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近的报告确定的三个紧迫的研究需求：了解气候变化与人类适应之间的关系；审查“对多种相互作用因素的作用的更详细的地方一级分析，包括非洲环境下的发展活动和减少气候风险”；区域研究“侧重于未来的选择和适应途径”。研究的目的是更好地理解适应气候变化作为一个耦合的人类/生物物理过程，重视对当地生计和适应的定性理解，以前沿的社会理论为依据。这个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可以将其气候情景与过去具有类似天气概况（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的农业社区，以评估他们在给定气候情景和他们以前适应气候和经济变化的方式的情况下可能发生的变化。这些迭代的混合方法的结果将是对适应及其生物物理影响的理解，将提供非常精确的数据，为未来适应和发展规划不可或缺的区域和次区域情景和建模工作提供信息。这个项目代表了一种研究复杂科学问题的新方法：气候变化对脆弱人群的影响。在许多人认为理解和模拟气候变化及其生物物理影响的定量努力与生计变化和适应这些影响的定性研究不可比较的地方，拟议的研究将把社会理论知情的、通过可量化的适应措施，对生计和对模拟生物物理过程的适应进行定性研究，从而既关注地方特殊性，又将研究结果普遍化，从而为更广泛的科学理解和政策制定提供信息。在更广泛的社会影响方面，研究人员期望该项目在三个主要领域做出贡献，即，加强三个国家的国家适应行动计划，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对美国和非洲博士生进行实际培训。本项目由美国国家科学基金会地理与空间科学计划和美国国家科学基金会国际科学与工程办公室共同资助。

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.