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1
Nazrul, Islam Md. Studies on summer monsoon rainfall using regional climate model PRECIS. Dhaka: SAARC Meteorological Research Centre, 2009.
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2
Md, Nazrul Islam. Studies on summer monsoon rainfall using regional climate model PRECIS. Dhaka: SAARC Meteorological Research Centre, 2009.
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3
Md, Nazrul Islam. Studies on summer monsoon rainfall using regional climate model PRECIS. Dhaka: SAARC Meteorological Research Centre, 2009.
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4
Abegg, Christoph. Parameterisierung atmosphärischer Grenzschichtprozesse in einem regionalen Klimamodell der Arktis =: Parameterisation of atmospheric boundary layer processes in a regional climate model of the Arctic. Bremerhaven: Alfred-Wegener-Institut für Polar- und Meeresforschung, 1999.
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5
Heck, Pamela. European-scale vegetation-climate feedbacks since the time of the Romans: A sensitivity study using a regional climate model. Zurich: Geographisches Institut, Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule Zurich, 1999.
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6
Agoramoorthy, Govindasamy. Sadguru model of rural development mitigates climate change in India's drylands. New Delhi: Daya Publishing House, a division of Astral International Pvt. Ltd., 2015.
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7
Meissner, Cathérine. High-resolution sensitivity studies with the regional climate model COSMO-CLM. Karlsruhe: Univ.-Verl. Karlsruhe, 2008.
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8
Grotch, Stanley L. Regional intercomparisons of general circulation model predictions and historical climate data. Washington, D.C: U.S. Dept. of Energy, Office of Energy Research, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Carbon Dioxide Research Division, 1988.
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9
E, Morris R., and Atmospheric Research and Exposure Assessment Laboratory (U.S.), eds. Sensitivity of a regional oxidant model to variations in climate parameters. Research Triangle Park, NC: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Atmospheric Research and Exposure Assessment Laboratory, 1989.
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10
Saha, Subodh Kumar. The influence of an improved soil scheme on the arctic climate in a regional climate model (RCM): Der Einfluss eines verbesserten Bodenschemas auf das arktische Klima in einem regionalen Klimamodell. Bremerhaven: Alfred-Wegener-Institut für Polar- und Meeresforschung, 2006.
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11
Dorn, Wolfgang. Natürliche Klimavariationen der Arktis in einem regionalen hochauflösenden Atmosphärenmodell =: Natural climate variations of the Arctic in a regional high-resolution atmosphere model. Bremerhaven: Alfred-Wegener-Institut für Polar- und Meeresforschung, 2002.
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12
Tsing-Chang, Chen, and United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration., eds. Equatorial waves simulated by the NCAR community climate model: Technical report. Ames, Iowa: Atmospheric Sciences Program, Dept. of Earth Sciences, Iowa State University, 1988.
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13
Nuttal, Pat, ed. Climate, ticks and disease. Wallingford: CABI, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1079/9781789249637.0000.
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Abstract This book is a collection of 77 expert opinions arranged in three sections. Section 1 on "Climate" sets the scene, including predictions of future climate change, how climate change affects ecosystems, and how to model projections of the spatial distribution of ticks and tick-borne infections under different climate change scenarios. Section 2 on "Ticks" focuses on ticks (although tick-borne pathogens creep in) and whether or not changes in climate affect the tick biosphere, from physiology to ecology. Section 3 on "Disease" focuses on the tick-host-pathogen biosphere, ranging from the triangle of tick-host-pathogen molecular interactions to disease ecology in various regions and ecosystems of the world. Each of these three sections ends with a synopsis that aims to give a brief overview of all the expert opinions within the section. The book concludes with Section 4 (Final Synopsis and Future Predictions). This synopsis attempts to summarize evidence provided by the experts of tangible impacts of climate change on ticks and tick-borne infections. In constructing their expert opinions, contributors give their views on what the future might hold. The final synopsis provides a snapshot of their expert thoughts on the future.
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Grotch, Stanley L. An intercomparison of general circulation model predictions of regional climate change: Presented at the International Conference on "Modelling of Global Climate Change and Variability," Hamburg, Federal Republic of Germany, September 1989. [Springfield, Va: Available from National Technical Information Service, 1990.
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15
Anufriev, Valeriy, Yuliya Gudim, and Aytkali Kaminov. Sustainable development. Energy efficiency. Green economy. ru: INFRA-M Academic Publishing LLC., 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.12737/1226403.
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The monograph examines the problems of sustainable development and energy efficiency using the scientific and methodological approach proposed by the authors for the development of regional fuel and energy programs based on the KhMAO, the Sverdlovsk region, and the oil and gas production enterprise JSC Yuganskneftegaz, and presents the results of the environmental and economic assessment. This approach allows us to evaluate and select the most effective investment project for the utilization of associated petroleum gas from the point of view of energy, environmental and climate security on comparable indicators (tons, rubles). The authors proposed to distinguish from more than 200 UN indicators four basic indicators: the change in the green area (country, region, city, household) for the year; the level of energy efficiency; the amount of pollutants released per year; the annual amount of greenhouse gas emissions. It is proposed to consider the possibility of using the" energy " ruble of S. A. Podolinsky (kW / h) as a possible world reserve currency. Taking into account the unique experience of the region's participation in various projects of sustainable development, energy-efficient and low-carbon economy, it is proposed to create a market for waste and greenhouse gas emissions on the basis of the trade exchange of the Sverdlovsk region as a pilot platform for the implementation of the green economy. The history of the term "green economy", the essence of this concept is considered; the results of the application of green economy in different countries are shown. The international experience of green solutions and technologies is analyzed, the psychological aspects of the transition to a green economy are studied. For all those interested in the environmental development of the economy.
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Cook, Kerry H. Climate Change Scenarios and African Climate Change. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.545.
