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Geographic Distribution of Climate Change Vulnerability
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Geographic Distribution of Climate Change Vulnerability

Introduction | Report and Reference | Maps| Citation | Disclaimer

 

Introduction

It is important to understand the nature of the risks from climate change, where natural and human systems are likely to be most vulnerable, and what may be achieved by adaptive responses. Recently, a group of scientists and researchers from Wesleyan University, the University of Illinois, the Joint Global Change Research Institute (JGCRI) of University of Maryland and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) of the U.S. Department of Energy, and Columbia University conducted a synthetic assessment of the global distribution of vulnerability to climate change.

The assessment and mapping effort was based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Assessment Report (TAR) and the IPCC scenarios from the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES). The assessment used the Vulnerability-Resilience Indicator Model (VRIM) of PNNL-JGCRI, the Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI) jointly created by the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy (YCELP) and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) at Columbia University, and the Country Specific Model for Intertemporal Climate (COSMIC) from the Climate Research Group of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The report on the synthetic assessment of the global distribution of vulnerability to climate change, with a complete set of maps and data, has been made available on this site in order to provide open access and feedback by the scientific community.

 

Report and Reference

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View and download the complete report in PDF (12.6 MB).

A summary version of the report was published as an article in The Integrated Assessment Journal (download article in PDF (4.2 MB)). The article citation is:

Yohe, G., E. Malone, A. Brenkert, M. Schlesinger, H. Meij, X. Xing.  2006. “Global Distributions of Vulnerability to Climate Change.”  The Integrated Assessment Journal 6 (3):35–44.

 

Global Maps

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View and download the complete set of maps in PDF (144 maps, 1.1 MB each)

 

Citation

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Yohe, G., E. Malone, A. Brenkert, M. Schlesinger, H. Meij, X. Xing, and D. Lee. 2006. “A Synthetic Assessment of the Global Distribution of Vulnerability to Climate Change from the IPCC Perspective that Reflects Exposure and Adaptive Capacity.” Palisades, New York: CIESIN (Center for International Earth Science Information Network), Columbia University. http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/mva/ccv/ [access date].

 

Disclaimers

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All the mapping is at a national or country level. Most subnational boundaries are removed for clarity. The mapping terms “country,” “nation,” or “national” do not imply any judgment on the legal status of any territory, or any endorsement or acceptance of disputed boundaries, on the part of CIESIN, the Trustees of Columbia University, or the data providers. The views expressed in the paper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of CIESIN, the Earth Institute, Columbia University, or NASA.

 

CIESIN - Center for International Earth Science Information Network
NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration SEDAC - Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center

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