American Journal of Climate Change > Vol.3 No.5, December 2014

Amy Cannon¹, Peter Lalor², Shobha Sriharan³, Chunlei Fan⁴, Gulnihal Ozbay^1*

¹Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Delaware State University, Dover, DE, USA.
²University of the Sunshine Coast, Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia.
³School of Agriculture, Virginia State University, Petersburg, VA, USA.
⁴School of Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences, Morgan State University, Baltimore, MD, USA.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), established by the United Nations and World Meteorological Organization, has determined that humans have very likely influenced a net warming to the Earth from the increase of greenhouse gases, aerosols and land use changes. This warming has caused the amount of ice on the Earth to continue to decrease and sea levels to rise. In addition, extreme precipitation events are happening more often in selected regions of the world. A case study that assesses the impacts of, and adaptations to, these changes in climate is presented here. Two modeling programs, Sim CLIM and Train CLIM, (CLIM Systems, Hamilton, New Zealand) were used to support assessments for water supply, coastal zones and tropical cyclones in a fictitious island group in the South Pacific region. In the case study, a consulting group was “hired” to carry out these assessments. A final analysis and synthesis report were created to help the Ministry of the Environment of the made-up nation decide how to improve the governmental actions to address the real concerns posed by changing climate and sea level. Although a simulated island group is used in this article, there are sincere concerns about climate change and extreme weather events in this part of the world. It is important to address the real and dangerous threat that these islands and people face in the wake of a changing climate and a growing global society.

Climate Change, Case Study, Water Supply, Coastal Zone Erosion, Tropical Cyclones

Cannon, A. , Lalor, P. , Sriharan, S. , Fan, C. and Ozbay, G. (2014) A Case Study on Climate Change Response and Adaptation: Fictional Aysese Islands in the South Pacific. American Journal of Climate Change, 3, 455-473. doi: 10.4236/ajcc.2014.35040.