| Adaptation | Adjustment in natural human systems to a new or changing environment. Activities that reduce the negative impacts of climate change and/or take advantage of new opportunities that arise from those impacts. Adaptations can be anticipatory (taken before the impacts are observed) or reactive (taken after the impacts have occurred). Adaptation actions can be planned (through deliberate policies and planning) or reactive (through spontaneous, in the moment responses) (Warren and Lemmen 2014; IPCC 2014). |
| Adaptation benefits | The avoided costs or the benefits of following the adoption and implementation of adaptation actions (IPCC 2014). |
| Adaptation costs | The costs of planning, preparing for, facilitating, and implementing adaptation actions (IPCC 2014). |
| Adaptive capacity | A measure of a system’s ability to adjust to change, to take advantage of the opportunities, or cope with the consequences. Used to describe a set of conditions that may allow adaptation to external stressors. Social indicators of high adaptive capacity include social capital, institutional learning, network restructuring, use of experiential knowledge, and flexibility in problem solving. Ecosystems with high adaptive capacity may exhibit high functional redundancy, connectivity among habitats, or contain species with high population diversity or phenotypic plasticity ((Bohensky et al. 2010, Marshall et al. 2010, Biggs et al. 2012, IPCC 2014). |
| Adverse effects | One or more of the following impacts: Reduction of the quality of a natural ecosystem for any use or value that can be made from it;Injury or damage to property, species, or community;Harm or material discomfort to anyone;Negative effects on human health;Making a place or ecosystem unfit for human use values;Loss of enjoyment of a natural place;Interference with normal life or business. |
| Climate change | A change in the mean state of the climate, or in climate variability, that persists for decades or longer. This can be reflected in warming of mean air or water temperatures, and also changes in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as heat waves, heavy rain, storms, and drought. Recent and rapid climate change is attributed to human activities, including the burning of fossil fuels and management actions such as land use changes, that alter the composition of the global atmosphere in addition to natural climate variability (UNFCCC, IPCC 2014). |
| Climate scenario | A projection of future climate conditions. |
| Climate variability | Fluctuations in climate over a shorter term that differ from long term averages or trends, over seasons or several years, such as the El Niño Southern Oscillation phenomenon (UNFCCC). |
| Impact | The consequences or product of climate change, such as changes to air temperature or ocean temperature. Something that logically occurs from a condition related to climate change or climate variability. |
| IPCC | Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. A group of several thousand qualified experts who review and assess, periodically, all published climate change research. |
| Hazard | A source of potential harm, or a situation with the potential for causing harm, in terms of damage to human health, property, the environment, other things of value, or a combination of these. |
| Ecosystem based management (EBM) | An adaptive approach to managing human and natural systems so that healthy functioning ecosystems may coexist with human communities. The MaPP EBM framework has three key elements: Ecological integrity, Human well-being, and Governance. |
| Resilience | The ability of a system to maintain its current identity, structure, and function through change or disturbance (Adger 2000, Walker et al. 2004). |
| Representative Climate Pathway (RCP) | RCPs describe potential 21st century scenarios of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, atmospheric GHG emissions, aerosols, and land use impacts. RCPs are used for making projections as to the impacts of climate change, and are based on the factors that drive human GHG emissions: population size, economic activities, lifestyle choices, energy use, land use patterns, technology adoption, and climate policy. Hence, each of the RCP scenarios directly relate to the choices made by global society (IPCC 2014, PCIC 2013). |
| Risk | The change of loss as a product of the frequency of occurrence and the severity of the consequence, such as an adverse effect to the environment or property or other thing of value. The level of risk is also affected by the impact to stakeholders. |
| Sea surface height (SSH) | A measure of the difference between the actual height of the sea surface and that which it would have been if the ocean were at rest; the thickness of the water column from the seabed to the free surface of the ocean can be affected by tides, stratification, winds, and currents. |
| Stakeholder | Any individual, group, or organization able to affect, be affected by, or believe they might be affected by a decision or activity. Decision makers are also stakeholders. |
| UNFCCC | The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992). |
| Vulnerability | A measure of a system’s susceptibility to change or a particular impact, and the inability to cope with that impact. A function of the exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity of a system. Vulnerability to climate change is therefore the function of the character, size, and rate of climate variation to which a system is exposed to, its sensitivity, and its adaptive capacity (IPCC 2014). |
