Adaptation Discussion Details

Three of the most important climate change extreme weather tips that are seldom heard: In winter in the south, even in Texas, carry a blanket. Polar vortex excursions are real. In a heat wave, always carry extra water in case of a breakdown where one is forced to walk around outside in the broiler. Then, take a tip from athletes and put most of that water on you instead of in you. Surface evaporation from your head and shirt is far more efficient at cooling that sweating. The other is to cover your head. If you find yourself outside in the heat bomb without a head covering, pick up a piece of trash from the ditch and put it on your head. Your head is the first and most important part of cooling in life threatening heat holocaust conditions. A simply ooky piece of trash could save your life… The purpose of this page however, is to discuss why climate restoration is compulsory, because without it much, of our adaptation efforts will fail.

Sea Level Rise

Already discussed in the summary was the huge difference in sea level rise projections with and without dynamical ice sheet responses that have already been activated. Important details need to be added to this discussion. Average global sea level rise , like most averages, never kills anyone. According to NOAA, By 2070, the one-percent mean sea level (100-year event) is projected to be 7.8 feet higher than today. By 2100, NOAA projects our ocean could be as much as 13.1 feet higher in the 100-year event. This is for Key West and not radically dissimilar for much of the rest of the U.S. From NOAA 2017, “The Low scenario has a 94% to 100% chance of being exceeded under RCP2.6 and RCP8.5, respectively.” (6) What NOAA 2017 goes on to say is relative to the relative sea level amount of rise. Our shorelines have a distinct feature that is called a beach ramp or terrace. This area is a relatively steeply sloping beach or shoreline that connects the ocean to the land. Much of the U.S. shoreline has a very low slope above the beach ramp. This means that as sea level rises, the effects of an abnormally high tide with a King Tide or storm, creates a much greater impact. Example: A five foot beach ramp contains a five foot tide without spillover onto the mainland except from wave action which is that amount of water a wave pushes above the level of the tide. The inland movement of the edge of water in this scenario is limited to the width of the beach (again, not considering wave runup). With three feet of sea level rise, the same five foot tide floods inland for two vertical feet. With the very low slope of much of the U.S. coastal plains of about 5 vertical feet per mile, (7) two feet of tide above the beach ramp extends inland nearly a half mile, not counting wave action. An 8 and 13 foot tide with three feet of sea level rise extends inland over a mile and a half and over two and half miles respectively, without wave action.

NOAA’s 2019 sea level rise report tells us that damaging non-storm (sunny day) high tide frequency is currently accelerating, up to 1000%  from the year 2000. This is from sea level rise not subsidence or changes in storminess. “For perspective, it was not until 1979 (more than 50 years of observations) that Charleston, S.C. experienced 13 total days of HTF [high tide flooding]; in 2019, 13 days of HTF occurred.”  Sunny day flooding was 100 to 150% more common in 2019 than in 2000 along the northeast Atlantic Coast , increasing to 300% along the Southeast Atlantic and 500% in Charleston, South Carolina. The Western Gulf saw the highest increase from Louisiana to Brownsville Texas with 500% and peaking at 1000%. Normal sunny day high tide flooding in 2000, which was already being influenced by sea level rise, were 1 to 3 days of sunny day flooding per year. Normal for much of the 20th century was near zero. (8)

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) sponsored a report in 2017 based on NOAA 2017, When Rising Seas Hit Home. this report was largely about chronic inundation rom sunny day high tides and states, “There comes a threshold of sea level rise-induced flooding that makes normal routines impossible and drives hard choices.” … “UCS defines flooding that occurs 25 times per year (on average, once every other week) or more as ‘chronic inundation’  [or] any coastal community that experiences this frequency of flooding over 10 percent or more of its land area, excluding wetlands and areas protected by federal levees.” (9)

