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A need for actionable climate projections across the Global South

Nature Climate Change volume 13, pages 883–886 (2023)Cite this article

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Inconsistent climate projections for much of the Global South from six generations of IPCC assessments have compounded the many challenges it faces in adapting to climate change. Here, we propose using emerging technologies and strengthening international collaborations to address these challenges.

The Global South, which hosts the majority of the world’s population, is unequivocally more vulnerable to climate change than the Global North, owing to widespread poverty, income inequality and its heavy dependence on climate-sensitive sectors. By contrast, the affluent Global North, which mostly consists of high-income countries, is better poised to face climate change, particularly in implementing mitigation and adaptation policies. Climate risks are exacerbated for the Global South because climate projections that inform adaptation policies are found to be inconsistent over many of its most vulnerable regions (Box 1) — a major pitfall in effective policymaking. Therefore, it is imperative to provide actionable climate projections for the Global South, although doing so is a challenge.

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Fig. 1: Spatial distribution of projected changes in precipitation and surface air temperature.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the United Nations and its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for advancing the knowledge of climate change. The research is partly supported by the DST Centre of Excellence in Climate Modeling at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and YES Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Atmospheric Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IITD), New Delhi, Delhi, India

    Saroj K. Mishra, Pankaj Upadhyaya & Narayan Prasad Keshri

  2. Climate Analysis Section, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, USA

    John T. Fasullo

  3. Center for Global Change Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Popat Salunke

  4. Council on Energy, Environment and Water, New Delhi, Delhi, India

    Arunabha Ghosh

  5. Department of Geosciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Asiya B. Sainudeen

  6. Indian Ocean Operational Research Center, Second Institute of Oceanography, Hangzhou, China

    In-Sik Kang

  7. Center of Excellence for Climate Change Research, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

    In-Sik Kang

Authors
  1. Saroj K. Mishra
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  2. Pankaj Upadhyaya
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  8. In-Sik Kang
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Contributions

S.K.M. and P.U. conceived the study and designed it with input from J.T.F. All authors contributed to the analyses and writing of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Saroj K. Mishra.

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Mishra, S.K., Upadhyaya, P., Fasullo, J.T. et al. A need for actionable climate projections across the Global South. Nat. Clim. Chang. 13, 883–886 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-023-01778-2

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