School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences

Events held by CCRI

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Upcoming Events

Symposium on climate change research at Victoria University of Wellington, 24 April 2013  (internal event)

The Climate Change Research Institute has invited staff from Victoria University of Wellington (VUW) to an internal symposium on climate change research at VUW. The symposium will take place on Wednesday 24 April 2013 and is being organised in preparation for the New Zealand Climate Change Conference in Palmerston North on 4-5 June 2013, which will focus on:

  • The Physical Science
  • Impacts, Vulnerability and Adaptation
  • Mitigation, and
  • Integration and Cross-cutting issues

The aim of the internal VUW symposium is to meet and network with colleagues working in climate change research across all schools and disciplines, providing researchers with a better understanding of capacity at VUW in this area prior to the June conference.

For further questions, please contact Yvonne Davidis at yvonne.davidis@vuw.ac.nz

 

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Previous Events

Climate science and future climate governance

Professor Pat Walsh, Vice-Chancellor of Victoria University of Wellington, invites you to the Inaugural Professorial Lecture to be given by David Frame, Professor of Climate Change.

When: 6pm, Tuesday 12 March
Where: Hunter Council Chamber, Level 2, Hunter Building, Gate 1 or 2, Kelburn Parade, Wellington

The international governance of climate change is about to enter a new era. The design of a post-2020 climate agreement will need to avoid the chronic weaknesses that undermined the Kyoto Protocol, but will also have to grapple with the emergence of inevitable tensions between different parts of the developing world.

To create an effective regime, considerable innovation will be required. Professor Frame’s inaugural lecture will discuss and evaluate some recent suggestions and international initiatives aimed at limiting climate change.

SCIE 401: Climate Science and Decision Making

21 January-17 February 2013

What are we doing about climate change?
Join the experts this summer and explore climate science, economic responses, and international policy negotiations going on now in response to the world’s changing climate.
This intense summer course is taught by experts in physics, economics and public policy: Professor Dave Frame, Director of New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute; Dr Suzi Kerr, Motu Economic and Public Policy
Research; and Dr Adrian Macey, former chair of Kyoto Protocol negotiations.
Read more

Seminar: 17th December 2012

Speaker: Professor Denise L. Mauzerall, Professor of Environmental Engineering and International Affairs Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton University

Title: A post-Kyoto partner: Considering the stratospheric ozone regime as a tool to manage nitrous oxide

Nitrous oxide (N2O) is the largest known remaining anthropogenic threat to the stratospheric ozone layer. However, it is currently only regulated under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol due to its simultaneous ability to warm the climate. The threat N2O poses to the stratospheric ozone layer, coupled with the uncertain future of the international climate regime, motivates our exploration of issues that could be relevant to the Parties to the ozone regime (the 1985 Vienna Convention and its 1987 Montreal Protocol) should they decide to take measures to manage N2O in the future. There are clear legal avenues for the ozone regime to regulate N2O, as well as several ways to share authority with the existing and future international climate treaties. N2O mitigation strategies exist to address its most significant anthropogenic sources, including agriculture, where behavioural practices and new technologies could contribute significantly to reducing emissions. Existing policies managing N2O and other forms of reactive nitrogen could be harnessed and built upon by the ozone regime’s existing bodies to implement N2O controls. The possible inclusion of N2O in the ozone regime need not be viewed as a sign of the UNFCCC’s failure to adequately deal with climate change. Rather, it could represent an additional valuable tool in sustainable development diplomacy.

Resources:

Seminar Flyer (PDF, 224 KB)

Seminar: 20th September 2012

Speaker: Prof. Jean Palutikof,  Director of the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility at Griffith University

Title: Flood, famine and dangerous weather: What can the past tell us about adapting to future climate change?

NCCARF was set up by the Australian government to provide decision makers with the knowledge they need to successfully adapt to climate change. We have found that people have difficulty identifying with the threat of climate change: it is far in the future, and shrouded in uncertainty. However, and perhaps especially in Australia, people have no difficulty in identifying with weather extremes and their effects: cyclone damage, drought and flood, bushfire.

