Author(s)

RAYMUNDO MAYORGA-CERVANTES, EDITH MONTESINOS-PEDRO, NORBERTO DOMÍNGUEZ-RAMÍREZ

Abstract

Climate change represents a long-term variability, namely decades of state of the climate, as identified by means of a statistical analysis containing a record of weather changes over time. These climate changes, which include temperature and precipitation mean values, may arise from natural processes within the same climate system or from anthropogenic events. Therefore, it is a mistake to attribute any temperature changes or variations to climate change without having some records or other comparable climate studies, as climate change entails a change in all climate features as determined by meteorological variables. Both in Mexico and worldwide, weather changes have occurred and have been attributed to climate change. However, in populations where floods are recurring, it is worth learning what population understands by climate change, if they find it to be a cause of floods, and why. To this end, a population was sampled (the town of Peñón de los Baños, in Mexico City), and semistructured interviews on flood causes were used to ask people about the connection of floods with climate change. The importance of this research was not only to learn whether climate change is a cause of floods, as compared to the science behind what climate change is, but what the population is suggesting that should be done to solve the problem of floods, and to take local actions that contribute directly to control climate change.

Keywords

climate change, perception, floods, mitigation, prevention