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Accurate projections of climate change under increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas levels are needed to evaluate the environmental cost of anthropogenic emissions, and to guide mitigation efforts. These projections are nowhere more important than Africa, with its high dependence on rain-fed agriculture and, in many regions, limited resources for adaptation. Climate models provide our best method for climate prediction but there are uncertainties in projections, especially on regional space scale. In Africa, limitations of observational networks add to this uncertainty since a crucial step in improving model projections is comparisons with observations. Exceeding uncertainties associated with climate model simulation are uncertainties due to projections of future emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Humanity’s choices in emissions pathways will have profound effects on climate, especially after the mid-century.The African Sahel is a transition zone characterized by strong meridional precipitation and temperature gradients. Over West Africa, the Sahel marks the northernmost extent of the West African monsoon system. The region’s climate is known to be sensitive to sea surface temperatures, both regional and global, as well as to land surface conditions. Increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases are already causing amplified warming over the Sahara Desert and, consequently, increased rainfall in parts of the Sahel. Climate model projections indicate that much of this increased rainfall will be delivered in the form of more intense storm systems.The complicated and highly regional precipitation regimes of East Africa present a challenge for climate modeling. Within roughly 5º of latitude of the equator, rainfall is delivered in two seasons—the long rains in the spring, and the short rains in the fall. Regional climate model projections suggest that the long rains will weaken under greenhouse gas forcing, and the short rains season will extend farther into the winter months. Observations indicate that the long rains are already weakening.Changes in seasonal rainfall over parts of subtropical southern Africa are observed, with repercussions and challenges for agriculture and water availability. Some elements of these observed changes are captured in model simulations of greenhouse gas-induced climate change, especially an early demise of the rainy season. The projected changes are quite regional, however, and more high-resolution study is needed. In addition, there has been very limited study of climate change in the Congo Basin and across northern Africa. Continued efforts to understand and predict climate using higher-resolution simulation must be sustained to better understand observed and projected changes in the physical processes that support African precipitation systems as well as the teleconnections that communicate remote forcings into the continent.
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Esler, Karen J., Anna L. Jacobsen, and R. Brandon Pratt. Evolution and Diversity. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198739135.003.0005.
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As mediterranean-type climate (MTC) regions emerged and expanded, species from the regional pool colonized and persisted in these new climate regions. In general, taxa were derived from a few types of historical ‘geoflora’ communities: temperate forest, subtropical and tropical, and semi-arid or arid. Some of the taxa within modern mediterranean-type vegetation represent relatively ancient relict taxa that pre-date the emergence of mediterranean-type drivers. Other lineages underwent subsequent speciation, resulting in the evolution of new MTC region-specific taxa, including the production of many new species through evolutionary radiations. Low extinction rates associated with historically stable climate and limited recent geological activity might explain the high diversity found in some MTC regions, while in regions with more topographical variation the ability of species to move across elevation gradients has been suggested also to have allowed species to be buffered from climatic changes that may otherwise have led to extinctions.
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Studies on summer monsoon rainfall using regional climate model PRECIS. Dhaka: SAARC Meteorological Research Centre, 2009.
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19
Gao, Yanhong, and Deliang Chen. Modeling of Regional Climate over the Tibetan Plateau. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.591.
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The modeling of climate over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) started with the introduction of Global Climate Models (GCMs) in the 1950s. Since then, GCMs have been developed to simulate atmospheric dynamics and eventually the climate system. As the highest and widest international plateau, the strong orographic forcing caused by the TP and its impact on general circulation rather than regional climate was initially the focus. Later, with growing awareness of the incapability of GCMs to depict regional or local-scale atmospheric processes over the heterogeneous ground, coupled with the importance of this information for local decision-making, regional climate models (RCMs) were established in the 1970s. Dynamic and thermodynamic influences of the TP on the East and South Asia summer monsoon have since been widely investigated by model. Besides the heterogeneity in topography, impacts of land cover heterogeneity and change on regional climate were widely modeled through sensitivity experiments.In recent decades, the TP has experienced a greater warming than the global average and those for similar latitudes. GCMs project a global pattern where the wet gets wetter and the dry gets drier. The climate regime over the TP covers the extreme arid regions from the northwest to the semi-humid region in the southeast. The increased warming over the TP compared to the global average raises a number of questions. What are the regional dryness/wetness changes over the TP? What is the mechanism of the responses of regional changes to global warming? To answer these questions, several dynamical downscaling models (DDMs) using RCMs focusing on the TP have recently been conducted and high-resolution data sets generated. All DDM studies demonstrated that this process-based approach, despite its limitations, can improve understandings of the processes that lead to precipitation on the TP. Observation and global land data assimilation systems both present more wetting in the northwestern arid/semi-arid regions than the southeastern humid/semi-humid regions. The DDM was found to better capture the observed elevation dependent warming over the TP. In addition, the long-term high-resolution climate simulation was found to better capture the spatial pattern of precipitation and P-E (precipitation minus evapotranspiration) changes than the best available global reanalysis. This facilitates new and substantial findings regarding the role of dynamical, thermodynamics, and transient eddies in P-E changes reflected in observed changes in major river basins fed by runoff from the TP. The DDM was found to add value regarding snowfall retrieval, precipitation frequency, and orographic precipitation.Although these advantages in the DDM over the TP are evidenced, there are unavoidable facts to be aware of. Firstly, there are still many discrepancies that exist in the up-to-date models. Any uncertainty in the model’s physics or in the land information from remote sensing and the forcing could result in uncertainties in simulation results. Secondly, the question remains of what is the appropriate resolution for resolving the TP’s heterogeneity. Thirdly, it is a challenge to include human activities in the climate models, although this is deemed necessary for future earth science. All-embracing further efforts are expected to improve regional climate models over the TP.
20
Sensitivity of a regional oxidant model to variations in climate parameters. Research Triangle Park, NC: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Atmospheric Research and Exposure Assessment Laboratory, 1989.
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21
Fosser, Giorgia. Precipitation Statistics From Regional Climate Model at Resolutions Relevant for Soil Erosion. Saint Philip Street Press, 2020.
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22
Behrman, Simon, and Avidan Kent, eds. Climate Refugees. Cambridge University Press, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/9781108902991.
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The last few years have witnessed a flurry of activity in global governance and international lawseeking to address the protection gaps for people fleeing the effects of climate change. This book discusses cutting-edge developments in law and policy on climate change and forced displacement, including theories and potential solutions, issues of governance, local and regional concerns, and future challenges. Chapters are written by a range of authors from academics to key figures in intergovernmental organisations, and offer detailed case studies of policy developments in the Americas, Europe, South-East Asia, and the Pacific. This is an ideal resource for graduate students and researchers from a range of disciplines, as well as policymakers working in environmental law, environmental governance, and refugee and migration law. This is one of a series of publications associated with the Earth System Governance Project. For more publications, see www.cambridge.org/earth-system-governance.
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Yang, Kun. Observed Regional Climate Change in Tibet over the Last Decades. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.587.
