Climatology

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Research conducted by: RAND Infrastructure, Safety, and Environment; Environment, Energy, and Economic Development Program; Improving Decisions in a Complex and Changing World

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Modeling Climate Change Threat Can Help Improve Policy Decisions

Climate change presents decisionmakers with a fundamental quandary: how to address a potentially serious, long-term, and uncertain threat. A joint project of RAND Infrastructure, Safety, and Environment and the RAND Pardee Center seeks to address this problem through basic research and computer modeling.

All Items (19)

COMMENTARY

Evidence for Climate Change Is Overwhelming — Mar 8, 2012

In case after case, the theory that best fits the data is the one that also leads inexorably to the conclusion that human influence is one of the most important forces currently changing the climate, writes Robert J. Lempert.

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Some Thoughts on the Role of Robust Control Theory in Climate-Related Decision Support: An Editorial Comment — Jul 31, 2011

Any successful response to climate change--both the challenges of limiting the magnitude of future climate change and adapting to its impacts--will clearly involve policies that evolve over time in response to new information and that are robust over a wide range of difficult-to-predict future conditions.

COMMENTARY

Climate Scientists Should Wear Adam Smith Ties — Mar 30, 2011

If it were really possible to explain millions of years of Earth data with a theory that doesn't also imply a recent human influence on the climate, some ambitious, self-interested team of scientists somewhere in the world would seek scientific renown by doing so, writes Robert Lempert.

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Managing Climate Risks in Developing Countries with Robust Decision Making — Jan 1, 2011

The authors present the concept of robust decision making (RDM), which draws on already-existing knowledge of practitioners to choose actions that are viable in both the short- and long-term.

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Methods for Long-Term Environmental Policy Challenges — Jul 31, 2009

This article provides a concise overview of methods for analyzing policy choices that have been used in the study of long-term environmental challenges.

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Planning for Climate Change in the Inland Empire: Southern California — Dec 31, 2007

Water managers in Southern California, who grapple with how to address climate change in their near-term and long-term plans, are beginning to seek methods for incorporating such changes in their planning processes.

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Managing the Risk of Uncertain Threshold Responses: Comparison of Robust, Optimum, and Precautionary Approaches — Dec 31, 2006

This study uses a simple computer simulation model to compare several alternative frameworks for decision making under uncertainty—optimal expected utility, the precautionary principle, and three different approaches to robust decision making—for addressing the challenge of adding pollution to a lake without triggering unwanted and potentially irreversible eutrophication.

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Multiple Equilibria in a Stochastic Implementation of DICE with Abrupt Climate Change — Oct 31, 2006

Integrated assessment modeling of global climate change has focused primarily on gradually occurring changes in the climate system. However, atmospheric and earth scientists have become increasingly concerned that the climate system may be subject to abrupt, discontinuous changes on short time scales, and that anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions could trigger such shifts.

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Assessment of Environmental Kuznets Curves and Socioeconomic Drivers in IPCC's SRES Scenarios — Mar 1, 2005

This study performs a standard econometric analysis on the simulation model outputs from six scenarios from the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) to assess the extent to which the projected CO 2 and NO x emissions reflect Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) behavior.

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Characterizing Climate-Change Uncertainties for Decision-Makers — Jan 1, 2004

Climate-change policy-making confronts a wide range of significant scientific and socioeconomic uncertainties. How experts should best characterize such uncertainties for decision-makers has emerged as an important debate within the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

JOURNAL ARTICLE

A New Decision Sciences for Complex Systems — Dec 31, 2001

This article describes Computer-Assisted Reasoning, an approach to decision-making under conditions of deep uncertainty that is ideally suited to applying complex systems to policy analysis.

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Adaptive Strategies for Climate Change — Dec 31, 2001

In this chapter the authors argue for a different approach to climate-change policy and thus a different use for forecasts. They argue that climate change presents a problem of decision-making under conditions of deep uncertainty. In the face of this uncertainty, robust strategies are ones that will work reasonably well no matter what the future holds.

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Climate-change Strategy Needs to Be Robust — Dec 31, 2000

Decision-makers need to develop a climate policy acceptable to groups with many different estimates of the likelihood of alternative futures, and may tend to rely on strategies that work reasonably well instead of alternatives across a wide range of plausible scenarios. The authors agreed with a recommendation for use of ensembles of multiple scenarios to capture what is known about the long-term climate future.

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Carrots and Sticks for New Technology: Abating Greenhouse Gas Emissions in a Heterogeneous and Uncertain World — Dec 31, 1999

The authors find that a combined strategy of carbon taxes and technology incentives, as opposed to carbon taxes alone, is the best approach to greenhouse gas emissions reductions if the social benefits of early adoption sufficiently exceed the private benefits.

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Reply to Some Comments By Malville Concerning the Midnight Auroral Maximum — Dec 31, 1960

The authors reply to comments made by J. M. Malville on the movement of geomagneticall trapped radiation toward lower latitudes on the night side of the earth in relation to observed dumping of auroral particles near magnetic midnight.

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Daytime and Nighttime Atmospheric Properties Derived from Rocket and Satellite Observations — Dec 31, 1960

Upper air densities obtained by means of rockets and satellites in the region from 100 to about 800 km are presented.

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Solar-stream Distortion of the Geomagnetic Field and Polar Electrojets — Dec 31, 1960

Solar stream distortion of the geomagnetic field, polar auroras, electrojets.

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Report of the Standing Committee on Problems of the Upper Atmosphere, 1951-1952 — Dec 31, 1952

The year 1951-1952 has been a significant one in the history of upper-atmosphere research, not because of any single revelation but because a large number of important research projects started shortly after the end of World War II are reaching fruition and being reported. This report serves as a brief and very general review of the activity in this broad field.

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Doppler Radar — Dec 31, 1948

This paper contains a discussion of the principle of operation of cw Doppler search radar systems and an analysis of their performance capabilities

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