Glossary

Adaptation - Action to adjust natural or human systems in response to climate change, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities. Examples include building flood defences, protecting coastal mangroves and wetlands to provide natural defence against storm surges, developing drought-tolerant crops and designing houses to cope with higher temperatures (e.g. with natural ventilation, canopies for shade and light-coloured walls and roofs).

Agent-based models - Models simulating the behaviour of individual decision-makers, firms and institutions that can learn and interact with each other.

CCIAV - Climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability

CCIAV models - Models for assessing present and future climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability.

Climate impacts - Impacts expected as a result of future climate change, including higher temperatures, more extreme weather events (storms, floods, droughts and wildfires), sea-level rise and associated impacts on ecosystems, food production, the spread of disease and so on.

Mitigation - Action to reduce human impacts on the climate system, through cutting greenhouse gas emissions and enhancing greenhouse gas sinks. Examples include switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy technologies, cutting energy use and planting trees or protecting existing forests.

Non-linear effects - Impacts that do not change linearly with their driver. For example, temperature increases may have an adverse impact on marine animals, but the impact may increase more steeply for a 1 degree rise at higher temperatures than for a 1 degree rise at lower temperatures.

Socio-economic scenarios - Scenarios describing the behaviour of society in terms of factors such as population growth, economic growth, employment, technical innovation, income inequality and conflict.

Thresholds - A point or level at which sudden or rapid change occurs or new properties emerge in an ecological, economic or other system, invalidating predictions based on mathematical relationships that apply at lower levels. Examples include an increase in temperature or decrease in food availability to the point where a species can no longer survive in a certain location, forcing migration.

Tipping points - A tipping point is the point at which sudden, dramatic change occurs, with positive feedbacks that tip a system into a new state. Examples include the collapse of large ice sheets as temperatures increase, which would result in accelerated sea level rise and increased warming due to the loss of the albedo effect (reflectance of the sun from the white surface of the ice) 

Vulnerability - Vulnerability is the degree to which a system is susceptible to, and unable to cope with, adverse effects of climate change, including climate variability and extremes. Vulnerability is a function of the character, magnitude, and rate of climate change and variation to which a system is exposed, its sensitivity, and its adaptive capacity.