Another report by the UCS in 2018 based on NOAA 2017, Underwater: Rising Seas, Chronic Floods, and the Implications for US Coastal Real Estate tells us, “More than 300,000 of today’s coastal homes, with a collective market value of about $117.5 billion today, are at risk of chronic inundation in 2045… By the end of the century, [or with 6.6 feet of sea level rise] … this includes as many as 2.4 million homes—the rough equivalent of all the homes in Los Angeles and Houston combined.” (10)

The fourth National Climate Assessment tells us, “There is medium confidence that many coastal communities will be transformed by 2100 under any scenario and that many individuals will be financially devastated under lower emission scenarios (RCP4.5 or RCP2.6). Considering current exposure of assets and the latest SLR science, large economic losses in coastal regions that will generate cascading impacts to the overall economy of the United States are considered to be likely.” Altogether in the U.S., 13.1 million people in the US will need to migrate with 6 feet of sea level rise. (11)

With median sea level rise of 0.86 meters and 95th percentile of 1.8m in 2100, global annual flood costs without additional adaptation are projected to be US$ 14.3 trillion per year (2.5% of GDP) for the median scenario and up to US$ 27.0 trillion per year for the 95th percentile, accounting for 4.7% of global GDP. (12)

Increasing Rainfall Intensity

Rainfall rates are increasing dramatically on a warmer planet, not only because a 1 degree C warming allows air to hold 7 percent more water, but because of dynamic effects that further increase the ability of rainfall to increase in intensity. In 2018, the National Weather Service released Atlas 14 Precipitation Frequency Atlas for Texas, based on rain gauge date that extended the previous frequency evaluation done in 1970. During this time, rainfall intensity for extreme storms increased by four times. In other words, warming has caused the old 100-year storm to become as frequent as the new 25-year storm. Atlas 14 for Texas has numerous caveats however.  Since data stopped being logged in 2017, our climate’s average temperature has increased 0.4 degree C, or a third of all warming prior to 2017. Atlas 14 for Texas also considers their data to be stationary, where of course their data are not stationary as rainfall intensity increases with warming and warming is increasing. This is a fundamental challenge in much of climate science because of the commonness of frequentist statistics that requires the data be stationary. Work on nonstationarity in rainfall frequency in Nature, out of the University of California Irvine, shows that assuming data are stationary can result in a 60 percent understatement of  statistical results. (13)

The Myth of Endless Adaptation

The first key point of this report by Future Earth, a globally significant coalition of major climate players, is “Questioning the myth of endless adaptation.” The report reveals,  “The potential to adapt to climate change is not limitless: people and ecosystems in different places across the world are already confronted with limits to adaptation, and if the planet warms beyond 1.5°C or even 2°C, more widespread breaching of adaptation limits is expected. Hence, adaptation efforts cannot substitute for ambitious mitigation… Existing adaptation efforts are falling short of adequately reducing risks from past, current and future climate change, leaving the most vulnerable particularly exposed to climate impacts… Adaptation cannot substitute for ambitious mitigation efforts. Even effective adaptation will not avoid all losses and damages, and new limits to adaptation can emerge in the shape of conflicts, pandemics and pre-existing development challenges. Deep and swift mitigation is critical to avoid widespread breaching of adaptation limits.” (14)

The Speed of Climate Change and Cascading Impacts Limit Adaptation 

Work out of the Kings College in London and the University of South Carolina, “Limits to adaptation, Building an integrated research agenda,” tells us that with faster climate change in combination with inevitable and cascading events, risks are greater of hitting adaptation limits than with the speed of climate change alone. This article says, “Comparison of the relative rates of change possible in different contexts (for instance, the evolution of behaviors, identities, regulations or markets) and the pace of change in specific climate risks offers policy relevant opportunities to anticipate limits and the time available to act. We can predict that with intensified and more extreme climate impacts, adaptation limits will be experienced more widely, by more people, in more places, sectors and systems. There is an emerging literature on systemic climate risks (Centeno et al., 2015) which envisages connecting, cascading and amplifying risks over time. We anticipate these affects to precipitate the onset of cascading multilevel and transnational climate adaptation limits. Just as a scalar appreciation of limits is needed, so the propagation of limits through scales needs to be considered.” (15)

