Sustainable adaptation to climate change needs to be assessed beyond the present time and location to include the way that current forms of adaptation might influence future response options. An analysis of past dynamics of adaptation, what we call “trajectories,” might hold the key to understanding how the adaptive outcomes of past responses to climate stress constrain or open avenues to future adaptation. Adaptation research often focuses on particular actions, technologies, or institutions which may positively influence these relationships in order to build resilience and reduce vulnerability. However, relationships are complex and often behave in unexpected ways. There is no simple cause and effect, but rather actions are modified and transmitted through a web of linkages and feedbacks that are both physical and social. This complexity challenges our ability to predict the outcome of particular actions and there remain gaps in the understanding of system interactions that would permit a more accurate assessment of future development trajectories. The work presented here is an analysis of change in the climate vulnerability of dryland farmers in Northeast Brazil over four decades. The analytical framework, which links biophysical characteristics with a socio-economic context and indicators, permits an analysis that captures the dynamic relationship of adaptive capacities and consequent changes in vulnerability. The analysis of trajectories provides a foundation for future assumptions about human behavior and the relationship with the environment.

Os modelos globais do quarto relatório do Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC-AR4) são avaliados para o Nordeste Setentrional do Brasil (NEB) quanto à representação da variabilidade interanual e interdecadal da precipitação para o período de 1901 a 1999 e são analisadas as projeções do cenário A1B. Essa avaliação é realizada
utilizando-se os dados do Climatic Research Unit (CRU) e a reanálise 20th Century Reanalysis V2 do National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). É aplicada a transformada em ondeletas à série de dados para detectar e analisar os padrões de variabilidades existentes no século XX. Os resultados sugerem que os modelos CSIRO_MK3_0_RUN2, GISS_MODEL_E_R_RUN8 e UKMO_HADCM3_RUN1 reproduziram de maneira satisfatória a variabilidade plurianual. Os modelos divergem quanto o futuro da precipitação no NEB, alguns indicam impactos positivos na média anual de até 12% e outros impactos negativos de até 42%.

By politicizing the last bastion of “untouched nature,” climate change makes blame ubiquitous and therefore infinitely malleable. Onto this moral blank slate, critical anthropologists and political ecologists inscribe industrial/Northern blame rather than universal/pan-human blame. This article queries what our analytical stance ought to be when our field partners—those who seem to best exemplify the inequity of climate change—disagree with this reading of climate change. The Republic of the Marshall Islands contributes minimally to global climate change yet faces nationwide uninhabitability at its hands. Despite awareness of their tiny carbon footprint, grassroots Marshall Islanders (if not their government) have strongly favored a response of guilt and atonement rather than outrage and protest. I argue that various delegitimizing explanations of this perception—ignorance, denial, performance, false consciousness—are ethnographically untenable or unsatisfying. Instead, Marshallese self-blame should be understood as the local appropriation of global warming discourse in terms of a preexisting narrative of seductive modernity and cultural decline. Such an analysis allows us to appreciate how indigenous climate change self-blame, while undoubtedly problematic in many of its implications, may also carry empowering, postcolonial, counterhegemonic potentialities that should not be discounted by those searching for radical counternarratives of climate change.

Aim
We used ecological niche modelling to test different models explaining the lineage age–area relationship. We hypothesized that lineage age should influence the proportion of potential range unfilled by phyllostomid bat species. We made explicit predictions about possible relationships between the proportion of unfilled potential range and lineage age. Our goal was to analyse empirical data and fit the model that best describes our data.

Location
South America.

Methods
We modelled the ecological niche of 49 phyllostomid bat species using Maxent and Support Vector Machine (SVM). We calculated the proportion of unfilled potential range as the amount of area outside the current distribution divided by the current distribution (realized range size). Using a dated phylogeny, we regressed the proportion of unfilled potential range on lineage age. To compare our predictions we also regressed realized range size on lineage age.

