Institution
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
Facility•Potsdam, Germany•
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.
Papers published on a yearly basis
Papers
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TL;DR: The authors constructed cities from the bottom up by clustering populated areas obtained from high-resolution data and found that Zipf's law for population holds for cities as small as 5,000 inhabitants in Great Britain and 12, 000 inhabitants in the US.
Abstract: The distribution of city populations has attracted much attention, in part because it constrains models of local growth. However, there is no consensus on the distribution below the very upper tail, because available data need to rely on "legal" rather than "economic" definitions for medium and small cities. To remedy this difficulty, we construct cities "from the bottom up" by clustering populated areas obtained from high-resolution data. We find that Zipf's law for population holds for cities as small as 5,000 inhabitants in Great Britain and 12,000 inhabitants in the US. We also find a Zipf's law for areas. JEL: R11, R12, R23
319 citations
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show that the multi-model mean of the CMIP5 (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project) climate models accurately reproduces the evolution over time and spatial patterns of the historically observed increase in monthly heat extremes.
Abstract: Climatic warming of about 0.5 C in the global mean since the 1970s has strongly increased the occurrence-probability of heat extremes on monthly to seasonal time scales. For the 21st century, climate models predict more substantial warming. Here we show that the multi-model mean of the CMIP5 (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project) climate models accurately reproduces the evolution over time and spatial patterns of the historically observed increase in monthly heat extremes. For the near-term (i.e., by 2040), the models predict a robust, several-fold increase in the frequency of such heat extremes, irrespective of the emission scenario. However, mitigation can strongly reduce the number of heat extremes by the second half of the 21st century. Unmitigated climate change causes most (>50%) continental regions to move to a new climatic regime with the coldest summer months by the end of the century substantially hotter than the hottest experienced today. We show that the land fraction experiencing extreme heat as a function of global mean temperature follows a simple cumulative distribution function, which depends only on natural variability and the level of spatial heterogeneity in the warming.
317 citations
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International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis1, Environmental Change Institute2, BirdLife International3, University of Cambridge4, Indian Institutes of Technology5, ETH Zurich6, Natural History Museum7, Bioversity International8, Sapienza University of Rome9, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation10, Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency11, Zoological Society of London12, World Conservation Monitoring Centre13, National Institute for Environmental Studies14, Ritsumeikan University15, Radboud University Nijmegen16, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research17, University College London18, Imperial College London19, Wageningen University and Research Centre20, Agricultural & Applied Economics Association21, Stockholm Resilience Centre22, Kyoto University23, Humboldt University of Berlin24, Leipzig University25, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro26, International Institute of Minnesota27, Utrecht University28, University of Queensland29, Wildlife Conservation Society30
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used an ensemble of land-use and biodiversity models to assess whether and how humans can reverse the declines in terrestrial biodiversity caused by habitat conversion, which is a major threat to biodiversity.
Abstract: Increased efforts are required to prevent further losses to terrestrial biodiversity and the ecosystem services that it provides1,2. Ambitious targets have been proposed, such as reversing the declining trends in biodiversity3; however, just feeding the growing human population will make this a challenge4. Here we use an ensemble of land-use and biodiversity models to assess whether—and how—humanity can reverse the declines in terrestrial biodiversity caused by habitat conversion, which is a major threat to biodiversity5. We show that immediate efforts, consistent with the broader sustainability agenda but of unprecedented ambition and coordination, could enable the provision of food for the growing human population while reversing the global terrestrial biodiversity trends caused by habitat conversion. If we decide to increase the extent of land under conservation management, restore degraded land and generalize landscape-level conservation planning, biodiversity trends from habitat conversion could become positive by the mid-twenty-first century on average across models (confidence interval, 2042–2061), but this was not the case for all models. Food prices could increase and, on average across models, almost half (confidence interval, 34–50%) of the future biodiversity losses could not be avoided. However, additionally tackling the drivers of land-use change could avoid conflict with affordable food provision and reduces the environmental effects of the food-provision system. Through further sustainable intensification and trade, reduced food waste and more plant-based human diets, more than two thirds of future biodiversity losses are avoided and the biodiversity trends from habitat conversion are reversed by 2050 for almost all of the models. Although limiting further loss will remain challenging in several biodiversity-rich regions, and other threats—such as climate change—must be addressed to truly reverse the declines in biodiversity, our results show that ambitious conservation efforts and food system transformation are central to an effective post-2020 biodiversity strategy. To promote the recovery of the currently declining global trends in terrestrial biodiversity, increases in both the extent of land under conservation management and the sustainability of the global food system from farm to fork are required.