Adaptation Limits Already Being Encountered

This article in Oxford Open Climate Change out of the University of Western Australia published on how existing limits to adaptation are already degrading our culture, especially underprivileged peoples, “Our findings demonstrate that participants are facing significant adaptation barriers and that, for many, these barriers already constitute limits to what they can do to protect what they value most. They also make visible how gender, age, and socioeconomic status shape individual preferences, choices, and impediments, revealing compounding layers of disadvantage and differential vulnerability.” (16)

At COP27 Scientists Warn against Limits of Adaptation

Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework convention on Climate Change warns against the limits to adaptation, “Adaptation alone cannot keep up with the impacts of climate change, which are already worse than predicted. Adaptation actions are still crucial and are critical to upgrade small-scale, fragmented and reactive efforts. But the potential to adapt to climate change is not limitless.” (17)

“Some impacts of climate change are already too severe to adapt to.”

The conclusion of the World Resources Institute’s review of the Intergovernmental Panel on climate change’s Sixth Report war=ns of ongoing and fast approaching “hard” limits to climate change adaptation. “The world needs urgent action now to address losses and damages. With the 1.1 degrees C of global warming the world is already experiencing, some highly vulnerable people and ecosystems are beginning to reach the limits of what they can adapt to. In some regions, these limits are “soft” — effective adaptation measures exist, but political, economic and social challenges hinder implementation, such as limited access to finance. But in others, people and ecosystems already face or are fast approaching “hard” limits to adaptation, where climate impacts are so severe that no existing adaptation measures can effectively prevent losses and damages. For instance, some coastal communities in the tropics have lost entire coral reef ecosystems that once helped sustain their food security and livelihoods. Others have had to abandon low-lying neighborhoods and cultural sites as sea levels rise… Whether facing soft or hard limits of climate adaptation, the result for communities is devastating and oftentimes irreversible. These losses and damages will only increase as global temperatures rise.” (18)

Conclusion

The overwhelming missing link in our climate culture today, that includes academic and policy sectors, is the fear of saying the emperor has no clothes. What is happening is reticence on a global scale by some of the smartest people in the world. It is the fear of saying that our current climate culture has failed; It is the inability to publicly recognize that further warming from today, with the out of control extremes becoming even more nonlineraly more extreme in the future even with no further warming, and with adaptation limits already being broached where further warming increases effects nonlinearly to broach even more adaptability thresholds; this reticence of such a tremendous number of academic, policy and through leaders is existentially startling.

Later is too late. Adaptation cannot save us. Complete emissions elimination only limits further warming and it is current warming that has created all the mayhem. Emergency climate restoration is required before we pass the point of no return.

