Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

About: Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research is a facility organization based out in Potsdam, Germany. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Climate change & Global warming. The organization has 1519 authors who have published 5098 publications receiving 367023 citations.

Detecting and quantifying causal associations in large nonlinear time series datasets

Abstract: Identifying causal relationships and quantifying their strength from observational time series data are key problems in disciplines dealing with complex dynamical systems such as the Earth system or the human body. Data-driven causal inference in such systems is challenging since datasets are often high dimensional and nonlinear with limited sample sizes. Here, we introduce a novel method that flexibly combines linear or nonlinear conditional independence tests with a causal discovery algorithm to estimate causal networks from large-scale time series datasets. We validate the method on time series of well-understood physical mechanisms in the climate system and the human heart and using large-scale synthetic datasets mimicking the typical properties of real-world data. The experiments demonstrate that our method outperforms state-of-the-art techniques in detection power, which opens up entirely new possibilities to discover and quantify causal networks from time series across a range of research fields.

Modelling present and potential future ranges of some European higher plants using climate response surfaces : The ecologist and environmental history : a British perspective

Abstract: It is hypothesized that the principal features of higher plant distributions at continental scales are determined by the macroclimate. Bioclimate data have been computed on a 50 km grid across Europe. Along with published maps of higher plant distributions based upon the same grid, these data have been used to derive climate response surfaces that model the relationship between a species' distribution and the present climate. Eight species representative of a variety of phytogeographic patterns have been investigated. The results support the hypothesis that the European distributions of all eight species are principally determined by macroclimate and illustrate the nature of the climatic constraints upon each species. Simulated future distributions in equilibrium with 2 x CO 2 climate scenarios derived from two alternative GCMs show that all of the species are likely to experience major shifts in their potential range if such climatic changes take place. Some species may suffer substantial range and population reductions and others may face the threat of extinction. The rate of the forecast climate changes is such that few, if any, species may be able to maintain their ranges in equilibrium with the changing climate. In consequence, the transient impacts upon ecosystems will be varied but often may lead to a period of dominance by opportunist, early-successional species. Our simulations of potential ranges take no account of such factors as photoperiod or the direct effects of CO2, both of which may substantially alter the realized future equilibrium.

Consequences of twenty-first-century policy for multi-millennial climate and sea-level change

Abstract: Most of the policy debate surrounding the actions needed to mitigate and adapt to anthropogenic climate change has been framed by observations of the past 150 years as well as climate and sea-level projections for the twenty-first century. The focus on this 250-year window, however, obscures some of the most profound problems associated with climate change. Here, we argue that the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, a period during which the overwhelming majority of human-caused carbon emissions are likely to occur, need to be placed into a long-term context that includes the past 20 millennia, when the last Ice Age ended and human civilization developed, and the next ten millennia, over which time the projected impacts of anthropogenic climate change will grow and persist. This long-term perspective illustrates that policy decisions made in the next few years to decades will have profound impacts on global climate, ecosystems and human societies — not just for this century, but for the next ten millennia and beyond.

Fossil-fueled development (SSP5): An energy and resource intensive scenario for the 21st century

Abstract: This paper presents a set of energy and resource intensive scenarios based on the concept of Shared Socio-Economic Pathways (SSPs). The scenario family is characterized by rapid and fossil-fueled development with high socio-economic challenges to mitigation and low socio-economic challenges to adaptation (SSP5). A special focus is placed on the SSP5 marker scenario developed by the REMIND-MAgPIE integrated assessment modeling framework. The SSP5 baseline scenarios exhibit very high levels of fossil fuel use, up to a doubling of global food demand, and up to a tripling of energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions over the course of the century, marking the upper end of the scenario literature in several dimensions. These scenarios are currently the only SSP scenarios that result in a radiative forcing pathway as high as the highest Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP8.5). This paper further investigates the direct impact of mitigation policies on the SSP5 energy, land and emissions dynamics confirming high socio-economic challenges to mitigation in SSP5. Nonetheless, mitigation policies reaching climate forcing levels as low as in the lowest Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP2.6) are accessible in SSP5. The SSP5 scenarios presented in this paper aim to provide useful reference points for future climate change, climate impact, adaption and mitigation analysis, and broader questions of sustainable development.

Global wildland fire emissions from 1960 to 2000

Abstract: In many regions of the world, fires are an important and highly variable source of air pollutant emissions, and they thus constitute a significant if not dominant factor controlling the interannual variability of the atmospheric composition. This paper describes the 41-year inventory of vegetation fire emissions constructed for the Reanalysis of the Tropospheric chemical composition over the past 40 years project (RETRO), a global modeling study to investigate the trends and variability of tropospheric ozone and other air pollutants over the past decades. It is the first attempt to construct a global emissions data set with monthly time resolution over such a long period. The inventory is based on a literature review, on estimates from different satellite products, and on a numerical model with a semiphysical approach to simulate fire occurrence and fire spread. Burned areas, carbon consumption, and total carbon release are estimated for 13 continental-scale regions, including explicit treatment of some major burning events such as Indonesia in 1997 and 1998. Global carbon emissions from this inventory range from 1410 to 3140 Tg C/a with the minimum and maximum occurring in 1974 and 1992, respectively (mean of 2078 Tg C/a). Emissions of other species are also reported (mean CO of 330 Tg/a, NO x of 4.6 Tg N/a, CH 2 O of 3.9 Tg/a, CH 4 of 15.4 Tg/a, BC of 2.2 Tg/a, OC of 17.6 Tg/a, SO 2 of 2.2 Tg/a). The uncertainties of these estimates remain high even for later years where satellite data products are available. Future versions of this inventory may benefit from ongoing analysis of burned areas from satellite data going back to 1982.