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Is populism the unsurpassable horizon of our own time or is it a temptation that should at all costs be resisted? Who, and to what end, does the jargon of populism serve? To answer these questions, Alexander Stagnell, Gustav Strandberg, David Payne, and their contributors trace the socio-historical significance of the concept of ‘The People’ in western philosophy and its relationship to the trend of populist politics today. Bringing together scholars from the fields of aesthetics, critical, cultural and political theory, philosophy, and rhetoric, this volume critically explores the issues facing contemporary society today. With an international team of authors, each chapter speaks to a range of contexts uniquely affected by populism today, including Sweden, Brazil, Germany, Austria, France and the UK. As political and economic establishments face a crisis of legitimacy, Populism and The People in Contemporary Critical Thought reveals the shaky foundations on which the concept of ‘The People’ rests. Engaging with critical theory, feminist theory, Marxism, phenomenology, and psychoanalysis, this collection highlights how ‘The People’ comes to stand in for both belonging and exclusion, enabling us to see the uses and abuses of such terminology as pressing theoretical and political concerns.

Two ensembles of climate simulations, one global and one regional, are used to investigate model errors and projected climate change in seasonal mean temperature and precipitation over South Asia. The global ensemble includes ten global climate models (GCMs). In the regional ensemble all ten GCMs are downscaled by a regional climate model—RCA4 over South Asia at 50 km resolution. Our focus is on the Indian Summer Monsoon season (June–August) and we show that RCA4 can reproduce, reduce or amplify large-scale GCM biases depending on regions and GCMs. However, the RCA4 bias pattern in precipitation is similar across the simulations, regardless of forcing GCM, indicating a strong RCA4 imprint on the simulated precipitation. For climate change, the results indicate, that RCA4 can change the signal projected by the GCM ensemble and its individual members. There are a few RCA4 simulations with a substantial reduction of projected warming by RCA4 compared to the driving GCMs and with a large regional increase in precipitation absent in the GCMs. We also found that in a number of subregions warm RCA4 biases are related to stronger warming and vice versa, while there is no such dependency in the GCM ensemble. Neither the GCM nor the RCA4 ensemble shows any significant dependency between projected changes and biases for precipitation. Our results implicate that using only RCMs and excluding GCMs, a commonly established approach, can significantly change the message on future regional climate change.

Extratropical cyclones are the dominant weather pattern in the midlatitudes and cause up to 80% of precipitation extremes in some regions of Europe with a large societal and economical impact. Using a regional climate model and a cyclone-tracking algorithm, we study how idealized deforestation and afforestation of Europe affect long-term changes in the number and intensity of cyclones, and their effects on precipitation. The number of cyclones over Europe is smaller for afforestation compared to deforestation, with differences starting from 10% in regions near the west European coast and increasing towards the east to reach 80%. This decrease is caused by the larger surface roughness in afforestation. The winter precipitation extremes are considerably reduced with afforestation, without a large decrease in mean precipitation because of the balancing effect of increased weak and moderate precipitation. The mean precipitation increases over central and southern Europe as a result of the summer precipitation increase caused by larger evapotranspiration and access to deeper soil moisture in the presence of trees. These different region-specific effects of afforestation are generally positive and could provide an important mitigation tool in a changing climate.

Since the 'Paris agreement' in 2015 there has been much focus on what a +1.5 °C or +2 °C warmer world would look like. Since the focus lies on policy relevant global warming targets, or specific warming levels (SWLs), rather than a specific point in time, projections are pooled together to form SWL ensembles based on the target temperature rather than emission scenario. This study uses an ensemble of CMIP5 global model projections to analyse how well SWL ensembles represent the stabilized climate of global warming targets. The results show that the SWL ensembles exhibit significant trends that reflect the transient nature of the RCP scenarios. These trends have clear effect on the timing and clustering of monthly cold and hot extremes, even though the effect on the temperature of the extreme months is less visible. In many regions there is a link between choice of RCP scenario used in the SWL ensemble and climate change signal in the highest monthly temperatures. In other regions there is no such clear-cut link. From this we conclude that comprehensive analyses of what prospects the different global warming targets bring about will require stabilization scenarios. Awaiting such targeted scenarios we suggest that prudent use of SWL scenarios, taking their characteristics and limitations into account, may serve as reasonable proxies in many situations.

Objectives Respiratory diseases are ranked second in Europe in terms of mortality, prevalence and costs. Studies have shown that extreme heat has a large impact on mortality and morbidity, with a large relative increase for respiratory diseases. Expected increases in mean temperature and the number of extreme heat events over the coming decades due to climate change raise questions about the possible health impacts. We assess the number of heat-related respiratory hospital admissions in a future with a different climate. Design A Europe-wide health impact assessment. Setting An assessment for each of the EU27 countries. Methods Heat-related hospital admissions under a changing climate are projected using multicity epidemiological exposure–response relationships applied to gridded population data and country-specific baseline respiratory hospital admission rates. Times-series of temperatures are simulated with a regional climate model based on four global climate models, under two greenhouse gas emission scenarios. Results Between a reference period (1981–2010) and a future period (2021–2050), the total number of respiratory hospital admissions attributed to heat is projected to be larger in southern Europe, with three times more heat attributed respiratory hospital admissions in the future period. The smallest change was estimated in Eastern Europe with about a twofold increase. For all of Europe, the number of heat-related respiratory hospital admissions is projected to be 26 000 annually in the future period compared with 11 000 in the reference period. Conclusions The results suggest that the projected effects of climate change on temperature and the number of extreme heat events could substantially influence respiratory morbidity across Europe.