REFERENCES

1. 1. Adaptability limit to SLR of three feet per century… IPCC tells us that “Nicholls et al. (2011) show that only a limited number of adaptation options are available for specific coastal areas if sea level exceeds a certain threshold (1 m) at the end of the century.”
      Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, page 393, paragraph 10.
      https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WGIIAR5-PartA_FINAL.pdf
      Nichols et al., Sea-level rise and its possible impacts given a beyond 4C world in the twenty-first century, Phil Trans Royal Society, 2011.
      ResearchGate (Free Subscription required) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/49643248_Sea-level_rise_and_its_possible_impacts_given_a_’beyond_4_degrees_C_world’_in_the_twenty-first_century
   2. IPCC sea level rise… IPCC 6th Assessment Report, Scientific Basis, Chapter 9, 2021.
      https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-i/
   3. NOAA sea level rise…
      Sweet et al., Global and Regional Sea Level Rise Scenarios for the United States, NOAA, February 2022.
      https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/noaatr/9/
   4. Ice sheet tipping activation… See the references in the Tipping Page of this website.
      https://healthyplanetaction.org/tipping/
   5. Point of no return of ice sheet collapse... mid-century or significant 1.5 C warming above normal. See the references in the Tipping Page of this website.
      https://healthyplanetaction.org/tipping/
      Also see Deconto and Pollard 2016’s marine ice cliff instability mode;ling  and their point of no return of mid-century unless upper mid-level ocean warming is removed.
      DeConto and Pollard, Contribution of Antarctica to past and future sea level rise, Nature, March 31, 2016.
      http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2823837-DeConto-Pollard-2016-Contribution-of-Antarctica.html
   6. NOAA 13.1 feet of Sea Level Rise by 2100 (100-year GMSL (Global Mean Sea Level), or the normal annual tide with a one-percent chance of occurrence)… By 2070, the one-percent mean sea level (100-year event) is projected to be 7.8 feet higher than today. By 2100, NOAA projects the ocean could be as much as 13.1 feet higher. This is for Key West and not radically dissimilar for much of the rest of the US. (Figure 17, page 40). “The Low scenario has a 94% to 100% chance of being exceeded under RCP2.6 and RCP8.5, respectively, whereas the Extreme scenario has a 0.05% to a 0.1% chance of being exceeded. New evidence regarding the Antarctic ice sheet, if sustained, may significantly increase the probability of the Intermediate-High, High, and Extreme scenarios, particularly for RCP8.5 projections based upon Kopp et al. (2014). These ice-sheet modeling results have not yet been incorporated into a (conditional) probabilistic analysis of GMSL.” (page 21)
      Sweet et al., Global and Regional Sea Level Rise Scenarios for the United States, NOAA, January 2017.
      https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/publications/techrpt83_Global_and_Regional_SLR_Scenarios_for_the_US_final.pdf
   7. Carsey, Geology of Gulf Coastal Area and Continental Shelf, AAPG Bulletin, 1950.
      https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/aapg/aapgbull/article-abstract/34/3/361/547491/Geology-of-Gulf-Coastal-Area-and-Continental?redirectedFrom=fulltext
   8. NOAA Tidal Flooding Report 2019 – Increasing extreme sunny day high tides… Damaging non-storm (sunny day) high tide frequency is currently accelerating, up to 1000%  from the year 2000. This is from sea level rise not subsidence, or changes in storminess, 1.5 inches in 2019. Typical example: “For perspective, it was not until 1979 (more than 50 years of observations) that Charleston, S.C. experienced 13 total days of HTF [high tide flooding]; in 2019, 13 days of HTF occurred.
      Summary: Sunny day flooding was 100 to 150% more common in 2019 than in 2000 along the northeast Atlantic Coast from the Chesapeake Bay area south to Norfolk, Virginia at 180 percent, to 300% along the Southeast Atlantic and 500% in Charleston, South Carolina. The Western Gulf saw the highest increase from Louisiana to Brownsville Texas with 500% and peaking at 1000%. Normal sunny day high tide flooding in 2000, which was already being influenced by sea level rise were 1 to 3 days of sunny day flooding per year. Normal for much of the 20th century was near zero.
      “The U.S. annual HTF frequency now is more than twice that in the year 2000 due to rising relative sea levels (RSL), which in 2019 rose to a record-setting 0.34 m (1.1 ft) nationally relative to1920 levels.” Executive Summary, page v, para 3.