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The Tibetan Plateau (TP) is subjected to strong interactions among the atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, and biosphere. The Plateau exerts huge thermal forcing on the mid-troposphere over the mid-latitude of the Northern Hemisphere during spring and summer. This region also contains the headwaters of major rivers in Asia and provides a large portion of the water resources used for economic activities in adjacent regions. Since the beginning of the 1980s, the TP has undergone evident climate changes, with overall surface air warming and moistening, solar dimming, and decrease in wind speed. Surface warming, which depends on elevation and its horizontal pattern (warming in most of the TP but cooling in the westernmost TP), was consistent with glacial changes. Accompanying the warming was air moistening, with a sudden increase in precipitable water in 1998. Both triggered more deep clouds, which resulted in solar dimming. Surface wind speed declined from the 1970s and started to recover in 2002, as a result of atmospheric circulation adjustment caused by the differential surface warming between Asian high latitudes and low latitudes.The climate changes over the TP have changed energy and water cycles and has thus reshaped the local environment. Thermal forcing over the TP has weakened. The warming and decrease in wind speed lowered the Bowen ratio and has led to less surface sensible heating. Atmospheric radiative cooling has been enhanced, mainly through outgoing longwave emission from the warming planetary system and slightly enhanced solar radiation reflection. The trend in both energy terms has contributed to the weakening of thermal forcing over the Plateau. The water cycle has been significantly altered by the climate changes. The monsoon-impacted region (i.e., the southern and eastern regions of the TP) has received less precipitation, more evaporation, less soil moisture and less runoff, which has resulted in the general shrinkage of lakes and pools in this region, although glacier melt has increased. The region dominated by westerlies (i.e., central, northern and western regions of the TP) received more precipitation, more evaporation, more soil moisture and more runoff, which together with more glacier melt resulted in the general expansion of lakes in this region. The overall wetting in the TP is due to both the warmer and moister conditions at the surface, which increased convective available potential energy and may eventually depend on decadal variability of atmospheric circulations such as Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation and an intensified Siberian High. The drying process in the southern region is perhaps related to the expansion of Hadley circulation. All these processes have not been well understood.
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Claussen, Martin, Anne Dallmeyer, and Jürgen Bader. Theory and Modeling of the African Humid Period and the Green Sahara. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.532.
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There is ample evidence from palaeobotanic and palaeoclimatic reconstructions that during early and mid-Holocene between some 11,700 years (in some regions, a few thousand years earlier) and some 4200 years ago, subtropical North Africa was much more humid and greener than today. This African Humid Period (AHP) was triggered by changes in the orbital forcing, with the climatic precession as the dominant pacemaker. Climate system modeling in the 1990s revealed that orbital forcing alone cannot explain the large changes in the North African summer monsoon and subsequent ecosystem changes in the Sahara. Feedbacks between atmosphere, land surface, and ocean were shown to strongly amplify monsoon and vegetation changes. Forcing and feedbacks have caused changes far larger in amplitude and extent than experienced today in the Sahara and Sahel. Most, if not all, climate system models, however, tend to underestimate the amplitude of past African monsoon changes and the extent of the land-surface changes in the Sahara. Hence, it seems plausible that some feedback processes are not properly described, or are even missing, in the climate system models.Perhaps even more challenging than explaining the existence of the AHP and the Green Sahara is the interpretation of data that reveal an abrupt termination of the last AHP. Based on climate system modeling and theoretical considerations in the late 1990s, it was proposed that the AHP could have ended, and the Sahara could have expanded, within just a few centuries—that is, much faster than orbital forcing. In 2000, paleo records of terrestrial dust deposition off Mauritania seemingly corroborated the prediction of an abrupt termination. However, with the uncovering of more paleo data, considerable controversy has arisen over the geological evidence of abrupt climate and ecosystem changes. Some records clearly show abrupt changes in some climate and terrestrial parameters, while others do not. Also, climate system modeling provides an ambiguous picture.The prediction of abrupt climate and ecosystem changes at the end of the AHP is hampered by limitations implicit in the climate system. Because of the ubiquitous climate variability, it is extremely unlikely that individual paleo records and model simulations completely match. They could do so in a statistical sense, that is, if the statistics of a large ensemble of paleo data and of model simulations converge. Likewise, the interpretation regarding the strength of terrestrial feedback from individual records is elusive. Plant diversity, rarely captured in climate system models, can obliterate any abrupt shift between green and desert state. Hence, the strength of climate—vegetation feedback is probably not a universal property of a certain region but depends on the vegetation composition, which can change with time. Because of spatial heterogeneity of the African landscape and the African monsoon circulation, abrupt changes can occur in several, but not all, regions at different times during the transition from the humid mid-Holocene climate to the present-day more arid climate. Abrupt changes in one region can be induced by abrupt changes in other regions, a process sometimes referred to as “induced tipping.” The African monsoon system seems to be prone to fast and potentially abrupt changes, which to understand and to predict remains one of the grand challenges in African climate science.
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Xue, Yongkang, Yaoming Ma, and Qian Li. Land–Climate Interaction Over the Tibetan Plateau. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.592.
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The Tibetan Plateau (TP) is the largest and highest plateau on Earth. Due to its elevation, it receives much more downward shortwave radiation than other areas, which results in very strong diurnal and seasonal changes of the surface energy components and other meteorological variables, such as surface temperature and the convective atmospheric boundary layer. With such unique land process conditions on a distinct geomorphic unit, the TP has been identified as having the strongest land/atmosphere interactions in the mid-latitudes.Three major TP land/atmosphere interaction issues are presented in this article: (1) Scientists have long been aware of the role of the TP in atmospheric circulation. The view that the TP’s thermal and dynamic forcing drives the Asian monsoon has been prevalent in the literature for decades. In addition to the TP’s topographic effect, diagnostic and modeling studies have shown that the TP provides a huge, elevated heat source to the middle troposphere, and that the sensible heat pump plays a major role in the regional climate and in the formation of the Asian monsoon. Recent modeling studies, however, suggest that the south and west slopes of the Himalayas produce a strong monsoon by insulating warm and moist tropical air from the cold and dry extratropics, so the TP heat source cannot be considered as a factor for driving the Indian monsoon. The climate models’ shortcomings have been speculated to cause the discrepancies/controversies in the modeling results in this aspect. (2) The TP snow cover and Asian monsoon relationship is considered as another hot topic in TP land/atmosphere interaction studies and was proposed as early as 1884. Using ground measurements and remote sensing data available since the 1970s, a number of studies have confirmed the empirical relationship between TP snow cover and the Asian monsoon, albeit sometimes with different signs. Sensitivity studies using numerical modeling have also demonstrated the effects of snow on the monsoon but were normally tested with specified extreme snow cover conditions. There are also controversies regarding the possible mechanisms through which snow affects the monsoon. Currently, snow is no longer a factor in the statistic prediction model for the Indian monsoon prediction in the Indian Meteorological Department. These controversial issues indicate the necessity of having measurements that are more comprehensive over the TP to better understand the nature of the TP land/atmosphere interactions and evaluate the model-produced results. (3) The TP is one of the major areas in China greatly affected by land degradation due to both natural processes and anthropogenic activities. Preliminary modeling studies have been conducted to assess its possible impact on climate and regional hydrology. Assessments using global and regional models with more realistic TP land degradation data are imperative.Due to high elevation and harsh climate conditions, measurements over the TP used to be sparse. Fortunately, since the 1990s, state-of-the-art observational long-term station networks in the TP and neighboring regions have been established. Four large field experiments since 1996, among many observational activities, are presented in this article. These experiments should greatly help further research on TP land/atmosphere interactions.