Despite the importance of salient, credible, and legitimate climate information for climate action, studies demonstrate a persistent usability gap between the information provided and what users find relevant and useful. Drawing from scientific literature and our experiences working with a Swedish national climate service, we explore and reflect on challenges and barriers with climate services using an analytical framework of four pillars. Based on this, we provide four overarching recommendations (and fundamental needs): (i) Advancing data production and analysis, (ii) Establishing a climate service collaboration forum, (iii) Fostering active users, and (iv) Prioritising long-lasting funding. These recommendations are directed to policymakers and the climate service community to transition the production and use of climate information from short-term studies and initiatives to long-lasting processes. We argue that adopting these recommendations can support climate-resilient development through strengthening climate service infrastructure and enhancing capabilities and skills of the actors involved.

Changes in vegetation are known to have an impact on climate via biogeophysical effects such as changes in albedo and heat fluxes. Here, the effects of maximum afforestation and deforestation are studied over Europe. This is done by comparing three regional climate model simulations—one with present-day vegetation, one with maximum afforestation, and one with maximum deforestation. In general, afforestation leads to more evapotranspiration (ET), which leads to decreased near-surface temperature, whereas deforestation leads to less ET, which leads to increased temperature. There are exceptions, mainly in regions with little water available for ET. In such regions, changes in albedo are relatively more important for temperature. The simulated biogeophysical effect on seasonal mean temperature varies between 0.5° and 3°C across Europe. The effect on minimum and maximum temperature is larger than that on mean temperature. Increased (decreased) mean temperature is associated with an even larger increase (decrease) in maximum summer (minimum winter) temperature. The effect on precipitation is found to be small. Two additional simulations in which vegetation is changed in only one-half of the domain were also performed. These simulations show that the climatic effects from changed vegetation in Europe are local. The results imply that vegetation changes have had, and will have, a significant impact on local climate in Europe; the climatic response is comparable to climate change under RCP2.6. Therefore, effects from vegetation change should be taken into account when simulating past, present, and future climate for this region. The results also imply that vegetation changes could be used to mitigate local climate change.

We investigate European regional climate change for time periods when the global mean temperature has increased by 1.5 and 2 degrees C compared to pre-industrial conditions. Results are based on regional downscaling of transient climate change simulations for the 21st century with global climate models (GCMs) from the fifth-phase Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). We use an ensemble of EURO-CORDEX high-resolution regional climate model (RCM) simulations undertaken at a computational grid of 12.5 km horizontal resolution covering Europe. The ensemble consists of a range of RCMs that have been used for downscaling different GCMs under the RCP8.5 forcing scenario. The results indicate considerable near-surface warming already at the lower 1.5 degrees C of warming. Regional warming exceeds that of the global mean in most parts of Europe, being the strongest in the northernmost parts of Europe in winter and in the southernmost parts of Europe together with parts of Scandinavia in summer. Changes in precipitation, which are less robust than the ones in temperature, include increases in the north and decreases in the south with a borderline that migrates from a northerly position in summer to a southerly one in winter. Some of these changes are already seen at 1.5 degrees C of warming but are larger and more robust at 2 degrees C. Changes in near-surface wind speed are associated with a large spread among individual ensemble members at both warming levels. Relatively large areas over the North Atlantic and some parts of the continent show decreasing wind speed while some ocean areas in the far north show increasing wind speed. The changes in temperature, precipitation and wind speed are shown to be modified by changes in mean sea level pressure, indicating a strong relationship with the large-scale circulation and its internal variability on decade-long timescales. By comparing to a larger ensemble of CMIP5 GCMs we find that the RCMs can alter the results, leading either to attenuation or amplification of the climate change signal in the underlying GCMs. We find that the RCMs tend to produce less warming and more precipitation (or less drying) in many areas in both winter and summer.

We investigate European regional climate change for time periods when the global mean temperature has increased by 1.5 and 2 °C compared to pre-industrial conditions. Results are based on regional downscaling of transient climate change simulations for the 21st century with global climate models (GCMs) from the fifth-phase Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). We use an ensemble of EURO-CORDEX high-resolution regional climate model (RCM) simulations undertaken at a computational grid of 12.5 km horizontal resolution covering Europe. The ensemble consists of a range of RCMs that have been used for downscaling different GCMs under the RCP8.5 forcing scenario. The results indicate considerable near-surface warming already at the lower 1.5 °C of warming. Regional warming exceeds that of the global mean in most parts of Europe, being the strongest in the northernmost parts of Europe in winter and in the southernmost parts of Europe together with parts of Scandinavia in summer. Changes in precipitation, which are less robust than the ones in temperature, include increases in the north and decreases in the south with a borderline that migrates from a northerly position in summer to a southerly one in winter. Some of these changes are already seen at 1.5 °C of warming but are larger and more robust at 2 °C. Changes in near-surface wind speed are associated with a large spread among individual ensemble members at both warming levels. Relatively large areas over the North Atlantic and some parts of the continent show decreasing wind speed while some ocean areas in the far north show increasing wind speed. The changes in temperature, precipitation and wind speed are shown to be modified by changes in mean sea level pressure, indicating a strong relationship with the large-scale circulation and its internal variability on decade-long timescales. By comparing to a larger ensemble of CMIP5 GCMs we find that the RCMs can alter the results, leading either to attenuation or amplification of the climate change signal in the underlying GCMs. We find that the RCMs tend to produce less warming and more precipitation (or less drying) in many areas in both winter and summer.