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- Title
Measuring and Attributing Sedimentary and Geomorphic Responses to Modern Climate Change: Challenges and Opportunities.
- Authors
East, Amy E.; Warrick, Jonathan A.; Li, Dongfeng; Sankey, Joel B.; Redsteer, Margaret H.; Gibbs, Ann E.; Coe, Jeffrey A.; Barnard, Patrick L.
- Abstract
Today, climate change is affecting virtually all terrestrial and nearshore settings. This commentary discusses the challenges of measuring climate‐driven physical landscape responses to modern global warming: short and incomplete data records, land use and seismicity masking climatic effects, biases in data availability and resolution, and signal attenuation in sedimentary systems. We identify opportunities to learn from historical and paleo data, select especially sensitive study sites, and report null results to better characterize the extent and nuances of climate‐change effects. We then discuss efforts to improve attribution practices, which will lead to better predictive capabilities. We encourage the Earth‐science community to prioritize scientific research on climate‐driven physical landscape changes so that societies will be better prepared to manage the effects on health and safety, infrastructure, water–food–energy security, economics, and ecosystems that follow from climate‐driven physical landscape change. Plain Language Summary: Modern global warming will ultimately affect physical landscape processes virtually everywhere on Earth, and some of those effects are evident already. This commentary describes the challenges to measuring climate‐driven physical landscape responses to global warming: short and incomplete data records, land use and earthquakes masking climatic effects, biases in data availability and resolution, and climate signals becoming harder to read at the downstream end of a landscape. We discuss ways to collect more informative data in key locations to better understand climate‐change impacts, while also diligently reporting where impacts are not evident. Forming a more complete picture in these ways will mean societies are better prepared to predict and manage impacts on human health and safety, infrastructure, water–food–energy security, economics, and ecosystems that are linked to climate‐driven physical landscape change. Key Points: Modern anthropogenic climate change affects a vast range of geomorphic settingsWe identify challenges of measuring physical landscape response to modern climate change and opportunities to improve studiesBetter understanding physical landscape impacts will prepare societies to manage hazards and economic effects of climate change
- Subjects
EFFECT of human beings on climate change; LANDSCAPE changes; GLOBAL warming; CLIMATE change; MODERN languages
- Publication
Earth's Future, 2022, Vol 10, Issue 10, p1
- ISSN
2328-4277
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1029/2022EF002983