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Liu, Xiaodong, and Libin Yan. Elevation-Dependent Climate Change in the Tibetan Plateau. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.593.
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As a unique and high gigantic plateau, the Tibetan Plateau (TP) is sensitive and vulnerable to global climate change, and its climate change tendencies and the corresponding impact on regional ecosystems and water resources can provide an early alarm for global and mid-latitude climate changes. Growing evidence suggests that the TP has experienced more significant warming than its surrounding areas during past decades, especially at elevations higher than 4 km. Greater warming at higher elevations than at lower elevations has been reported in several major mountainous regions on earth, and this interesting phenomenon is known as elevation-dependent climate change, or elevation-dependent warming (EDW).At the beginning of the 21st century, Chinese scholars first noticed that the TP had experienced significant warming since the mid-1950s, especially in winter, and that the latest warming period in the TP occurred earlier than enhanced global warming since the 1970s. The Chinese also first reported that the warming rates increased with the elevation in the TP and its neighborhood, and the TP was one of the most sensitive areas to global climate change. Later, additional studies, using more and longer observations from meteorological stations and satellites, shed light on the detailed characteristics of EDW in terms of mean, minimum, and maximum temperatures and in different seasons. For example, it was found that the daily minimum temperature showed the most evident EDW in comparison to the mean and daily maximum temperatures, and EDW is more significant in winter than in other seasons. The mean daily minimum and maximum temperatures also maintained increasing trends in the context of EDW. Despite a global warming hiatus since the turn of the 21st century, the TP exhibited persistent warming from 2001 to 2012.Although EDW has been demonstrated by more and more observations and modeling studies, the underlying mechanisms for EDW are not entirely clear owing to sparse, discontinuous, and insufficient observations of climate change processes. Based on limited observations and model simulations, several factors and their combinations have been proposed to be responsible for EDW, including the snow-albedo feedback, cloud-radiation effects, water vapor and radiative fluxes, and aerosols forcing. At present, however, various explanations of the mechanisms for EDW are mainly derived from model-based research, lacking more solid observational evidence. Therefore, to comprehensively understand the mechanisms of EDW, a more extensive and multiple-perspective climate monitoring system is urgently needed in the areas of the TP with high elevations and complex terrains.High-elevation climate change may have resulted in a series of environmental consequences, such as vegetation changes, permafrost melting, and glacier shrinkage, in mountainous areas. In particular, the glacial retreat could alter the headwater environments on the TP and the hydrometeorological characteristics of several major rivers in Asia, threatening the water supply for the people living in the adjacent countries. Taking into account the climate-model projections that the warming trend will continue over the TP in the coming decades, this region’s climate change and the relevant environmental consequences should be of great concern to both scientists and the general public.
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Christensen, Ole Bøssing, and Erik Kjellström. Projections for Temperature, Precipitation, Wind, and Snow in the Baltic Sea Region until 2100. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.695.
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The ecosystems and the societies of the Baltic Sea region are quite sensitive to fluctuations in climate, and therefore it is expected that anthropogenic climate change will affect the region considerably. With numerical climate models, a large amount of projections of meteorological variables affected by anthropogenic climate change have been performed in the Baltic Sea region for periods reaching the end of this century.Existing global and regional climate model studies suggest that:• The future Baltic climate will get warmer, mostly so in winter. Changes increase with time or increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. There is a large spread between different models, but they all project warming. In the northern part of the region, temperature change will be higher than the global average warming.• Daily minimum temperatures will increase more than average temperature, particularly in winter.• Future average precipitation amounts will be larger than today. The relative increase is largest in winter. In summer, increases in the far north and decreases in the south are seen in most simulations. In the intermediate region, the sign of change is uncertain.• Precipitation extremes are expected to increase, though with a higher degree of uncertainty in magnitude compared to projected changes in temperature extremes.• Future changes in wind speed are highly dependent on changes in the large-scale circulation simulated by global climate models (GCMs). The results do not all agree, and it is not possible to assess whether there will be a general increase or decrease in wind speed in the future.• Only very small high-altitude mountain areas in a few simulations are projected to experience a reduction in winter snow amount of less than 50%. The southern half of the Baltic Sea region is projected to experience significant reductions in snow amount, with median reductions of around 75%.
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Rosenzweig, Cynthia, and Daniel Hillel. Climate Variability and the Global Harvest. Oxford University Press, 2008. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195137637.001.0001.
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The Earth's climate is constantly changing. Some of the changes are progressive, while others fluctuate at various time scales. The El Niño-la Niña cycle is one such fluctuation that recurs every few years and has far-reaching impacts. It generally appears at least once per decade, but this may vary with our changing climate. The exact frequency, sequence, duration and intensity of El Niño's manifestations, as well as its effects and geographic distributions, are highly variable. The El Niño-la Niña cycle is particularly challenging to study due to its many interlinked phenomena that occur in various locations around the globe. These worldwide teleconnections are precisely what makes studying El Niño-la Niña so important. Cynthia Rosenzweig and Daniel Hillel describe the current efforts to develop and apply a global-to-regional approach to climate-risk management. They explain how atmospheric and social scientists are cooperating with agricultural practitioners in various regions around the world to determine how farmers may benefit most from new climate predictions. Specifically, the emerging ability to predict the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle offers the potential to transform agricultural planning worldwide. Biophysical scientists are only now beginning to recognize the large-scale, globally distributed impacts of ENSO on the probabilities of seasonal precipitation and temperature regimes. Meanwhile, social scientists have been researching how to disseminate forecasts more effectively within rural communities. Consequently, as the quality of climatic predictions have improved, the dissemination and presentation of forecasts have become more effective as well. This book explores the growing understanding of the interconnectedness of climate predictions and productive agriculture for sustainable development, as well as methods and models used to study this relationship.
