Final Project: Course: Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must be Avoided Course by: World Bank Group

1. Final Project
Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C
Warmer World Must be Avoided
Alireza Babaee
M.Sc. Civil Eng. For Risk Mitigation
Politecnico di Milano
May 2015
1
Course by:
World Bank Group

2. Aim of Project:
Create a sense of urgency and a call to action for individuals,
companies or countries to change behaviors associated with a warming
planet.
Target Audience:
Graduated University Students
2
By acting now, acting together and acting differently, we will be able to transition to
a low emissions, climate resilient development path and hold warming below 2°C.
Source: WDR 2010: Development and Climate Change

3. Introduction
3

4. Global disaster losses from 1980–2012
4

5. The role of natural hazards, exposure and vulnerability in disaster risk
5

6. Total loss and damage from
hydro-meteorological disasters,
by affected sector (1972–2013)
6

7. Source: MunichRe
7

8. Comparison of current Index of Risk Preparation with projected poverty risk by 2030
8

9. Comparison of current Index of Risk Preparation with projected poverty risk by 2030
9

10. Observed Climate
Changes Impacts
10

11. The Rise of CO2 Concentrations and Emissions
11

12. Rising Sea Levels
12

13. Increasing Loss of Ice
13

14. Ocean Acidification
14
Observed changes in ocean acidity (pH) compared to concentration of carbon dioxide dissolved in seawater
(p CO2) alongside the atmospheric CO2 record from 1956. A decrease in pH indicates an increase in acidity

15. Heat Waves and Extreme Temperatures
15
Excess deaths observed during the 2003 heat wave in France. O= observed; E= expected.

16. Drought and Aridity Trends
16
Drought conditions experienced on August 28 in the contiguous United States.

17. 21st Century
17
4°C warming is not inevitable and that warming can still be limited to 2°C or lower
with sustained policy action

18. How Likely is a 4°C World?
18
Median estimates (lines) from probabilistic temperature projections for two nonmitigation emission
scenarios (SRES A1FI and a reference scenario close to SRESA1B), both of which come close to, or
exceed by a substantial margin, 4°C warming by 2100

19. CO2 Concentration and Ocean Acidification
19
Projected impacts on coral reefs as a consequence of a rising atmospheric CO2 concentration
approximate levels of atmospheric CO2 concentration at which the reaction of CO2 with seawater
educes the availability of calcium carbonate to the point that coral reefs stop growing (450 ppm), or
even start to resolve (550 ppm)

20. Sea Level Changes
20
Present-day rates of regional sea-
level rise due to landice melt only

21. Increase in Heat Extremes
21
Multi-model mean of monthly warming over the 21st century (2080–2100 relative to present day) for
the months of JJA (left) and DJF (right) in units of degrees Celsius (top) and in units of local standard
deviation of temperature (bottom). The intensity of the color scale has been reduced over the oceans
for distinction.

22. Frequency of Significantly Warmer Months
22
Multimodal mean of the percentage of
months during 2080–2100 that are
warmer than 3- (top), 4- (middle) and
5-sigma (bottom) relative to the
present-day climatology, for the
months of JJA (left) and DJF (right).
The intensity of the color scale has
been reduced over the oceans for
distinction.

23. What we should do?
23

24. • All of these things in turn will affect political security. We already
fight over water resources. There's a long history of conflict over
water around the world. We fight over access to water. We fight
over shared water resources. We fight over water contamination.
We fight over water infrastructure, and climate change is going to
affect political tensions as well.
• human health is affected by not just climate change, but climate
change's impacts on water resources. Many water related
diseases are going to be worsened by increased flooding events,
by increased temperature that prevents vectors like mosquitoes
to breed more effectively, collar, dysentery, typhoid, malaria, are
also expected to be greater threats under a warming world, and
these water related diseases kill millions of people every year.
24

25. • water management itself is going to be a challenge, because
we have designed and built our infrastructure as though the
future climate is going to look like the past. And if there's
anything that science is telling us, it's that the future climate
is going to be different than the past, and that infrastructure
is going to have to be managed differently. It's possible that
new infrastructure is going to have to be built to different
standards, and water managers are just beginning to warp
their minds around how to manage water under a changing
climate rather than a static climate.
• Combined, all of these threats mean growing scarcity of
water, growing stress over water resources. But we need to
act. We already know enough to take action today.
25

26. • There's plenty of things that scientists can do to improve
our understanding about regional impacts, about changes in
rain fall patterns, but those uncertainties are not an excuse
for inaction today. We know enough to act, and the good
news is that there are things that we can do today.
• We can manage our water resources differently. We can
look for new sources of supply that are less vulnerable to
climate change. We can use our water far more productively
and efficiently than we do. We waste a lot of the water that
we use today, and if we improve water use productivity we
can reduce our demand for water, we can reduce pressure
on water ecosystems, we can reduce our vulnerability to
climate change. There are economic tools that will help us
manage water resources more effectively.
26

27. • Smart pricing for water and water markets are a good
tool to help manage water more effectively. There are
new technologies that help us use water more carefully.
There are things that we can do at an individual or a
homeowner level. We can buy more efficient
appliances like washing machines and dishwashers. We
can change our gardens to use less water. We can
change our industries to be more efficient. We can
grow more food with less water with irrigation
technologies that let us be more productive. All of
these things can help us reduce our vulnerability to
climate change and increase the effectiveness, and the
success, of our water management systems.
27

28. • as individuals, there are things that we can do to
learn more about these problems, to follow
organizations and institutions, to learn about the
science of climate change and about what we can
expect in coming years. We can work with our local
water managers. We can vote. We can support
policy makers that are thinking about climate
change and thinking about how to reduce our
vulnerabilities to climate change. We can reduce
our emissions of greenhouse gases that will reduce
pressure on the climate in the future.
28