Climate generations

Pierre Jean-Daniel Loty, Institut de Formation et de Recherche Démographiques (IFORD)

Climate generations Abstract: The issue of climate change is now shaping the future of societies. The type of development needed is determined by reliable data on climate likely to direct action aiming at long term protection of our climate and environment. The purpose of this paper is to construct the concept of climate generation, based on the demographic concept of generation. The idea springs from the similarity between intensity and schedule in demographic and whether events. Construction of climate generation will supply climate science with rich, powerful indicators likely to provide fine-tuned longitudinal and cross-sectional climatic cohort analysis. In demographic studies, it is common to guess the future behavior of present generations using information on past and present generations. Similarly, it will be possible to project future climate trends based on current and previous climatic behavior.