title: Multisectoral climate impact hotspots in a warming world.
abstract: The impacts of global climate change on different aspects of humanity's diverse life-support systems are complex and often difficult to predict. To facilitate policy decisions on mitigation and adaptation strategies, it is necessary to understand, quantify, and synthesize these climate-change impacts, taking into account their uncertainties. Crucial to these decisions is an understanding of how impacts in different sectors overlap, as overlapping impacts increase exposure, lead to interactions of impacts, and are likely to raise adaptation pressure. As a first step we develop herein a framework to study coinciding impacts and identify regional exposure hotspots. This framework can then be used as a starting point for regional case studies on vulnerability and multifaceted adaptation strategies. We consider impacts related to water, agriculture, ecosystems, and malaria at different levels of global warming. Multisectoral overlap starts to be seen robustly at a mean global warming of 3 °C above the 1980-2010 mean, with 11% of the world population subject to severe impacts in at least two of the four impact sectors at 4 °C. Despite these general conclusions, we find that uncertainty arising from the impact models is considerable, and larger than that from the climate models. In a low probability-high impact worst-case assessment, almost the whole inhabited world is at risk for multisectoral pressures. Hence, there is a pressing need for an increased research effort to develop a more comprehensive understanding of impacts, as well as for the development of policy measures under existing uncertainty.
authors.affiliation: Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Studies, Potsdam 14473 Germany.
authors.forename: Franziska
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Piontek
authors.forename: Christoph
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Müller
authors.forename: Thomas A M
authors.initials: TA
authors.lastname: Pugh
authors.forename: Douglas B
authors.initials: DB
authors.lastname: Clark
authors.forename: Delphine
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authors.lastname: Deryng
authors.forename: Joshua
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Elliott
authors.forename: Felipe de Jesus
authors.initials: Fde J
authors.lastname: Colón González
authors.forename: Martina
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authors.lastname: Flörke
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Folberth
authors.forename: Wietse
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Franssen
authors.forename: Katja
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authors.lastname: Frieler
authors.forename: Andrew D
authors.initials: AD
authors.lastname: Friend
authors.forename: Simon N
authors.initials: SN
authors.lastname: Gosling
authors.forename: Deborah
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Hemming
authors.forename: Nikolay
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Khabarov
authors.forename: Hyungjun
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Mark R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Lomas
authors.forename: Yoshimitsu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Masaki
authors.forename: Matthias
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mengel
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Morse
authors.forename: Kathleen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Neumann
authors.forename: Kazuya
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Nishina
authors.forename: Sebastian
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ostberg
authors.forename: Ryan
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Pavlick
authors.forename: Alex C
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Ruane
authors.forename: Jacob
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Schewe
authors.forename: Erwin
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Schmid
authors.forename: Tobias
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Stacke
authors.forename: Qiuhong
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.forename: Zachary D
authors.initials: ZD
authors.lastname: Tessler
authors.forename: Adrian M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Tompkins
authors.forename: Lila
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Warszawski
authors.forename: Dominik
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Wisser
authors.forename: Hans Joachim
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Schellnhuber
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000379:methods*; D017753:Ecosystem; D004777:Environment; D005843:Geography; D057232:Global Warming / Q000191:economics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D008288:Malaria / Q000453:epidemiology; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D011640:Public Policy; D013696:Temperature; D014881:Water Supply / Q000706:statistics & numerical data
keywords: ISI-MIP; coinciding pressures; differential climate impacts