Twenty-eighth Report Adapting Institutions to Climate Change Cm ...

Adaptive capacity (also referred to as adaptability) is the ability of a system to adjust to climate change
(including climate variability and extremes) to moderate potential damages, to take advantage of opportunities,
or to cope with the consequences.
Autonomous adaptation is the ongoing implementation of existing knowledge and technology in response
to the changes in climate experienced. (Taken from IPCC WG II 4AR Section 5.5, c.f. alternative
definition above.)
Climate change in IPCC usage refers to any change in climate over time, whether due to natural
variability or as a result of human activity. This usage differs from that in the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change, where climate change refers to a change of climate that is attributed
directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and that is
in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.
Climate variability refers to variations in the mean state and other statistics (such as standard deviations,
statistics of extremes etc.) of the climate on all temporal and spatial scales beyond that of individual
weather events. Variability may be due to natural internal processes within the climate system (internal
variability), or to variations in natural or anthropogenic external forcing (external variability).
(Climate change) impacts – the effects of climate change on natural and human systems. Depending on
the consideration of adaptation, one can distinguish between potential and residual impacts:
Potential impacts – all impacts that may occur given a projected change in climate, without consideration
of adaptation.
Residual impacts – the impacts of climate change that would occur after adaptation.
Aggregate impacts – total impacts integrated across sectors and/or regions. The aggregation of impacts
requires knowledge (or assumptions about) the relative importance of impacts in different sectors and
regions. Measures of aggregate impacts include, for example, the total number of people affected, or the
total economic costs.
Market impacts – impacts that can be quantified in monetary terms, and directly affect Gross Domestic
Product – e.g. changes in the price of agricultural inputs and/or goods.
Non-market impacts – impacts that affect ecosystems or human welfare, but that are not easily expressed
in monetary terms, e.g., an increased risk of premature death, or increases in the number of people at
risk of hunger.
Impact – a specific change in a system iii caused by its exposure to climate change. Impacts may be
judged to be harmful or beneficial. Vulnerability to climate change is the degree to which these systems
are susceptible to, and unable to cope with, adverse impacts. The concept of risk, which combines the
magnitude of the impact with the probability of its occurrence, captures uncertainty in the underlying
processes of climate change, exposure, impacts and adaptation. (Taken from IPCC WGII 4AR, Section
19.1.1; c.f. definition above).
iii Systems are considered to be geophysical, biological and socio-economic systems.
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Appendix A