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Busuioc, Aristita, and Alexandru Dumitrescu. Empirical-Statistical Downscaling: Nonlinear Statistical Downscaling. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.770.
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This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Climate Science. Please check back later for the full article.The concept of statistical downscaling or empirical-statistical downscaling became a distinct and important scientific approach in climate science in recent decades, when the climate change issue and assessment of climate change impact on various social and natural systems have become international challenges. Global climate models are the best tools for estimating future climate conditions. Even if improvements can be made in state-of-the art global climate models, in terms of spatial resolution and their performance in simulation of climate characteristics, they are still skillful only in reproducing large-scale feature of climate variability, such as global mean temperature or various circulation patterns (e.g., the North Atlantic Oscillation). However, these models are not able to provide reliable information on local climate characteristics (mean temperature, total precipitation), especially on extreme weather and climate events. The main reason for this failure is the influence of local geographical features on the local climate, as well as other factors related to surrounding large-scale conditions, the influence of which cannot be correctly taken into consideration by the current dynamical global models.Impact models, such as hydrological and crop models, need high resolution information on various climate parameters on the scale of a river basin or a farm, scales that are not available from the usual global climate models. Downscaling techniques produce regional climate information on finer scale, from global climate change scenarios, based on the assumption that there is a systematic link between the large-scale and local climate. Two types of downscaling approaches are known: a) dynamical downscaling is based on regional climate models nested in a global climate model; and b) statistical downscaling is based on developing statistical relationships between large-scale atmospheric variables (predictors), available from global climate models, and observed local-scale variables of interest (predictands).Various types of empirical-statistical downscaling approaches can be placed approximately in linear and nonlinear groupings. The empirical-statistical downscaling techniques focus more on details related to the nonlinear models—their validation, strengths, and weaknesses—in comparison to linear models or the mixed models combining the linear and nonlinear approaches. Stochastic models can be applied to daily and sub-daily precipitation in Romania, with a comparison to dynamical downscaling. Conditional stochastic models are generally specific for daily or sub-daily precipitation as predictand.A complex validation of the nonlinear statistical downscaling models, selection of the large-scale predictors, model ability to reproduce historical trends, extreme events, and the uncertainty related to future downscaled changes are important issues. A better estimation of the uncertainty related to downscaled climate change projections can be achieved by using ensembles of more global climate models as drivers, including their ability to simulate the input in downscaling models. Comparison between future statistical downscaled climate signals and those derived from dynamical downscaling driven by the same global model, including a complex validation of the regional climate models, gives a measure of the reliability of downscaled regional climate changes.
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Zalasiewicz, Jan, and Mark Williams. The Goldilocks Planet. Oxford University Press, 2012. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199593576.001.0001.
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Climate change is a major topic of concern today and will be so for the foreseeable future, as predicted changes in global temperatures, rainfall, and sea level continue to take place. But as Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams reveal in The Goldilocks Planet, the climatic changes we are experiencing today hardly compare to the changes the Earth has seen over the last 4.5 billion years. Indeed, the vast history that the authors relate here is dramatic and often abrupt--with massive changes in global and regional climate, from bitterly cold to sweltering hot, from arid to humid. They introduce us to the Cryogenian period, the days of Snowball Earth seven hundred million years ago, when ice spread to cover the world, then melted abruptly amid such dramatic climatic turbulence that hurricanes raged across the Earth. We read about the Carboniferous, with tropical jungles at the equator (where Pennsylvania is now) and the Cretaceous Period, when the polar regions saw not ice but dense conifer forests of cypress and redwood, with gingkos and ferns. The authors also show how this history can be read from clues preserved in the Earth's strata. The evidence is abundant, though always incomplete--and often baffling, puzzling, infuriating, tantalizing, seemingly contradictory. Geologists, though, are becoming ever more ingenious at deciphering this evidence, and the story of the Earth's climate is now being reconstructed in ever-greater detail--maybe even providing us with clues to the future of contemporary climate change. And through all of this, the authors conclude, the Earth has remained perfectly habitable--in stark contrast to its planetary neighbors. Not too hot, not too cold; not too dry, not too wet--"the Goldilocks planet."
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Simulation of the Indian summer monsoon using ISRO vegetation fraction and downscaling by a regional climate model. New Delhi: NCMRWF-IIT Delhi, 2007.
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Goswami, B. N., and Soumi Chakravorty. Dynamics of the Indian Summer Monsoon Climate. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.613.
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Lifeline for about one-sixth of the world’s population in the subcontinent, the Indian summer monsoon (ISM) is an integral part of the annual cycle of the winds (reversal of winds with seasons), coupled with a strong annual cycle of precipitation (wet summer and dry winter). For over a century, high socioeconomic impacts of ISM rainfall (ISMR) in the region have driven scientists to attempt to predict the year-to-year variations of ISM rainfall. A remarkably stable phenomenon, making its appearance every year without fail, the ISM climate exhibits a rather small year-to-year variation (the standard deviation of the seasonal mean being 10% of the long-term mean), but it has proven to be an extremely challenging system to predict. Even the most skillful, sophisticated models are barely useful with skill significantly below the potential limit on predictability. Understanding what drives the mean ISM climate and its variability on different timescales is, therefore, critical to advancing skills in predicting the monsoon. A conceptual ISM model helps explain what maintains not only the mean ISM but also its variability on interannual and longer timescales.The annual ISM precipitation cycle can be described as a manifestation of the seasonal migration of the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) or the zonally oriented cloud (rain) band characterized by a sudden “onset.” The other important feature of ISM is the deep overturning meridional (regional Hadley circulation) that is associated with it, driven primarily by the latent heat release associated with the ISM (ITCZ) precipitation. The dynamics of the monsoon climate, therefore, is an extension of the dynamics of the ITCZ. The classical land–sea surface temperature gradient model of ISM may explain the seasonal reversal of the surface winds, but it fails to explain the onset and the deep vertical structure of the ISM circulation. While the surface temperature over land cools after the onset, reversing the north–south surface temperature gradient and making it inadequate to sustain the monsoon after onset, it is the tropospheric temperature gradient that becomes positive at the time of onset and remains strongly positive thereafter, maintaining the monsoon. The change in sign of the tropospheric temperature (TT) gradient is dynamically responsible for a symmetric instability, leading to the onset and subsequent northward progression of the ITCZ. The unified ISM model in terms of the TT gradient provides a platform to understand the drivers of ISM variability by identifying processes that affect TT in the north and the south and influence the gradient.The predictability of the seasonal mean ISM is limited by interactions of the annual cycle and higher frequency monsoon variability within the season. The monsoon intraseasonal oscillation (MISO) has a seminal role in influencing the seasonal mean and its interannual variability. While ISM climate on long timescales (e.g., multimillennium) largely follows the solar forcing, on shorter timescales the ISM variability is governed by the internal dynamics arising from ocean–atmosphere–land interactions, regional as well as remote, together with teleconnections with other climate modes. Also important is the role of anthropogenic forcing, such as the greenhouse gases and aerosols versus the natural multidecadal variability in the context of the recent six-decade long decreasing trend of ISM rainfall.
