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Climate change and variability have created widespread risks for farmers’ food and livelihood security in the Himalayas. However, the extent of impacts experienced and perceived by farmers varies, as there is substantial diversity in the demographic, social, and economic conditions. Therefore, it is essential to understand how farmers with different resource-endowment and household characteristics perceive climatic risks. This study aims to analyze how farmer types perceive climate change processes and its impacts to gain insight into locally differentiated concerns by farming communities. The present study is based in the Uttarakhand state of Indian Western Himalayas. We examine farmer perceptions of climate change and how perceived impacts differ across farmer types. Primary household interviews with farming households (n = 241) were done in Chakrata and Bhikiyasian tehsil in Uttarakhand, India. In addition, annual and seasonal patterns of historical data of temperature (1951–2013) and precipitation (1901–2013) were analyzed to estimate trends and validate farmers’ perception. Using statistical methods farmer typology was constructed, and five unique farmer types are identified. Majority of respondents across all farmer types noticed a decrease in summer and winter precipitation and an increase in summer temperature. Whereas the perceptions of impacts of climate change diverged across farmer types, as specific farmer types exclusively experienced few impacts. Impact of climatic risks on household food security and income was significantly perceived stronger by low-resource-endowed subsistence farmers, whereas the landless farmer type exclusively felt impacts on the communities social bond. This deeper understanding of the differentiated perception of impacts has strong implications for agricultural and development policymaking, highlighting the need for providing flexible adaptation options rather than specific solutions to avoid inequalities in fulfilling the needs of the heterogeneous farming communities.

Assessing vulnerability to climate change and extremes is the first step towards guiding climate change adaptation. It provides the basis to decide ‘what’ adaptation measures are needed ‘where’. Vulnerability which is defined as a function of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity, differs spatially and evolves temporally. Therefore, it is imperative to understand the dynamics of vulnerability at sub-national scales to be prepared for and respond to current and future climatic risks. This paper focuses on Ethiopia where a sub-national understanding of vulnerability dynamics in smallholder agriculture systems is missing to date. The paper assesses the vulnerability of crop-based smallholder systems in Ethiopia for the past (1996–2005), current (2006–2015), and two future (2036–2045 and 2066–2075) climate scenarios using an indicator-based approach. The future scenarios are based on two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) RCP 2.6 and RCP 6.0 from four general circulation models. Results show the emergence of highly vulnerable zones that were missing in the past scenario. With Paris agreement pathway, keeping global warming under 2 °C (RCP 2.6), reduction in vulnerability of 10% of the zones is noted in far future (2066–75) as compared to RCP 6.0 where the exposure increases, making 30% of the zones highly vulnerable. The projected increase in exposure to climatic hazards will worsen the vulnerability of smallholder agricultural systems in future unless the current adaptation deficit is sufficiently addressed. This study maps the temporal dynamics of vulnerability unlike the prevailing snapshot assessments at subnational-level for Ethiopia. The study seeks to assist the decision-making process to build resilience to climate change in Ethiopia and other low-income countries with similar geophysical and socio-economic conditions.

Adaptation to climate change is often conceptualized as a dichotomy, with responses being either planned (formal and structured) or autonomous (organic and self-organized, often known as “everyday adaptation”). Recent literature on adaptation responses has highlighted the existence and importance of the interplay between autonomous and planned adaptation, but examination of this interaction has been limited to date. We use a global database of 1682 peer-reviewed articles on adaptation responses to systematically examine autonomous and planned adaptations, with an emphasis on how these types of adaptations interact with one another. We propose a third category, mixed adaptation, which demonstrates characteristics of both autonomous and planned types, and which recognizes nuances in how organization, external support, formality, and autonomy manifest in the fuzzy space between the two. We find that more than one-third of articles reporting on adaptation responses fall into this mixed category, with cases across sectors and world regions. We develop a qualitative typology of mixed adaptation that identifies nine ways that autonomous and planned adaptation interact and influence each other both positively and negatively. Based on these findings, we argue for more nuanced examinations of the interplay between autonomous and planned adaptation and for conceptualizing adaptation planning as a continuum between the two rather than a dichotomy. Exploring the patterns of interplay from a large database of adaptation responses offers new insights on the relative roles of both autonomous and planned adaptation for mobilizing adaptation pathways in locally relevant, scalable, effective, and equitable ways.