      “Assessed over several decades, the national trend in HTF frequency is accelerating, and HTF is more than twice as likely now as it was in 2000. The rapid growth is in response to RSL rise, which is occurring along most U.S. coastlines. (Our study does not include Alaska, where land-based ice melt is contributing to land rebound14). In 2019, RSL along U.S. coastlines (median value) reached an all-time record of 0.34 m since 1920 (last 100 years), which is about 4 centimeters (1.5 inches) higher than it was in 2018. The national RSL (linear) trend along U.S. coastlines examined here is 2.8 millimeters/year over this period.” page 3
      “HTF flooding is occurring more often now than in the past because of RSL rise and not changes in ‘storminess.’” page 4
      “Compared to HTF frequencies typical in 2000 assessed with an accelerating or linearly increasing significant trend (e.g., Figure 3d), HTF in 2019 was extraordinary. Flood days occurred 100–150% more frequently than in 2000 along the Northeast Atlantic and Eastern Gulf coastlines (e.g., 14 HTF days in 2019 at Norfolk, Va. is >150% higher than the trend value of about 5 days in 2000). Even higher percentage increases (>300%) occurred along the Southeast Atlantic (e.g., >500% increase in Charleston with 13 HTF days in 2019 compared to about 2 days in 2000). Percentage increases compared to 2000 were the greatest in the Western Gulf (>500%). For example, Sabine Pass and Corpus Christi, Tex. had 21 and 18 HTF days in 2019, and in 2000 the trend values were about 1 and 3 days (>1000% and 500% increase), respectively. This increase is in part driven by about a 0.15 m (0.5 ft) rise in RSL18.” page 7
      NOAA – 1.5 inches sea lever rise average in 2019 at all US lower 48 NOAA tide gauges… This new record, 1.5 inches in a single year (38 mm) doubles the old record and is ten times the long-term global average rate.
      Page 3 and 4
      “In 2019 (12) the national (median) HTF [high tide flooding] occurrence along U.S. coastlines as a whole was 4 days. This is 1 day less than the record reached in 2018 as measured by 98 NOAA tide gauges (13) (Figure 3a). Assessed over several decades, the national trend in HTF frequency is accelerating, and HTF is more than twice as likely now as it was in 2000. The rapid growth is in response to RSL rise, which is occurring along most U.S. coastlines. (Our study does not include Alaska, where land-based ice melt is contributing to land rebound (14)). In 2019, RSL along U.S. coastlines (median value) reached an all-time record of 0.34 m since 1920 (last 100 years), which is about 4 centimeters (1.5 inches) higher than it was in 2018. The national RSL (linear) trend along U.S. coastlines examined here is 2.8 millimeters/year over this period (not shown). Inherent to the RSL measurement in Figure 3a is the effect of land subsidence, which nationally (median plus or minus standard deviation value of the 98 tide gauges monitored) is occurring at a rate of 0.7 ±1.4 mm/year, but can be as high as 7 mm/year along the coastline of Louisiana (Zervas et al., 2013; Sweet et al., 2017). Annual mean RSLs at most East and Gulf Coast tide gauges (57 of the 62) broke their historical records (Figure 3b) in 2019 by (median value) 2.6 cm (about 1 inch).” [emphasis added]
      Press Release – NOAA, U.S. high-tide flooding continues to increase, July 14, 2020
      https://www.noaa.gov/media-release/us-high-tide-flooding-continues-to-increase
      New NOAA Technical Report on high tide flooding:
      NOAA 2019 State of U.S. High Tide Flooding with a 2020 Outlook, TR 092, July 2020, page 3 and 4.
      https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/publications/Techrpt_092_2019_State_of_US_High_Tide_Flooding_with_a_2020_Outlook_30June2020.pdf
      Also see a letter from principle William Sweet – 23 July 2020
      https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/aa-updates/high-tide-flooding-outlook-072320.html
   9. Chronic Inundation… “There comes a threshold of sea level rise-induced flooding that makes normal routines impossible and drives hard choices.” … “UCS defines flooding that occurs 25 times per year (on average, once every other week) or more as ‘chronic inundation’  [or] any coastal community that experiences this frequency of flooding over 10 percent or more of its land area, excluding wetlands and areas protected by federal levees.”
      Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), When Rising Seas Hit Home, 2017, quote box and par 5.
      https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2018/06/underwater-analysis-full-report.pdf
   10. Coastal home inundation… “More than 300,000 of today’s coastal homes, with a collective market value of about $117.5 billion today, are at risk of chronic inundation in 2045.” “By the end of the century, [or with 6.6 feet of sea level rise] … this includes as many as 2.4 million homes—the rough equivalent of all the homes in Los Angeles and Houston combined.”
       Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), Underwater: Rising Seas, Chronic Floods, and the Implications for US Coastal Real Estate (2018), Report Summary, bullets 1 and 2.
       https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/global-warming-impacts/sea-level-rise-chronic-floods-and-us-coastal-real-estate-implications
   11. Large economic losses in coastal regions that will generate cascading impacts to the overall economy of the United States are considered to be likely… “There is medium confidence that many coastal communities will be transformed by 2100 under any scenario and that many individuals will be financially devastated under lower emission scenarios (RCP4.5 or RCP2.6). Considering current exposure of assets and the latest SLR science, large economic losses in coastal regions that will generate cascading impacts to the overall economy of the United States are considered to be likely.”
       Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume II, Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States, Global Change Research Program, 2018, page 340, paragraph 1)
       https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/downloads/NCA4_2018_FullReport.pdf
   12. $27 Trillion Per year Damages from Sea Level Rise… If the 2 C target is missed, and we follow the RCP8.5_J14 scenario (median sea level rise of 0.86m and 95th percentile of 1.8m in 2100), global annual flood costs without additional adaptation are projected to be US$ 14.3 trillion per year (2.5% of GDP) for the median scenario and up to US$ 27.0 trillion per year for the 95th percentile (figure 4(a)), accounting for 4.7% of global GDP (table S4).
       Jevrejeva et al., Flood damage costs under the sea level rise with warming of 1.5 and 2C, Environmental Research Letters, July 4, 2018.
       http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aacc76/pdf 
   13. Atlas 14 precipitation frequency significantly biased low… Today’s 25-year storm is our old 100-year storm based on NOAA, but their analysis cannot statistically fully account for the increase in storm intensity to date because the increase has just begun in the last 10 years plus or minus. Weather statistics used to determine the current intensity of any storm (the 25-year, the 100-year, etc.) is based in Atlas 14 on long-term rain gauge data, much of which predates 1950.  The current NOAA Atlas 14 analysis therefor is biased low because the current increase in storm intensity is averaged in to the previous normal 20th century weather.
       In Texas, Atlas 14 supersedes the most recent and most widely required rainfall analysis design criteria from 1961 for the 1 to 100-year storms, 30-minute to 24-hour duration.
       Atlas 14 is significantly understated because of non-stationarity in data… NOAA assumed the data for this evaluation was stationary, it is not and is in fact rapidly and recently increasing in intensity. Assuming stationarity is the only way to get tradition statistics used in average weather analysis to work, (from Atlas 14 Section 4.5.5. , page 21, paragraph 5, ” Trend analysis: The precipitation frequency analysis methods used in NOAA Atlas 14 are based on the assumption that the annual maximum series used in the analysis are stationary.”
       Non-stationarity underestimates extreme precipitation by as much as 60 percent… Cheng and AghaKouchak 2014, “Extreme climatic events are growing more severe and frequent, calling into question how prepared our infrastructure is to deal with these changes. Current infrastructure design is primarily based on precipitation Intensity-Duration-Frequency (IDF) curves with the so-called stationary assumption, meaning extremes will not vary significantly over time. However, climate change is expected to alter climatic extremes, a concept termed nonstationarity. Here we show that given nonstationarity, current IDF curves can substantially underestimate precipitation extremes and thus, they may not be suitable for infrastructure design in a changing climate. We show that a stationary climate assumption may lead to underestimation of extreme precipitation by as much as 60%, which increases the flood risk and failure risk in infrastructure systems.”
       (TP40) Technical Paper Number 40 – Rainfall Frequency Atlas of the United States
       https://www.weather.gov/media/owp/oh/hdsc/docs/TechnicalPaper_No40.pdf
       Atlas 14 Point Precipitation Viewer
       https://hdsc.nws.noaa.gov/hdsc/pfds/pfds_map_cont.html
       Science basis – Atlas 14, Precipitation-Frequency Atlas of the United States Volume 11 Version 2.0, Texas, NOAA, 2018.
