Recent Scientific Findings and Future Outlook on Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability in the Working Group II Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of IPCC

Abstract

The Working Group II contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4/WG2) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) summarized the recent scientific findings on the revelation and future projection of climate change impacts, the adaptation for reducing the climate change impacts and vulnerability. We introduce the summary of observed results and future projection of climate change impacts on natural environment and human society reported by AR4/WG2. We focus on the observed results and future projection climate change impacts in Japan as well as the freshwater resources and management. Furthermore, we argue the future subjects on the research for the freshwater resources and managements in addition to the future tasks on the research for the climate change impacts assessment toward the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC (AR5).