Collaborative Research: Climate Forecasting, Adaptation Backcasting: Coupling Human Response to Climate Change in Malawi

该项目将解决政府间气候变化专门委员会最新报告确定的三个迫切研究需求：了解气候变异性与人类适应之间的关系；审查“在非洲范围内对包括发展活动和减少气候风险在内的多种相互作用因素的作用进行更详细的地方一级分析”；以及区域研究“侧重于适应的未来选择和途径”。研究的目标是更好地理解气候变化的适应作为一个耦合的人类/生物物理过程，认真对待对当地生计的定性理解和从前沿社会理论中了解到的适应。该项目的研究方法将包括开发南部非洲的区域气候模型。一旦这些气候模型得到测试和验证，研究小组将编制一个气象和经济数据数据库，以便PI可以将他们的气候情景与过去具有相似天气特征(干旱、洪水等)的年份相匹配。然后，这些建模工作的结果将提交给当地农业社区，以衡量他们在气候情景下可能发生的变化，以及他们以前适应气候和经济变化的方式。这些迭代的、混合的方法的结果将是对适应及其生物物理影响的理解，将提供大量精炼的数据，为区域和次区域的情景和建模工作提供信息，是未来适应和发展规划不可或缺的组成部分。该项目代表了一种研究复杂科学问题的新方法：气候变化对脆弱人口的影响。在许多人认为理解气候变化及其生物物理影响的量化努力和对生计变化和适应这些影响的定性研究无法相称的情况下，拟议的研究将通过可量化的适应措施，将关于生计和适应的社会理论知情的定性研究与模拟的生物物理过程联系起来，以便既注意当地的特殊性，又概括研究结果，以促进更广泛的科学理解和政策制定。至于更广泛的社会影响，调查人员预计该项目将有助于三个主要领域，即在三个国家加强国家适应行动计划，在合作的非洲大学提供短期课程，以及通过实地研究旅行期间的密切接触亲手培训美国和非洲的博士生。该项目由NSF地理与空间科学项目和NSF国际科学与工程办公室共同支持。

This project will address three acute research needs identified by the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report: understanding the relationship between climatic variability and human adaptation; examining the "more detailed local-level analyses of the role of multiple interacting factors, including development activities and climate risk-reduction in the African context"; and regional studies "focusing on future options and pathways for adaptation." The research objective is to better understand adaptation to climate change as a coupled human/biophysical process, taking seriously both qualitative understandings of local livelihoods and adaptation informed by cutting-edge social theory. This project's research methods will include the development of regional climate models for southern Africa. Once these climate models have been tested and verified, the research team will then compile a database of meteorological and economic data so that the PIs can match their climate scenarios with years in the past that have a similar weather profile (drought, floods, etc). The results from these modeling efforts will then be presented to local farming communities to gauge changes that they might undertake given the climate scenarios and the ways in which they have previously adapted to climatic and economic variability. The outcome of these iterative, mixed methods will be an understanding of adaptation and its biophysical impacts will provide greatly refined data to inform regional and sub-regional scenario and modeling efforts integral to future adaptation and development planning.This project represents a novel approach to studying a complex scientific problem: the impacts of climate change on vulnerable human populations. Where many see quantitative efforts to understand and model climate change and its biophysical impacts and qualitative studies of livelihoods change and adaptation to these impacts as incommensurable, the proposed research will link social-theoretically informed, qualitatively-based research on livelihoods and adaptation to modeled biophysical processes via quantifiable measures of adaptation allowing for both attention to local particularity and the generalization of research findings to inform broader scientific understandings and policy development. With respect to broader societal impacts, the investigators expect this project to contribute to three main areas, namely, the strengthening of National Adaptation Programme of Action in the three countries, the offering of short courses at the partnering African universities, and the hands on training of U.S. and African Ph.D. students through close contact during field research trips. This project is jointly supported by the NSF Geography and Spatial Sciences Program and the NSF Office of International Science and Engineering.