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Räisänen, Jouni. Future Climate Change in the Baltic Sea Region and Environmental Impacts. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.634.
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The warming of the global climate is expected to continue in the 21st century, although the magnitude of change depends on future anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and the sensitivity of climate to them. The regional characteristics and impacts of future climate change in the Baltic Sea countries have been explored since at least the 1990s. Later research has supported many findings from the early studies, but advances in understanding and improved modeling tools have made the picture gradually more comprehensive and more detailed. Nevertheless, many uncertainties still remain.In the Baltic Sea region, warming is likely to exceed its global average, particularly in winter and in the northern parts of the area. The warming will be accompanied by a general increase in winter precipitation, but in summer, precipitation may either increase or decrease, with a larger chance of drying in the southern than in the northern parts of the region. Despite the increase in winter precipitation, the amount of snow is generally expected to decrease, as a smaller fraction of the precipitation falls as snow and midwinter snowmelt episodes become more common. Changes in windiness are very uncertain, although most projections suggest a slight increase in average wind speed over the Baltic Sea. Climatic extremes are also projected to change, but some of the changes will differ from the corresponding change in mean climate. For example, the lowest winter temperatures are expected to warm even more than the winter mean temperature, and short-term summer precipitation extremes are likely to become more severe, even in the areas where the mean summer precipitation does not increase.The projected atmospheric changes will be accompanied by an increase in Baltic Sea water temperature, reduced ice cover, and, according to most studies, reduced salinity due to increased precipitation and river runoff. The seasonal cycle of runoff will be modified by changes in precipitation and earlier snowmelt. Global-scale sea level rise also will affect the Baltic Sea, but will be counteracted by glacial isostatic adjustment. According to most projections, in the northern parts of the Baltic Sea, the latter will still dominate, leading to a continued, although decelerated, decrease in relative sea level. The changes in the physical environment and climate will have a number of environmental impacts on, for example, atmospheric chemistry, freshwater and marine biogeochemistry, ecosystems, and coastal erosion. However, future environmental change in the region will be affected by several interrelated factors. Climate change is only one of them, and in many cases its effects may be exceeded by other anthropogenic changes.
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Omstedt, Anders. The Development of Climate Science of the Baltic Sea Region. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.654.
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Dramatic climate changes have occurred in the Baltic Sea region caused by changes in orbital movement in the earth–sun system and the melting of the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet. Added to these longer-term changes, changes have occurred at all timescales, caused mainly by variations in large-scale atmospheric pressure systems due to competition between the meandering midlatitude low-pressure systems and high-pressure systems. Here we follow the development of climate science of the Baltic Sea from when observations began in the 18th century to the early 21st century. The question of why the water level is sinking around the Baltic Sea coasts could not be answered until the ideas of postglacial uplift and the thermal history of the earth were better understood in the 19th century and periodic behavior in climate related time series attracted scientific interest. Herring and sardine fishing successes and failures have led to investigations of fishery and climate change and to the realization that fisheries themselves have strongly negative effects on the marine environment, calling for international assessment efforts. Scientists later introduced the concept of regime shifts when interpreting their data, attributing these to various causes. The increasing amount of anoxic deep water in the Baltic Sea and eutrophication have prompted debate about what is natural and what is anthropogenic, and the scientific outcome of these debates now forms the basis of international management efforts to reduce nutrient leakage from land. The observed increase in atmospheric CO2 and its effects on global warming have focused the climate debate on trends and generated a series of international and regional assessments and research programs that have greatly improved our understanding of climate and environmental changes, bolstering the efforts of earth system science, in which both climate and environmental factors are analyzed together.Major achievements of past centuries have included developing and organizing regular observation and monitoring programs. The free availability of data sets has supported the development of more accurate forcing functions for Baltic Sea models and made it possible to better understand and model the Baltic Sea–North Sea system, including the development of coupled land–sea–atmosphere models. Most indirect and direct observations of the climate find great variability and stochastic behavior, so conclusions based on short time series are problematic, leading to qualifications about periodicity, trends, and regime shifts. Starting in the 1980s, systematic research into climate change has considerably improved our understanding of regional warming and multiple threats to the Baltic Sea. Several aspects of regional climate and environmental changes and how they interact are, however, unknown and merit future research.
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Yoshifumi, Tanaka. Part V Regional Perspectives on Global Ocean Governance, 12 The Asian Perspective on Global Ocean Governance. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/law/9780198824152.003.0012.
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This chapter discusses issues of global ocean governance from an Asian perspective. The Asian Seas regions face four challenges relating to marine pollution, conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity, adverse impacts of climate change upon the oceans, and maritime security. Before analysing these challenges in detail, the chapter considers two paradigms of ocean governance that the international law of the sea attempts to balance: the traditional paradigm based on co-existence of States; and a new paradigm based on notions of inter-dependency between governments, human communities and the natural environment thus requiring new, more co-operative arrangements. It also examines elements of uncertainty in the Asian Seas regions and notes that there is no regional treaty concerning marine environmental protection in those regions.
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Low, Pak Sum, ed. Sustainable Development: Asia-Pacific Perspectives. Cambridge University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/9780511977961.
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The Asia-Pacific region has been experiencing rapid development in the past 30 years, and issues relating to sustainable development will become increasingly important in the coming decades. This comprehensive overview presents sustainable development from the perspectives of Asia and the Pacific, with contributions from more than 70 leading international experts. The first part focuses on the theories and practices of sustainable development, including national and regional perspectives, as well as international policies and law concerning climate change. The second part highlights the challenges and opportunities of sustainable development and poverty reduction amid the changing ecological, social, cultural, economic, and political environment in this region. These include issues such as the importance of science for sustainable development and related areas, including sustainable energy, stratospheric ozone depletion, climate change, land-use change, biodiversity, and disaster risk reduction. The volume is an invaluable reference for all researchers and policy makers with an interest in sustainable development.