For many of us, our experience of climate change will come mainly through changes in the frequency and severity of extremes. We can confidently expect there to be more severe heatwaves and bushfires, and we have some certainty that drought and flood will become more common also. If we - as a nation, a community and as individuals - are resilient to the effects of extremes - if we know how to protect ourselves and how to respond - then we’ve a much better chance of being resilient to climate change.

We have looked at notable weather extremes in Australia and globally to understand what builds resilience to extremes: what makes people well prepared, what works and what doesn’t during the event, and what can be done afterwards to prepare for next time. We have looked at events as widely separated in time and distance as Cyclone Tracy in Darwin, and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

This talk presents results from these studies addressing two questions. What lessons can we learn about adapting to climate change by studying responses and adaptation to weather extremes? How can studying weather extremes help us to understand better the challenge of climate change?

Resources:

Seminar Flyer (PDF, 232 KB)

Seminar slides (PDF, 2.2 MB)

Recording

Seminar: 6th September 2012

Speaker: Dr. Sven Rannow, Leibniz Institute of Ecological and Regional Development, Germany

Title: From impact assessment to desicion making - Experiences from the adaptation to climate change in Germany

Even though climate change is a global concern its effects are felt and dealt with at the regional and local level. Understanding the impacts of climate change on land uses, landscapes and ecosystems is an essential basis for the development and application of adaptation strategies. Yet, even though a growing number of detailed assessments of climate change impacts are available, their results are rarely taken into account in relevant decision making processes. Examples from adaptation process in German spatial and urban planning are used to demonstrate different approaches to integrate scientific knowledge in planning processes. They show that sometimes there is a mismatch between the way knowledge is produced by climate science and the need for information for decision makers. Experience from adaptation processes in Germany on different spatial levels provide first signs for a shift from analysing impacts to effective guidance of decision making. Relevance, legitimacy and transparency are considered key aspects for the acceptance and implementation of scientific results in public decision making. A special problem lies within the reflection of user needs and applicability of results for decision making. Providing methods for the co-production of knowledge, communication of scientific results and applied risk management are future challenges that require urgent solutions for climate adaptation to be successful. There is the necessity for more science-practice partnerships to identify strategies that are robust to uncertainty deriving from climate projections and to find applicable tools that provide no-regret options for adaptation based on available scientific information.

Resources:

Seminar Flyer (PDF, 254 KB)

Presentation slides (PDF, 5.9 MB)

Seminar: 30th August 2012

Speaker: Prof Dave Frame, the Director of the Climate Change Research Institute at Victoria University of Wellington

Title: Greenhouse gas metrics: a guide for the perplexed

Because of our unusual portfolio of greenhouse gas emissions, choices about how to compare the effects of different gases matter more to New Zealand than to our trading partners. Comparisons between, for instance, methane and carbon dioxide can be made in a number of equally plausible ways, scientifically, but each of these methods contain different value judgements and distributional implications.  This talk is a plain language guide to the basic science and policy aspects of the metrics issue.

Resources:

Seminar Flyer (PDF, 263 KB)

Presentation slides (PDF, 1MB)

Recording

 

Seminar: 26th July 2012

Speaker: Mark Cooper, Visiting Researcher, Climate Change Research Institute

Title: Knowledge Matters: The tangle of science, politics, and policy for climate change

Identifying options for managing climatic change and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions relies upon knowledge generated across a broad range of scientific disciplines and approaches. Using examples from both the social and natural sciences, this talk will examine some of the the many ways in which knowledge and uncertainty frame potential action on climate change. By exploring how particular policy approaches and political aims in turn frame the production of knowledge, insight into the persistent challenges of emissions abatement strategy can be gathered.