316 citations
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University of Maryland, College Park1, University of New Hampshire2, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research3, Joint Global Change Research Institute4, Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency5, Durham University6, National Institute for Environmental Studies7, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis8, University of Bern9, Max Planck Society10, University of Hong Kong11, National Center for Atmospheric Research12, University of Copenhagen13, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich14, Goddard Space Flight Center15, Princeton University16, Oak Ridge National Laboratory17, Food and Agriculture Organization18, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science19
TL;DR: The Land-Use Harmonization 2 (LUH2) project is presented, which smoothly connects updated historical reconstructions of land use with eight new future projections in the format required for ESMs to enable new and improved estimates of the combined effects of landUse on the global carbon–climate system.
Abstract: . Human land-use activities have resulted in large changes to the biogeochemical and biophysical properties of the Earth surface, with consequences for climate and other ecosystem services. In the future, land-use activities are likely to expand and/or intensify further to meet growing demands for food, fiber, and energy. As part of the World Climate Research Program Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6), the international community is developing the next generation of advanced Earth System Models (ESMs) to estimate the combined effects of human activities (e.g. land use and fossil fuel emissions) on the carbon-climate system. A new set of historical data based on the History of the Global Environment database (HYDE), and multiple alternative scenarios of the future (2015–2100) from Integrated Assessment Model (IAM) teams, are required as input for these models. Here we present results from the Land-use Harmonization 2 (LUH2) project, with the goal to smoothly connect updated historical reconstructions of land-use with new future projections in the format required for ESMs. The harmonization strategy estimates the fractional land-use patterns, underlying land-use transitions, key agricultural management information, and resulting secondary lands annually, while minimizing the differences between the end of the historical reconstruction and IAM initial conditions and preserving changes depicted by the IAMs in the future. The new approach builds off a similar effort from CMIP5, and is now provided at higher resolution (0.25 × 0.25 degree), over a longer time domain (850–2100, with extensions to 2300), with more detail (including multiple crop and pasture types and associated management practices), using more input datasets (including Landsat remote sensing data), updated algorithms (wood harvest and shifting cultivation), and is assessed via a new diagnostic package. The new LUH2 products contain > 50 times the information content of the datasets used in CMIP5, and are designed to enable new and improved estimates of the combined effects of land-use on the global carbon-climate system.
316 citations
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TL;DR: This paper analyzed the impacts of climate extremes on yield anomalies of maize, soybeans, rice and spring wheat at the global scale using sub-national yield data and applying a machine-learning algorithm.
Abstract: Climate extremes, such as droughts or heat waves, can lead to harvest failures and threaten the livelihoods of agricultural producers and the food security of communities worldwide. Improving our understanding of their impacts on crop yields is crucial to enhance the resilience of the global food system. This study analyses, to our knowledge for the first time, the impacts of climate extremes on yield anomalies of maize, soybeans, rice and spring wheat at the global scale using sub-national yield data and applying a machine-learning algorithm. We find that growing season climate factors - including mean climate as well as climate extremes - explain 20%-49% of the variance of yield anomalies (the range describes the differences between crop types), with 18%-43% of the explained variance attributable to climate extremes, depending on crop type. Temperature-related extremes show a stronger association with yield anomalies than precipitation-related factors, while irrigation partly mitigates negative effects of high temperature extremes. We developed a composite indicator to identify hotspot regions that are critical for global production and particularly susceptible to the effects of climate extremes. These regions include North America for maize, spring wheat and soy production, Asia in the case of maize and rice production as well as Europe for spring wheat production. Our study highlights the importance of considering climate extremes for agricultural predictions and adaptation planning and provides an overview of critical regions that are most susceptible to variations in growing season climate and climate extremes.
315 citations
Authors
Showing all 1589 results
Name | H-index | Papers | Citations |
---|---|---|---|
Carl Folke | 133 | 360 | 125990 |
Adam Drewnowski | 106 | 486 | 41107 |
Jürgen Kurths | 105 | 1038 | 62179 |
Markus Reichstein | 103 | 386 | 53385 |
Stephen Polasky | 99 | 354 | 59148 |
Sandy P. Harrison | 96 | 329 | 34004 |
Owen B. Toon | 94 | 424 | 32237 |
Stephen Sitch | 94 | 262 | 52236 |
Yong Xu | 88 | 1391 | 39268 |
Dieter Neher | 85 | 424 | 26225 |
Johan Rockström | 85 | 236 | 57842 |
Jonathan A. Foley | 85 | 144 | 70710 |
Robert J. Scholes | 84 | 253 | 37019 |
Christoph Müller | 82 | 457 | 27274 |
Robert J. Nicholls | 79 | 515 | 35729 |