Results
Unfilled potential range was weakly associated with lineage age. This relationship was an inverse function of lineage age, explaining between 0 and 17% of the proportion of unfilled potential range. Furthermore, the relationship between realized range size and lineage age exhibited a logarithmic function, with lineage age explaining between 13 and 20% of the variation in realized range size.

Main conclusions
Different regression models indicated that old phyllostomid species have smaller unfilled ranges than young species. That is, old species have filled most of the areas that are suitable for them. Furthermore, old species have larger realized ranges than young species. We thus refuted both the lineage age–area and taxon cycle models and lent support to the stasis post-expansion model. This suggests that bat species can reach most of their potential range rapidly after cladogenesis and such occupation remains more or less constant through time.

A homogeneous monthly data set of sea surface temperature (SST) and pseudo wind stress based on in situ observations is used to investigate the climatic trends over the tropical Atlantic during the last five decades (1964–2012). After a decrease of SST by about 1 °C during 1964–1975, most apparent in the northern tropical region, the entire tropical basin warmed up. That warming was the most substantial (>1 °C) in the eastern tropical ocean and in the longitudinal band of the intertropical convergence zone. Surprisingly, the trade wind system also strengthened over the peirod 1964–2012. Complementary information extracted from other observational data sources confirms the simultaneity of SST warming and the strengthening of the surface winds. Examining data sets of surface heat flux during the last few decades for the same region, we find that the SST warming was not a consequence of atmospheric heat flux forcing. Conversely, we suggest that long-term SST warming drives changes in atmosphere parameters at the sea surface, most notably an increase in latent heat flux, and that an acceleration of the hydrological cycle induces a strengthening of the trade winds and an acceleration of the Hadley circulation. These trends are also accompanied by rising sea levels and upper ocean heat content over similar multi-decadal time scales in the tropical Atlantic. Though more work is needed to fully understand these long term trends, especially what happens from the mid-1970’s, it is likely that changes in ocean circulation involving some combination of the Atlantic meridional overtuning circulation and the subtropical cells are required to explain the observations.

Knowledge of the seasonal variability of river discharge and the concentration of nutrients in the estuary waters of large rivers flowing into the tropical Atlantic contributes to a better understanding of the biogeochemical processes that occur in adjacent coastal and ocean systems. The monthly averaged variations of the physical and biogeochemical contributions of the Orinoco, Amazon, São Francisco, Paraíba do Sul (South America), Volta, Niger and Congo (Africa) Rivers are estimated from models or observations. The results indicate that these rivers deliver approximately 0.1 Pg C year−1 in its dissolved organic (DOC 0.046 Pg C year−1) and inorganic (DIC 0.053 Pg C year−1) forms combined. These values represent 27.3% of the global DOC and 13.2% of the global DIC delivered by rivers into the world’s oceans. Estimations of the air-sea CO2 fluxes indicate a slightly higher atmospheric liberation for the African systems compared with the South American estuaries (+10.6 ± 7 mmol m−2 day−1 and +5.4 ± 8 mmol m−2 day−1, respectively). During the high river discharge periods, the fluxes remained positive in all of the analyzed systems (average +12 ± 8 mmol m−2 day−1), except at the mouth of the Orinoco River, which continued to act as a sink for CO2. During the periods of low river discharges, the mean CO2 efflux decreased to +5.2 ± 9 mmol m−2 day−1. The updated and detailed review presented here contributes to the accurate quantification of CO2 input into the atmosphere and to ongoing studies on the oceanic modeling of biogeochemical cycles in the tropical Atlantic.

