Monitoring climate change with Dragonflies: Foreword

Climate change has become a cold reality for the public, or a hot disaster for those who are suff ering from extreme heat-related events such as the destructive fi res in Australia in early 2009. Th e symptoms of climate change are no longer possible to ignore, with polar ice caps melting, glaciers receding, and the distribution of breeding birds steadily moving northward. Th e combination of sound science, as illustrated through the regular reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); the growing public awareness as illustrated by the Oscar-winning fi lm, “An Inconvenient Truth” narrated by Al Gore; and the solid economic case made by the Report prepared for the British Government by former World Bank Chief Economist, Nicholas Stern, have been crucial in putting the issue squarely before the public. And individuals, the private sector, and governments are all responding in various ways. Terms like “carbon sequestration”, “carbon footprint”, and “energy effi ciency” are now part of the public vocabulary. All of this indicates that society at large may well be fi nally taking the issue seriously. But despite all of this, our understanding of the dynamics of climate change remains surprisingly poor. But perhaps this is not so surprising, given the great complexity of the global climate system, and the diversity of its symptoms in various parts of the world. An eff ective means of providing solid scientifi c evidence for the changing conditions would be a boon to decision-makers, from an individual to a Head of State. Monitoring Climate Change with Dragonfl ies provides a novel and cost-eff ective approach, using dragonfl ies as a means of monitoring climate change. As the authors BioRisk 5: 1–2 (2010)