PIK Biennial Report 2000-2001 - Potsdam Institute for Climate ...

Land-use Change in Developing Countries
Land-use change is particularly suited for pattern analysis.
Work has focused on the syndrome-based analysis of
deforestation on the one hand and the modelling of local
decision-making of smallholders on the other. Based on
a set of presently 15 case studies (see Figure 3), a qualitative
model has been developed to integrate the case studies.
The model exhibits the mechanism of the Sahel Syndrome
(see SYNAPSE) to be related to the interplay
between an increasing rate of soil degradation and a limited
rate of yield increase due to social, economic and environmental
circumstances.
Overexploitation of Marine Resources
The global pattern of overfishing has been examined
with a focus on capital accumulation. Extending previous
bio-economic models by QDEs, time series of
resource use were reconstructed and general problems of
fishery development identified (Figure 4). The generalized
character of the model allows general conclusions
for policy action. Model results show that a fishery needs
perpetual adjustment, because the disaster case cannot
be reliably avoided under the usual normative framework.
Yet the adjustment should not be restricted to a
single policy (e.g., catch quotas), but comprise a policy
basket.
ReCSim
Regional Climate Simulation Models
Project speaker: Rupert Klein
PIK project members: Nicola Botta, Friedrich-Wilhelm
Gerstengarbe, Detlef Hauffe, Martin Kücken, Susanne
Langenberg, Antony Owinoh.
External project collaborators: U. Böhm (Univ.
Potsdam), G. Doms (DWD), U. Schättler (DWD), J.
Steppeler (DWD), B. Rockel (GKSS), K. Keuler (BTU
Cottbus).
The Climate-Limited Area Model CLM
Regional climate modelling refers to the practice of nesting
a limited area model (LAM) in a general circulation
model (GCM) to infer the combined impact of global
driving fields and small-scale forcings on the climate of a
region. This project will provide PIK with such a
dynamic regionalization tool as a contribution to general
integrated assessment technologies. PIK has joined the
German climate research community in developing such
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Further work will integrate alternative regulatory frameworks
and improve the decision-making module. This
will provide direct advice for the EU fisheries policy.
Fig. 4: Phase plot (a) of the development of the blue whale hunting
industry (solid line), compared to results of former models
(dashed line) and our qualitative model (b). The red arrow corresponds
to the disaster case, emerging from the critical branching
point.
Outlook
As well as further work in the two fields of syndrome
analysis described here, a new focus will be on environmental
issues of urban sprawl. This will be the subject of
an EU project utilizing underlying case studies for which
research is already ongoing.
a regional climate model (CLM) based on Deutscher
Wetterdienst’s Local Model (LM).
Operational Framework and Statistical Analysis
The first activity within ReCSim contributes an operational
framework suitable for long-time computations
and the associated data analysis, modern statistical and
non-statistical validation schemes, and improved parameterizations.
This is the basis for comprehensive model
intercomparison and the validation of the new regional
climate model against real data.
Figure 5 illustrates our new statistical cluster analysis
tools by exhibiting the result of a spatial error estimation.
The production of these results required the regional
adaptation of the model, the development of software to
drive the LAM with global analyses, as well as the incorporation
of the group’s statistical analysis tools within
the CLM-operational framework.