Implications of regional variations in climate change vulnerability and mitigation behaviour for social-climate dynamics

How regional heterogeneity in social and cultural processes drive–and respond to–climate dynamics is little studied. Here we present a coupled social-climate model stratified across five world regions and parameterised with geophysical, economic and social survey data. We find that support for mitigation evolves in a highly variable fashion across regions, according to socio-economics, climate vulnerability, and feedback from changing temperatures. Social learning and social norms can amplify existing sentiment about mitigation, leading to better or worse global warming outcomes depending on the region. Moreover, mitigation in one region, as mediated by temperature dynamics, can influence other regions to act, or just sit back, thus driving cross-regional heterogeneity in mitigation opinions. Under high emissions scenarios, the peak temperature anomaly varies by several degrees Celsius depending on how these interactions unfold. Our model exemplifies an exploratory framework for studying how global geophysical processes interact with population-scale concerns to determine future sustainability outcomes. Many climate models now include economic variables, and this study shows how also integrating powerful social and cultural forces can dramatically alter predictions of both social and climate dynamics, and their diverse manifestation in world regions.