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Extreme Events: Pacemakers of Adaptation? William R. Travis CIRES, Center for Science and Technology Policy Research Simulations of selected climate-sensitive adaptation decisions in agriculture and flood control show that extreme events can, as proposed in the literature, evoke adaption sooner than an underlying climate trend alone would, but also that extremes can, in the words of Schneider et al., trip “false starts leading to maladaptation.” A decision analysis model of a farm undergoing droughts superimposed on a gradual climate change, and of an urban drainage system experiencing an underlying change in rainfall intensity, are used to test for adaptive efficiency occasioned by the timing and intensity of extremes forced into the simulation. Results indicate that larger variability tends to mask climate trends and thus actually slow adaptation, while extreme events can indeed trip early adaptation, with sub-optimal outcomes. |