Resources:

Seminar: 28th June 2012

Speaker: Dr. Jim Renwick, Associate Professor, School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington

Title: Progress in climate science since the 2007 IPCC Assessment Report

This talk will summarise our current understanding of how and why the climate is changing. It will also provide an overview of some of the recent research likely to form the basis for the next Assessment Report. The focus will be on observed and projected changes to elements of the climate system, the role of large-scale patterns of variability (e.g. the monsoons, El Niño/Southern Oscillation, Southern Annular Mode) and implications for New Zealand.

Resources:

Seminar: 24th May 2012

Speaker: Laurel Evans, Visiting Scholar at Victoria Universlty Department of Psychology

Title: The time-scale and magnitude of sea level rise: influences of framing on perceptions of risk

Psychological research on risk perception shows that people are sensitive to framing and may react differently to different framings of identical information. Dr Evans, Visiting Scholar at the Department of Psychology, asked Wellington and Kapiti Coast residents about the potential for sea-level rise in Wellington city, showing them images of possibilities. She will discuss whether these different framings affected people's responses to the information, in particular their overall level of concern about sea-level rise and climate change, their support for government initiatives to adapt to and to mitigate climate change, and their personal intentions to change behaviour.

Resources:

Seminar: 11th April 2012

Title: Leviathan in the greenhouse: can we solve climate change without extending the state?

Speaker: Myles Allen, head of the Climate Dynamics group at the University of Oxford's Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics Department

Resources:

Seminar: 26th March 2012

Title: Unilateral Climate Policy in Europe - competitiveness concerns and policy options

Speaker: Andreas Loschel, University of Hidelberg

Seminar co-hosted with the Institute of Policy Studies more information

IPCC Working Group 3 meeting: 19th - 23rd March 2012

Victoria University’s Climate Change Research Institute (NZCCRI) coordinated a recent meeting of authors working on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report, due out in 2014.

Over two hundred people from fifty different countries or territories converged on Wellington for five days of intense work on their contribution to the report. The authors were welcomed at the opening session by Dr Paul Reynolds, CEO of the Ministry for the Environment, and Professor Dave Frame, Director of NZCCRI. The Mayor of Wellington, Celia Wade-Brown, spoke to delegates at an informal welcome event hosted by the Faculty of Science. 

The purpose of the closed meeting was to allow the authors to make significant progress on their Assessment with their colleagues from around the world. However, some of the authors were able to share their expertise through events set up by NZCCRI and others such as Motu. Those who benefitted included parliamentarians, government officials from Treasury, Foreign Affairs and Trade, Economic Development, NZTA, Ministry for the Environment, the Earthquake Commission, Victoria University staff and the public.

Co-chair of the working group, Professor Dr. Ottmar Edenhofer, deemed the meeting a great success, saying “The discussions in New Zealand were lively and productive. I do not only ascribe this to the great expertise and commitment of our author teams, but also to the most qualified local organization as well as the excellent facilities provided by our hosts."

Seminar: 15th March 2012

Title: Climate change and development - helpfully distant neighbours? 

Speaker: Professor Dave Frame

Inaugural talk in the Geography, Environment and Development Seminar Series

Resources:

Seminar: 23rd February 2012

Title: Development of Earth System Models and Application to Climate Change

Speaker: Ron Prinn, Director, Center for Global Change Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Resources:

Seminar: 17th February 2012

Title: Climate change: the Durban deal - views from inside the negotiations

Speaker: Adrian Macey

Resources: 

Seminar co-hosted with the Institute of Policy Studies 

Seminar: Wednesday 15th February 2012

Title: Reasoning about Catastrophic Climate Risks

Speaker: Antony Millner, Ciriacy-Wantrup postdoctoral research fellow at the University of California, Berkeley

Resources: 

Seminar: Tuesday 14th February 2012

Title: Ambiguity and Climate Policy

Speaker: Antony Millner, Ciriacy-Wantrup postdoctoral research fellow at the University of California, Berkeley

Resources:

Previous Years' Events