The threat to biodiversity and the intensity of the Anthropocene Extinction Event depend on the value of climate sensitivity. In addition to initiating the process of global warming, the anthropogenic disturbance of the climate system has also triggered the action of a complex web of interconnected feedback mechanisms which amplify the effect of the original disturbance. The value of the amplification factor determines the eventual increase in average surface temperature required to re-balance the dynamic thermal equilibrium of the planet. Using new visualisation techniques, this presentation offers a trans-disciplinary re-evaluation of climate sensitivity with profound implications for our current strategic approach to the mitigation of climate change. The most significant boundary in climate dynamics is the strength of feedback at which the system behaviour crosses the critical threshold between equilibrium-seeking and self-amplifying outcomes. This is the tipping point at the boundary of runaway climate change. The second part of this paper will explore current state of knowledge about this boundary, and indicate policy implications.

Turkey is a Mediterranean country and it is a transcontinental European and Asian country. Its geographical location is important for different climatic transition regions. In this study, daily maximum and minimum air temperature data from 165 stations were used to study the temperature fluctuation in the period of 1961-2008 in Turkey. Homogeneity for data quality and non-parametric Mann-Kendall correlation statistical tests for statistically significant increasing or decreasing trends have been assessed in the 48-year period. The results show that there is increasing trend in all seasonal maximum temperature but only the summer and autumn is significant. There is also a significant increasing trend in the summer minimum temperature..

Climate change is expected to affect lakes which are the important freshwater resource. Eight largest lakes contain about 96% of water resources of all lakes over Russia territory. Modern environmental and climate change, caused by natural and man-made factors, drives to important changes in hydrological regime of lakes. The response of the individual lakes to these changes depends on the magnitude of regional climate change. Water balance, lake level, thermal characteristics, ice events and ice thickness have been studied for largest Russian Lakes Baikal, Ladoga, Onega, Ilmen, Chudsko-Pskovskoe, Chany, Taimyr and Khanka based on the data of observation.
The lakes’ level is a reliable moisture integrator, reflecting water resource within a vast territory, and that is why it can be used as indicator of modern climate change. Three of studied lakes show negative water level trends (Ladoga, Onega and Chudsko-Pskovskoe) and Lake Chany manifests a positive one. Important consequences for aquatic ecosystems and human activities on lakes have modern changes in lake ice with progress of warming. All studied lakes show the tendencies to earlier date of ice cover break-up and decrease in duration of ice cover on lakes. Maximal ice cover thickness had the most pronounced response to climate warming during the last decades.

We examine here daily minimum and maximum temperatures recorded at 7 climatic stations all located in Lazio region, Italy. These 14 time series were provided by the Italian “Agro-meteorological National Data Base” (BDAN) of the National Agricultural Information System (SIAN) and cover the second half of the XX century. The purposes of the signal processing were, first, to extract the linear trend and the two main seasonal cycles present in the series, second, after their subtraction from the signal, to assess the relative importance of the residual stochastic component and, finally, identifying a stochastic model for the latter, in order to arrive at an artificial simulation of the original series. After retrieving and filling the data gaps, we obtained uninterrupted series of daily data. Then, after detrending and filterinfg away the seasonal components (with 6-month and 12-month periods), it was possible to determine correlograms and power spectra of the residual zero-mean stochastic component. Also, a successful attempt was carried out to model this stochastic residual by means of an AR(1) process, thus yielding an efficient representation of the time variability of each of the 14 temperature series. In all cases the residual white noise obtained is definitely non gaussian. This model including the trend, the seasonal oscillation and the AR(1) process permitted a fairly good artificial reconstruction of the given temperature series via computer simulations specific for each given climatic station. This reconstruction, on capturing the essential features of each given series, represents a useful tool to describe and understand the recurrence of weather patterns and the possible occurrences of weather-linked phenomena interesting the local vegetation and the related biological processes. As a by-product, the analysis has permitted to evaluate the relative incidence of the two main seasonal components, and their importance with respect to the residual variability associated to purely stochastic fluctuations. From a comparison with the results of other similar studies, carried out in other countries of Europe and Oceania, it appears that the trends found by us for both minimum and maximum temperature daily series, when statistically significant, are generally lower than the corresponding values reported by the last IPCC (2007) for those areas that, at least from a geographical viewpoint, appear similar to ours.

Global climate change has generally been linked with species extinctions, while a possible evolutionary effect of the new environmental conditions was seldom considered. Further, the overwhelming majority of speciation studies focus on population divergence under allopatry, a process resulting from the spatial separation of a group of individuals, that under different selection pressures, later give rise to a new species. Nevertheless, speciation may also take place under sympatry, when some individuals within the population genetically diverge, in spite of remaining in the same, originally occupied area. The very rarely observed process of sympatric speciation, also called adaptive speciation, is here documented through an ongoing study of two populations of a forest insect, the pine processionary moth, Thaumetopoea pityocampa (Lepidopter, Notodontidae), between which gene flow has ceased. One of the populations has undergone a shift of its annual cycle and succeeded to adjust to different, generally warmer, climatic conditions. This population already shows both ecological adaptations, such as a higher temperature niche, as well as some divergence at genetic level. Such findings draw attention to the need of considering the role of species plasticity and of speciation processes, in response to climate change. A thorough interdisciplinary approach is clearly needed, when planning mitigation strategies for biological communities under different scenarios.