Over the last few decades climate change has been gaining importance in international scientific and political debates. However, the social sciences, especially in Latin America, have only lately become interested in the subject and their approach is still vague. Scientific understanding of global environmental change and the process of designing public policies to face them are characterized by their complexity as well as by epistemic and normative uncertainties. This makes it necessary to problematize the way in which research efforts understand ‘the social’ of climate change. How do ‘the climate’ and ‘the social’ interpenetrate as scientific objects? What does the resulting field look like? Is the combination capable of promoting reflexivity and collaboration on the issue, or does it merely become dispersed with diffuse boundaries? Our paper seeks to answer these and other related questions using Chile as a case study and examining peer-reviewed scientific research on the topic. By combining in-depth qualitative content analysis of each paper with a statistical meta-analysis, we were able to: characterize the key content and forms of such literature; identify divisions and patterns within it; and, discuss some factors and trends that may help explain these. We conclude that the literature displays two competing trends: while it is inclined to become fragmented beyond the scope of the ‘mitigation’ black box, it also tends to cluster along the lines of methodological distinctions traditionally contested within the social sciences. This, in turn, highlights the persistence of disciplinary divisions within an allegedly interdisciplinary field.

Abstract The response of the global climate system to atmospheric CO2 concentration increase in time is scrutinized employing the Brazilian Earth System Model Ocean–Atmosphere version 2.3 (BESM-OA2.3). Through the achievement of over 2000 yr of coupled model integrations in ensemble mode, it is shown that the model simulates the signal of recent changes of global climate trends, depicting a steady atmospheric and oceanic temperature increase and corresponding marine ice retreat. The model simulations encompass the time period from 1960 to 2105, following the phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) protocol. Notwithstanding the accurate reproduction of large-scale ocean–atmosphere coupled phenomena, like the ENSO phenomena over the equatorial Pacific and the interhemispheric gradient mode over the tropical Atlantic, the BESM-OA2.3 coupled model shows systematic errors on sea surface temperature and precipitation that resemble those of other global coupled climate models. Yet, the simulations demonstrate the model’s potential to contribute to the international efforts on global climate change research, sparking interest in global climate change research within the Brazilian climate modeling community, constituting a building block of the Brazilian Framework for Global Climate Change Research.

In the current UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) and the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA), societal impact measurements are inherent parts of the national evaluation systems. In this study, we deal with a relatively new form of societal impact measurements. Recently, Altmetric—a start-up providing publication level metrics—started to make data for publications available which have been mentioned in policy documents. We regard this data source as an interesting possibility to specifically measure the (societal) impact of research. Using a comprehensive dataset with publications on climate change as an example, we study the usefulness of the new data source for impact measurement. Only 1.2 % (n = 2341) out of 191,276 publications on climate change in the dataset have at least one policy mention. We further reveal that papers published in Nature and Science as well as from the areas “Earth and related environmental sciences” and “Social and economic geography” are especially relevant in the policy context. Given the low coverage of the climate change literature in policy documents, this study can be only a first attempt to study this new source of altmetrics data. Further empirical studies are necessary, because mentions in policy documents are of special interest in the use of altmetrics data for measuring target-oriented the broader impact of research.

Climate scientists have identified the establishment of historical baseline data from which to determine degrees of climate change as a significant challenge. In this article the use of ships’ logbooks and other sources for maritime history, to provide evidence of weather and climatic conditions pre-dating the era of modern meteorological data measurements, is discussed. The CLIWOC and TANAP projects utilising international archival resources to provide climatological and related information are examined. The discussion is then focused on the Indian Ocean rim countries and the archival and historical resources that may yield similar information. The article concentrates on sources in the Republic of South Africa, and sources in the Sultanate of Oman and Western Australia are discussed for comparative purposes. Utilising archival sources to provide historical climate-change related data aligns archivists and information scientists with the major imperatives of the South African Government. A beginning can also be made with developing south-south scientific and archival co-operation that can unlock new sources of historical and climatological knowledge.

Many regions vulnerable to climate change effects are Indigenous homelands. The dialogue on climate change focuses on adaptation strategies including the projected removal of such communities. Many Indigenous groups argue that such perspectives are genocidal and seek recognition of an Indigenous right to environmental self-determination. Using ideas of home, place attachment, and place attachment disruption, this chapter offers an argument for considering emotional geographies as an important aspect of climate change research, focusing primarily on Indigenous responses to climate change.

Abstract A large body of research now indicates that climate likely matters for conflict. This climate–conflict scholarship, however, has involved divergent findings, sometimes strident disagreement, and resulting limits to the usability of the scholarship for policymakers and practitioners. This viewpoint essay draws from recent expert assessments of climate–conflict linkages to position the research field among climate change research and assessment more broadly. We explore potential insights from the climate realm. As is often the case for climate change research, science–society dynamics are inherent in scholarship on climate and conflict. They contribute to contestation about the state of knowledge, the best ways to characterize it, and its implications for societal choices and investments. Our critique is grounded in the literature evaluating policy-relevant climate change assessment across diverse disciplines, from sea-level-rise adaptation science to energy-system modeling. Through comparisons with such fields, this perspective article considers several implications for climate–conflict knowledge production. We examine, in particular, the necessity of integrating diverse lines of evidence to understand the risks of responding to societally relevant uncertainties and priorities, and of encouraging interactions among researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. The experiences of other climate change disciplines can provide inspiration for potential directions for climate, conflict, and security scholarship. They include risk framings in integrating underlying evidence, through to options for supporting the interactions among researchers and societies.

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Researchers have documented that observations of climate change impacts reported by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities coincide with scientific measurements of such impacts. However, insights from Indigenous and Local Knowledge are not yet completely included in international climate change research and policy fora. In this article, we compare observations of climate change impacts detected by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities from around the world and collected through a literature review (n=198 case studies), with climate scientists' opinions on the relevance of such information for climate change research. Scientists' opinions were collected through a web survey among climate change researchers from universities and research centres in Spain (n=191). In the survey, we asked about the need to collect local level data regarding 68 different groups of indicators of climate change impacts to improve the current knowledge, and about the feasibility of using Indigenous and local knowledge in climate change studies. Results show consensus on the need to continue collecting local level data from all groups of indicators to get a better understanding of climate change impacts, particularly on impacts on the biological system. However, while scientists of our study considered that Indigenous and local knowledge could mostly contribute to detect climate change impacts on the biological and socioeconomic systems, the literature review shows that information on impacts on these systems is rarely collected; researchers instead have mostly documented the impacts on the climatic and physical systems reported by Indigenous and local knowledge.

A quantitative descriptionof the growth of climate change science is presented based on the increase in the number of abstracts of scientific publications dealing with the many aspects of this broad subject. Thisnumber now totals 7000 and is doubling every 11 years. The annual rate ofpublication per author and number of authors per paper in climate change science, 1.75 and 2.5respectively, were similar to those for scientific publications in general but, based on theU.S. data, the cost per publishing scientist is very high largely because of the sums allocatedto satellite programs related to climate change research. The total global cost of currentclimate change research is estimated at three billion U.S. dollars annually. Two plausible but verydifferent interpretations of the growth curve of climate change research are presented andused to discuss its future. The importance of extra-scientific factors in controlling thegrowth of climate change studies is emphasized, limiting the predictive value of thescientometric analysis presented.