The identification of the main sources of anthropic greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) associated with the mitigation and removal of these emissions has become an important instrument in the attenuation of the climatic changes predicted by the IPCC. The largest emission source in Brazil is forest conversion. This land use change has always had a strong relationship with the expansion of agriculture, an activity of great importance in the country, which has the largest commercial cattle herd in the planet. Following the considerable reduction in emissions from deforestation, agriculture has been since 2010 the most important source (MCTI (Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação), 2013. Brasília: Ministério daCiência, Tecnologia e Inovação, Brasil). Seeking to discover the possibilities of altering the emissions profile in the agricultural sector, four scenarios were developed related to how this is dealt with in the beef cattle sector, calculating the potential removal of carbon from the atmosphere through natural regeneration of biomes. The results suggest that picketing and rotation scenario has the greatest potential, with a carbon reduction of 17.7 Gt CO2eq, while the shared raising with grain legumes scenario has the lowest calculated reduction potential of 7.1 Gt CO2eq was calculated. The animal confinement scenario had an intermediary reduction potential of 8.3 Gt CO2eq. The mosaic of methods scenario, in which it is attempted to simulate the parallel adoption of the measures proposed in all other scenarios, had a reduction potential of 13.1 Gt CO2eq. In the scenarios where animal confinement occurs, the treatment of waste with biodigestion allows the generation of biogas and biofertilizers, contributing to an increase in the potential carbon reduction.

In this paper, we aim to assess how the changes in aspects of demand impact the use of energy in the developing economies of Brazil, China, and India and the developed economies of Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. To achieve this objective, we use input–output matrices for the years 1995 and 2005 by applying a structural decomposition analysis. We find the following: Brazil is the only country where technology has a positive impact on energy. Germany and the United Kingdom decrease their use of energy over the sample period. China and the United Kingdom are the only countries where the use of renewable inputs decreases; and, in Brazil, China, and the United States, the use of coal increases. When we change the focus of our analysis from aggregated to disaggregated results, these countries can be lined up differently in terms of development in relation to their wealth and energy use.

In March 2014 a group of early career researchers and academics from São Paulo state and from the UK met at the University of Campinas to participate in a workshop on ‘Responsible Innovation and the Governance of Socially Controversial Technologies’. In this Perspective we describe key reflections and observations from the workshop discussions, paying particular attention to the discourse of responsible innovation from a cross-cultural perspective. We describe a number of important tensions, paradoxes and opportunities that emerged over the three days of the workshop.

O presente Manual de Boas Práticas Portuárias – Porto de Belém é resultado da iniciativa interinstitucional da Secretaria de Portos da Presidência da Presidência da República (SEP/PR) que, em parceria com a Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), por intermédio do Instituto Virtual Internacional de Mudanças Globais (IVIG), elaborou um Guia de Boas Práticas Portuárias, sob o pálio do Programa de Conformidade do Gerenciamento de Resíduos Sólidos e Efluentes Líquidos nos Portos Marítimos Brasileiros, desenvolvido no âmbito do PAC II (Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento – Fase II), cujo objetivo é o estabelecimento de diretrizes sustentáveis para o setor portuário no país.

O presente Manual de Boas Práticas Portuárias – Porto de São Francisco do Sul é resultado da iniciativa interinstitucional da Secretaria de Portos da Presidência da Presidência da República (SEP/PR) que, em parceria com a Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), por intermédio do Instituto Virtual Internacional de Mudanças Globais (IVIG), elaborou um Guia de Boas Práticas Portuárias, sob o pálio do Programa de Conformidade do Gerenciamento de Resíduos Sólidos e Efluentes Líquidos nos Portos Marítimos Brasileiros, desenvolvido no âmbito do PAC II (Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento – Fase II), cujo objetivo é o estabelecimento de diretrizes sustentáveis para o setor portuário no país.

O presente Manual de Boas Práticas Portuárias – Porto de Ilhéus é resultado da iniciativa interinstitucional da Secretaria de Portos da Presidência da Presidência da República (SEP/PR) que, em parceria com a Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), por intermédio do Instituto Virtual Internacional de Mudanças Globais (IVIG), elaborou um Guia de Boas Práticas Portuárias, sob o pálio do Programa de Conformidade do Gerenciamento de Resíduos Sólidos e Efluentes Líquidos nos Portos Marítimos Brasileiros, desenvolvido no âmbito do PAC II (Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento – Fase II), cujo objetivo é o estabelecimento de diretrizes sustentáveis para o setor portuário no país.