CNH: Towards an Integrated Framework for Climate Change Impact Assessments for International Market Systems with Long-Term Investments

预计气候变化将对广泛的自然和人类系统产生重大影响，但目前用于评估气候变化的影响、适应和脆弱性的许多方法和途径是不够的。绝大多数气候变化评估侧重于局部/区域过程或系统如何受到扰动气候的影响。这些传统的评估通常没有明确考虑单个系统组成部分的演变，如气候、其他生物物理因素、经济影响、个人决策和政策制定。很少有评估审查了这些组成部分之间相互作用的时间变化，传统的评估通常没有将潜在影响的地理差异和地理区域之间的相互作用纳入评估。国际市场体系的特点是分布在世界各地的多个生产区可能受到气候变化的不同影响。此外，需要现实地考虑各生产区域之间通过国际贸易联系的时间演变，以及适应战略和政策的地理差异。鉴于这些苛刻的要求，很少有人尝试进行全行业评估，强调需要改进评估气候变化对国际工业的潜在影响的方法。这一国际合作研究项目将开发和评估国际市场系统气候变化评估的综合框架，同时明确考虑从地方到全球、从个人到行业的多个尺度上自然和人类系统的时空动态。调查人员将特别重视有长期投资的行业，他们的大部分注意力将放在对美国中部和中欧酸樱桃产业的研究上。他们将对暂时演化的系统组件进行动态建模，并对那些无法进行动态建模的组件进行静态建模。一系列相互关联的模型将评估气候变化对未来一系列时间片段中的每一个市场体系的潜在影响；随后的时间片段将通过对适应方案、消费者偏好等经济因素和区域发展模式的预测联系起来。该模型链将包括一个用于缩减未来气候预测规模的混合方法、一个生产模型、一个个人层面决策模型和国际贸易模型。将调查和解决许多技术和实施方面的挑战，并使用一个涉及专业多年生农产品的示例行业作为概念的证明。除了拟议框架所带来的技术进步之外，这项研究还将有助于培养具有国际跨学科研究专业知识的多样化本科生和研究生，并将向公众提供关于气候变化潜在影响的非正式教育。该项目将促进对气候变率和变化对动态的、相互作用的全球活动和系统的潜在影响的基本认识。它将改进评估气候变化影响、适应和脆弱性的方法，改进过去、现在和未来气候的特征，并将个人决策和适应纳入评估过程。它还将为评估评估结果的总体不确定性或“元不确定性”提供一种新的方法。更广泛地说，该项目开发的框架在如何进行气候变化评估方面可能具有变革性，它可以帮助制定国际环境政策，以考虑到全球活动的空间相互作用。本项目由美国国家科学基金会自然与人类系统耦合动力学（CNH）项目资助。

Climate change is expected to have a substantial influence on a broad spectrum of natural and human systems, yet many of the methods and approaches currently used to evaluate the impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability to climate change are insufficient. The large majority of climate change assessments have focused on how a local/regional process or system may be affected by a perturbed climate. These traditional assessments usually have not explicitly considered the evolution over time of individual system components, such as climate, other biophysical factors, economic impacts, individual decision-making, and policy formulation. Few assessments have examined temporal changes in the interactions among these components, and traditional assessments typically have not incorporated geographic differences in potential impacts and the interactions among geographic regions. International market systems are characterized by multiple production regions distributed worldwide that are likely to be differentially impacted by climate change. Furthermore, the temporal evolution of the linkages among production regions via international trade needs to be realistically considered along with geographic differences in adaptation strategies and policies. Given these demanding requirements, few industry-wide assessments have been attempted that emphasize the need for enhanced methods for evaluating the potential impacts of climate change on international industries. This international collaborative research project will develop and evaluate an integrated framework for climate change assessments for international market systems that simultaneously and explicitly considers spatial and temporal dynamics of natural and human systems at multiple scales from the local to the global and from the individual to an industry. The investigators will pay special emphasis to industries with long-term investments, with much of their attention given to studies of the tart cherry industry in the central U.S. and central Europe. They will combine dynamic modeling of temporally evolving system components with static modeling for those components where dynamic modeling is not feasible. A chain of linked models will assess the potential impact of a changing climate on a market system for each of a series of future time slices; succeeding time slices will be connected by projections in adaptation options, economic factors such as consumer preferences, and regional development patterns. The model chain will include a hybrid approach to the downscaling of future climate projections, a production model, an individual-level decision-making model, and an international trade model. Numerous technical and implementation challenges will be investigated and addressed using an example industry involving a specialized perennial agricultural commodity as proof of concept. In addition to the technical advances made possible by the proposed framework, this research will contribute to the development and growth of a diverse pool of undergraduate and graduate students with expertise in international, interdisciplinary research and will provide informal education to the general public on potential impacts of climate change.This project will advance basic understanding of the potential impacts of climate variability and change on dynamic, interactive worldwide activities and systems. It will enhance methodologies for the assessment of climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability, it will improve the characterizations of past, current, and future climates, and it will incorporate individual decision making and adaptation into assessment processes. It also will provide a novel approach for evaluating the overall uncertainty, or "meta-uncertainty," of assessment outcomes. More broadly, the framework developed by the project can potentially be transformative in terms of how climate change assessments are conducted, and it could help shape international environmental policy formulation to take into account the spatial interactions of worldwide activities. This project is supported by the NSF Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems (CNH) Program.