Adequate response to the challenges associated with climate change requires new formats of scientific research and assessment. In the past, linear approaches, starting from the recognition of climate change, through the analysis of observed or expected impacts and ending with policy recommendations, have been the mainstream. It is now widely recognised that these approaches mostly fail to reach their objectives since they do not account for feedbacks between the physical environment and societal action, nor for the feedbacks in the various subsystems. The objective of this session is to review and discuss the problem of climatic change in all its dimensions, with a special focus on interdisciplinary approaches. Climate change science concerns a number of disciplines, such as physics, biology, economics, social sciences etc. It is essential that new forms for interact between disciplines are found in order to produce innovative results.
We do not expect to cover all the aspects of the climate change science but we hope that as well researchers in physical and natural sciences than researchers in social sciences will find interest to participate at the session to present and discuss a few exciting issues within one of several of these scopes (and more):
- The link between global climate scenarios and the socio-economic developments
- Scenarios for impact studies: from global to local
- Climate services: the relation between scientists and stakeholders
- Ecosystem services: outputs from ecosystems, challenges and responses
- Climate – societal interactions in the last millennia: can we learn from past experience?
- Socio-ecosystems, towards a comprehensive approach to sustainability Science
- The climate change policies to mitigate climatic change
- Climatic change and biodiversity
- How to couple physical, ecological and socio-economic models
- Peoples' perception of risk, how to improve communication
- Sea level change and the problems of low lying areas.