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Chubarova, Natalia, Yekaterina Zhdanova, Yelizaveta Androsova, Alexander Kirsanov, Marina Shatunova, Yulia Khlestova, Yelena Volpert, et al. THE AEROSOL URBAN POLLUTION AND ITS EFFECTS ON WEATHER, REGIONAL CLIMATE AND GEOCHEMICAL PROCESSES. LLC MAKS Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.29003/m1475.978-5-317-06464-8.
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The monograph is devoted to the study of atmospheric aerosol and its dynamics in the urban environment of Moscow megacity. Based on the AeroRadCity 2018-2019 complex experiment, composed of measurement campaign and numerical experiments using the COSMO-ART chemical transport model, a number of new results were obtained, which contributed to a deeper understanding of the gas-aerosol composition of the urban atmosphere, wet aerosol deposition with accounting of geochemical processes and aerosol radiative effects. Aerosol pollution in the Moscow region and its dynamics in the 21st century were estimated according to the aerosol retrievals using the MAIAC algorithm developed for the MODIS satellite instrument, and long-term AERONET measurements. The effects of aerosol on meteorological and radiative characteristics of the atmosphere were obtained from the numerical experiments with the COSMO model and long-term observations. The indirect aerosol effects on cloud characteristics and weather forecast were estimated.
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Zaitchik, Benjamin F. Climate and Health across Africa. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.555.
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Humans have understood the importance of climate to human health since ancient times. In some cases, the connections appear to be obvious: a flood can cause drownings, a drought can lead to crop failure and hunger, and temperature extremes pose a risk of exposure. In other cases, the connections are veiled by complex or unobserved processes, such that the influence of climate on a disease epidemic or a conflict can be difficult to diagnose. In reality, however, all climate impacts on health are mediated by some combination of natural and human dynamics that cause individuals or populations to be vulnerable to the effects of a variable or changing climate.Understanding and managing negative health impacts of climate is a global challenge. The challenge is greater in regions with high poverty and weak institutions, however, and Africa is a continent where the health burden of climate is particularly acute. Observed climate variability in the modern era has been associated with widespread food insecurity, significant epidemics of infectious disease, and loss of life and livelihoods to climate extremes. Anthropogenic climate change is a further stress that has the potential to increase malnutrition, alter the distribution of diseases, and bring more frequent hydrological and temperature extremes to many regions across the continent.Skillful early warning systems and informed climate change adaptation strategies have the potential to enhance resilience to short-term climate variability and to buffer against negative impacts of climate change. But effective warnings and projections require both scientific and institutional capacity to address complex processes that are mediated by physical, ecological, and societal systems. Here the state of understanding climate impacts on health in Africa is summarized through a selective review that focuses on food security, infectious disease, and extreme events. The potential to apply scientific understanding to early warning and climate change projection is also considered.
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Tourism, climate change and the geopolitics of arctic development: the critical case of Greenland. Wallingford: CABI, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1079/9781789246728.0000.
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Abstract This book focuses on the context, nature and role of tourism in Greenland, and is set within an overlapping geopolitical frame of: (a)the heightening climate crisis; (b)Greenland's trajectory towards political independence from Denmark; (c)its concept of economic 'self-sustainability' in supporting this trajectory; and (d)growing international interest in, and competition for, Greenland's natural resources and infrastructure projects. The last in its turn partly reflects improving land and sea accessibility afforded by climate change, which paradoxically both challenges and encourages Greenland's concepts of sustainable development, within which tourism plays an ambivalent role: while elements of global and local tourism have been seeking to create a more responsible sector, within Greenland's development trajectory tourism appears to be supporting a sustainability ideology that ignores, or at best camouflages, the climate crisis. The central themes of this book therefore employ the role of tourism and travel as a lens through which to examine climatic, societal, economic and geopolitical change in the Arctic as specifically articulated in the experience of Greenland. The 'critical' situations in which Greenland finds itself reflect external perceptions of the global climate crisis and geostrategic maneuvering over Arctic resources, and domestic considerations of socio-economic development and increased sovereignty. The volume thereby highlights the close and often critical interrelationships between the local, regional and global. A recurring observation is the paradox, one of several of a region hitherto regarded as peripheral but which is becoming increasingly central to global concerns, with tourism-related dynamics reflecting such centrality. In this way, this book aims to: (1) emphasise the critical role of change in the Arctic in general and in Greenland in particular; (2) highlight critical interrelationships between tourism, climate change and the geopolitics of Arctic development, where 'geopolitics' is interpreted as applying at a number of scales from the interpersonal and quotidian to the global geostrategic; and (3) provide a critical examination of Greenland's post-colonial tourism development path, as the territory becomes the focus of increasing global interest. This book is organised into three parts with a total of 13 chapters.
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Crop output projections for states by agro-climatic sub-regions: Based on an inter-regional area allocation model. Ahmedabad: Agro-Climatic Regional Planning Unit, Planning Commission, 1994.
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Byrne, Maria, Pauline M. Ross, Symon A. Dworjanyn, and Laura Parker, eds. Larval Ecology in the Face of Changing Climate—Impacts of Ocean Warming and Ocean Acidification. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198786962.003.0017.
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Ocean warming and acidification are major climate change stressors for marine invertebrate larvae, and their impacts differ between habitats and regions. In many regions species with pelagic propagules are on the move, exhibiting poleward trends as temperatures rise and ocean currents change. Larval sensitivity to warming varies among species, influencing their invasive potential. Broadly distributed species with wide developmental thermotolerances appear best able to avail of the new opportunities provided by warming. Ocean acidification is a multi-stressor in itself and the impacts of its covarying stressors differ among taxa. Increased pCO2 is the key stressor impairing calcification in echinoid larvae while decreased mineral saturation is more important for calcification in bivalve larvae. Non-feeding, non-calcifying larvae appear more resilient to warming and acidification. Some species may be able to persist through acclimatization/adaptation to produce resilient offspring. Understanding the capacity for adaptation/acclimatization across generations is important to predicting the future species composition of marine communities.
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Carvalho, Carlos, and Jill Rickershauser. Characterizing the uncertainty of climate change projections using hierarchical models. Edited by Anthony O'Hagan and Mike West. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198703174.013.20.