       https://www.weather.gov/media/owp/oh/hdsc/docs/Atlas14_Volume11.pdf
       Old 100-year in Austin is now the new 25-year. Austin Watershed Management.
       https://web.archive.org/web/20190304145731/https://www.austintexas.gov/page/flood-risk-and-atlas-14-details
       Nonstationarity – Cheng and AghaKouchak, Nonstationary Precipitation Intensity-Duration-Frequency Curves for Infrastructure Design in a Changing Climate, Nature Scientific Reports, November 18, 2014.
       https://www.nature.com/articles/srep07093
   14. The Myth of Endless Adaptation…
       Future Earth, The Earth League, WCRP (2022). 10 New Insights in Climate Science 2022. Stockholm
       https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7228925
   15. The speed of climate change, and cascading impacts limit adaptation… The important concepts in this article are that climate change is happening faster than adaptation limits with relatively slow climate changes, but with faster and cascading events, risks are greater of hitting limits than with the speed of climate change alone.  “Comparison of the relative rates of change possible in different contexts (for instance, the evolution of behaviors, identities, regulations or markets) and the pace of change in specific climate risks offers policy relevant opportunities to anticipate limits and the time available to act. Fourth, we can predict that with intensified and more extreme climate impacts, adaptation limits will be experienced more widely, by more people, in more places, sectors and systems. There is an emerging literature on systemic climate risks (Centeno et al., 2015) which envisages connecting, cascading and amplifying risks over time. We anticipate these affects to precipitate the onset of cascading multilevel and transnational climate adaptation limits. Just as a scalar appreciation of limits is needed, so the propagation of limits through scales needs to be considered.”
       Berkhout and Dow, Limits to adaptation, Building an integrated research agenda, WIREs Climate Change, May 2023.
       https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/wcc.81
   16. Adaptation limits already being encountered… “Our findings demonstrate that participants are facing significant adaptation barriers and that, for many, these barriers already constitute limits to what they can do to protect what they value most. They also make visible how gender, age, and socioeconomic status shape individual preferences, choices, and impediments, revealing compounding layers of disadvantage and differential vulnerability.”
       Henrique and Tschakert, Everyday limits to adaptation, Oxford Open Climate, January 7, 2022.
       https://academic.oup.com/oocc/article/2/1/kgab013/6500302
   17. At COP27 Scientists Warn against Limits of Adaptation… “Adaptation alone cannot keep up with the impacts of climate change, which are already worse than predicted,” Stiell said. “Adaptation actions are still crucial and are critical to upgrade small-scale, fragmented and reactive efforts. But the potential to adapt to climate change is not limitless.” Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary, UNFCCC.
       Adaptation Limits UNFCCC, Cop27 website review, November 2022.
       https://unfccc.int/news/at-cop27-scientists-warn-against-limits-of-adaptation
   18. WRI Review of AR6, “Some impacts of climate change are already too severe to adapt to.”… “The world needs urgent action now to address losses and damages. With the 1.1 degrees C of global warming the world is already experiencing, some highly vulnerable people and ecosystems are beginning to reach the limits of what they can adapt to. In some regions, these limits are “soft” — effective adaptation measures exist, but political, economic and social challenges hinder implementation, such as limited access to finance. But in others, people and ecosystems already face or are fast approaching “hard” limits to adaptation, where climate impacts are so severe that no existing adaptation measures can effectively prevent losses and damages. For instance, some coastal communities in the tropics have lost entire coral reef ecosystems that once helped sustain their food security and livelihoods. Others have had to abandon low-lying neighborhoods and cultural sites as sea levels rise… Whether facing soft or hard limits of climate adaptation, the result for communities is devastating and oftentimes irreversible. These losses and damages will only increase as global temperatures rise.”
       Levin et al., 6 Big Findings from the IPCC 2022 Report on Climate Impacts, Adaptation and  Vulnerability, World Resource Institute, February 27, 2022.
       https://www.wri.org/insights/ipcc-report-2022-climate-impacts-adaptation-vulnerability