A Bayesian perspective of climate change adaptation in South East Queensland, Australia

Abstract

There is compelling evidence that the recent observed changes in climate conditions throughout the world are, and will continue to be, largely of anthropogenic provenance (IPCC 2007a, 2007d). The responses of practitioners and researchers to managing the current and future impacts of climate change have been to place significant effort into the mitigation of climate effects through emission reduction strategies (Lorenzoni et al. 2000) and predicting how biophysical systems will respond to climate change (Ford et al. 2006). Although these responses are crucial to tackling the drivers of climate change and related changes to exposure, there is an emerging recognition that complementary assessments of vulnerability through the additional considerations of sensitivity and adaptive capacity are also required (Lorenzoni et al. 2000; Ford et al. 2006; IPCC 2007b; Smith et al. 2009, 2011). There is clear motivation for these assessments because, even in the absence of further emissions, climatic changes will be driven by the current amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) already in the atmosphere for at least the next 20 years (Friedlingstein and Solomon 2005).