The editors of the Community Science Exchange want to say a big thank you to the 29 reviewers for reviewing for Community Science in 2023. Peer‐review is essential to the process of doing and publishing scientific findings, and will be a pillar of our successful expansion of science by, with and for communities into mainstream science. Many papers start with an inquiry, allowing us to assist prospective authors in inclusion of community voice. These consultations also allow us to respect reviewers' time as we only send papers for review that meet our criteria. Plain Language Summary As a new journal, we still have few enough reviewers that we do not want to identify them by name. But you know who you are! Please accept our sincere thanks for generously sharing your expertise and working to improve Community Science. Key Points The editors thank the 2023 peer reviewers

Teleconnections, such as El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), and the Madden Julian Oscillation (MJO), are often analyzed in their mature phase of variability with the recognition that the teleconnections have an evolving spatiotemporal scale. Jianfeng Wang [11] presented the impacts of harsh weather conditions on the transportation system using a stratified Cox model and a heterogeneous Markov chain model, and showed that weather variables, including temperature, humidity, snow depth, and ice/snow precipitation, have a significant impact on train performance. To improve the simulation of tropical cyclones over the North Indian Ocean (NIO), Gundapuneni Venkata Rao [12] investigated the impact of seven microphysical parameterization schemes using the ARW model. All published 13 studies contributed significantly to our existing knowledge and will appeal to the broader society of Earth scientists and modellers given the problems they face in understanding the spatio-temporal variability of the climate variables, coupled between the teleconnections and extreme events.

With the growing recognition to myriad forms of current and future threats in the mountain agriculture systems,there is a pressing need to holistically understand the vulnerability of mountain agriculture communities.The study aims to assess the biophysical and social vulnerability of agriculture communities using an indicator-based approach for the state of Uttarakhand,India.A total of 14 indicators were used to capture biophysical vulnerability and 22 for social vulnerability profiles of15285 villages.Vulnerability analysis was done at village level with weights assigned to each indicator using Analytical Hierarchical Process（AHP）.The results of the study highlight the presence of very high biophysical vulnerability（0.82 ± 0.10） and high social vulnerability（0.65 ± 0.15） within the state.Based on the results,it was found that incidences of high biophysical vulnerability coincide with presence of intensified agriculture land and absence of dense forest.Higher social vulnerability scores were found in villages with an absence of local institutions（like Self Helping Groups（SHGs））,negligible infrastructure facilities and higher occupational dependence on agriculture.A contrast was observed in the vulnerability scores of villages present in the three different altitudinal zones in the study area,indicating respective vulnerability generating conditions existing in these three zones.Biophysical vulnerability was recorded to be highest in the villages falling in the lower zone and lowest in the upper zone villages;whereas,social vulnerability was found to be highest in the middle zone villages and lowest in lower zone villages.Our study aids policy makers in identifying areas for intervention to expedite agriculture adaptation planning in the state.Additionally,the adaptation programmes in the region need to be more context-specific to accommodate the differential altitudinal vulnerability profiles.

The editors thank the 2022 peer reviewers

More settlements will suffer as heavy rains and unregulated construction destabilize slopes in the tropics, models show. More settlements will suffer as heavy rains and unregulated construction destabilize slopes in the tropics, models show. Low-angle view of people gathering at a damaged building at a mudslide site in Freetown, Sierra Leone

Smallholder farmers’ responses to the climate-induced agricultural changes are not uniform but rather diverse, as response adaptation strategies are embedded in the heterogonous agronomic, social, economic, and institutional conditions. There is an urgent need to understand the diversity within the farming households, identify the main drivers and understand its relationship with household adaptation strategies. Typology construction provides an efficient method to understand farmer diversity by delineating groups with common characteristics. In the present study, based in the Uttarakhand state of Indian Western Himalayas, five farmer types were identified on the basis of resource endowment and agriculture orientation characteristics. Factor analysis followed by sequential agglomerative hierarchial and K-means clustering was use to delineate farmer types. Examination of adaptation strategies across the identified farmer types revealed that mostly contrasting and type-specific bundle of strategies are adopted by farmers to ensure livelihood security. Our findings show that strategies that incurred high investment, such as infrastructural development, are limited to high resource-endowed farmers. In contrast, the low resourced farmers reported being progressively disengaging with farming as a livelihood option. Our results suggest that the proponents of effective adaptation policies in the Himalayan region need to be cognizant of the nuances within the farming communities to capture the diverse and multiple adaptation needs and constraints of the farming households.

Assessing global progress on human adaptation to climate change is an urgent priority. Although the literature on adaptation to climate change is rapidly expanding, little is known about the actual extent of implementation. We systematically screened >48,000 articles using machine learning methods and a global network of 126 researchers. Our synthesis of the resulting 1,682 articles presents a systematic and comprehensive global stocktake of implemented human adaptation to climate change. Documented adaptations were largely fragmented, local and incremental, with limited evidence of transformational adaptation and negligible evidence of risk reduction outcomes. We identify eight priorities for global adaptation research: assess the effectiveness of adaptation responses, enhance the understanding of limits to adaptation, enable individuals and civil society to adapt, include missing places, scholars and scholarship, understand private sector responses, improve methods for synthesizing different forms of evidence, assess the adaptation at different temperature thresholds, and improve the inclusion of timescale and the dynamics of responses.Determining progress in adaptation to climate change is challenging, yet critical as climate change impacts increase. A stocktake of the scientific literature on implemented adaptation now shows that adaptation is mostly fragmented and incremental, with evidence lacking for its impact on reducing risk.