earth systems. She has become a key player in the international climate debate. She is currently a professor of climate change at the University of the South Pacific. She is also the director of the Pacific Center for Environmental and Sustainable Development.
The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Special Report on Climate Change and Land (SRCCL), also known as the "Special Report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems", is a landmark study from 2019 by 107 experts from 52 countries. The SRCCL provides a comprehensive overview of the entire land-climate system for the first time and decided to enlist land as a "critical resource". The IPCC's 50th session (IPCC-50) formally adopted the SRCCL's Summary for policymakers (SPM) and approved the underlying report. The SPM and the full text of Special Report on Climate Change and Land—in an unedited form—were released on 8 August 2019. The report is over 1,300 pages long and includes the work of 107 experts from 52 countries.
The Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the sixth in a series of reports which assess scientific, technical, and socio-economic information concerning climate change. Three Working Groups covered the following topics: The Physical Science Basis (WGI); Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability (WGII); Mitigation of Climate Change (WGIII). Of these, the first study was published in 2021, the second report February 2022, and the third in April 2022. The final synthesis report was finished in March 2023.
Climate change vulnerability is a concept that describes how strongly people or ecosystems are likely to be affected by climate change. It is defined as the "propensity or predisposition to be adversely affected" by climate change. It can apply to humans and also to natural systems. Related concepts include climate sensitivity and the ability, or lack thereof, to cope and adapt. Vulnerability is a component of climate risk. Vulnerability differs within communities and across societies, regions, and countries, and can increase or decrease over time.
Opha Pauline Dube or Pauline Dube is a Botswanan environmental scientist and Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Science at the University of Botswana. She co-authored the IPCC's Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C. She is one of fifteen scientists creating the 2023 Global Sustainable Development Report for the United Nations.