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This article focuses on the use of Bayesian hierarchical models for integration and comparison of predictions from multiple models and groups, and more specifically for characterizing the uncertainty of climate change projections. It begins with a discussion of the current state and future scenarios concerning climate change and human influences, as well as various models used in climate simulations and the goals and challenges of analysing ensembles of opportunity. It then introduces a suite of statistical models that incorporate output from an ensemble of climate models, referred to as general circulation models (GCMs), with the aim of reconciling different future projections of climate change while characterizing their uncertainty in a rigorous fashion. Posterior distributions of future temperature and/or precipitation changes at regional scales are obtained, accounting for many peculiar data characteristics. The article confirms the reasonableness of the Bayesian modelling assumptions for climate change projections' uncertainty analysis.
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Esler, Karen J., Anna L. Jacobsen, and R. Brandon Pratt. The Biology of Mediterranean-Type Ecosystems. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198739135.001.0001.
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The world’s mediterranean-type climate regions (including areas within the Mediterranean, South Africa, Australia, California, and Chile) have long been of interest to biologists by virtue of their extraordinary biodiversity and the appearance of evolutionary convergence between these disparate regions. Comparisons between mediterranean-type climate regions have provided important insights into questions at the cutting edge of ecological, ecophysiological and evolutionary research. These regions, dominated by evergreen shrubland communities, contain many rare and endemic species. Their mild climate makes them appealing places to live and visit and this has resulted in numerous threats to the species and communities that occupy them. Threats include a wide range of factors such as habitat loss due to development and agriculture, disturbance, invasive species, and climate change. As a result, they continue to attract far more attention than their limited geographic area might suggest. This book provides a concise but comprehensive introduction to mediterranean-type ecosystems. As with other books in the Biology of Habitats Series, the emphasis in this book is on the organisms that dominate these regions although their management, conservation, and restoration are also considered.
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Takahashi, Bruno, and Alejandra Martinez. Climate Change Communication in Peru. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.574.
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Peru is one of the most biodiverse countries on the planet. More than 65% of the country is covered by the Amazon rainforest, and the Andes region is home to more than 70% of the world’s tropical glaciers. This abundance of natural resources also makes the country highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.The Peruvian government therefore requires the development and implementation of action plans to adapt to the present and future impacts of climate change. At the same time, it requires the development of sound communication strategies that include collaboration with stakeholders such as the media and nongovernmental organizations. Media coverage of climate change can have important implications for policy decision making. This is especially salient in a context of low information availability where media reports play an important role in filling knowledge gaps that in turn can affect the way policies are developed.Climate change, as an environmental and social issue in Peru, is not highly politicized, as it is in countries such as the United States and Australia. There is no major debate about the reality of climate change, the scientific evidence, or the need for political action and technological and policy innovations. This approach is also reflected in the media’s coverage of the issue. Peru’s media tend to focus on climate change mostly during key policy events. Among these major events was the capital city of Lima’s hosting in 2010 of the V meeting of Latin American, Caribbean, and European Union countries, where the main topics of discussion were climate change and poverty. In addition, Lima hosted the COP20, which preceded the Paris meeting in 2015 that led to a major global agreement. The media’s coverage of these events was intense. These were the exceptions: A good proportion of Peru’s newspaper coverage comes from international news wire agencies. Coverage from those sources focuses mostly on mitigation actions, instead of adaptation, which is more relevant to vulnerable countries such as Peru. This coverage is in line with the government’s view of mitigation as a business opportunity. There is, however, a lack of studies that explore, first, the factors that affect this coverage, and, second, the way other mediums such as television or radio cover the issue.Strategic communication by governmental organizations, as well as accurate and fact-based media reporting about climate change, is necessary to better communicate the urgency and magnitude of the problem to the general public, grassroots organizations, industry, and international agencies, among others.
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Newman, Chris, Christina D. Buesching, and David W. Macdonald. Meline mastery of meteorological mayhem: the effects of climate changeability on European badger population dynamics. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198759805.003.0021.
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Adaptation to climatic conditions is a major ecological and evolutionary driver. Long-term study of European badger population dynamics in Oxfordshire reveals that rainfall and temperature patterns affect food (principally earthworm) availability, energy expended in thermoregulation, and activity patterns, with badgers able to seek refuge in their setts. Cubs prove especially vulnerable to harsh weather conditions, where drought and food shortages exacerbate the severity of pandemic juvenile coccidial parasite infections. Crucially, weather variability, rather than just warming trends, stresses badgers, by destabilising their bioclimatic niche. Summer droughts cause mortality, even driving genetic selection; and while milder winters generally benefit badgers, less time spent in torpor leads to more road casualties. Similar effects also operate over a wide spatial scale in Ireland, impacting regional badger densities and bodyweights. That even an adaptable, generalist musteloid is so variously susceptible to weather conditions highlights how climate change places many species and ecosystems at risk.
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Lau, William K. M. Impacts of Aerosols on Climate and Weather in the Hindu-Kush-Himalayas-Gangetic Region. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.590.
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Situated at the southern edge of the Tibetan Plateau (TP), the Hindu-Kush-Himalayas-Gangetic (HKHG) region is under the clear and present danger of climate change. Flash-flood, landslide, and debris flow caused by extreme precipitation, as well as rapidly melting glaciers, threaten the water resources and livelihood of more than 1.2 billion people living in the region. Rapid industrialization and increased populations in recent decades have resulted in severe atmospheric and environmental pollution in the region. Because of its unique topography and dense population, the HKHG is not only a major source of pollution aerosol emissions, but also a major receptor of large quantities of natural dust aerosols transported from the deserts of West Asia and the Middle East during the premonsoon and early monsoon season (April–June). The dust aerosols, combined with local emissions of light-absorbing aerosols, that is, black carbon (BC), organic carbon (OC), and mineral dust, can (a) provide additional powerful heating to the atmosphere and (b) allow more sunlight to penetrate the snow layer by darkening the snow surface. Both effects will lead to accelerated melting of snowpack and glaciers in the HKHG region, amplifying the greenhouse warming effect. In addition, these light-absorbing aerosols can interact with monsoon winds and precipitation, affecting extreme precipitation events in the HKHG, as well as weather variability and climate change over the TP and the greater Asian monsoon region.
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Wilson, Robyn S., Sarah M. McCaffrey, and Eric Toman. Wildfire Communication and Climate Risk Mitigation. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.570.
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Throughout the late 19th century and most of the 20th century, risks associated with wildfire were addressed by suppressing fires as quickly as possible. However, by the 1960s, it became clear that fire exclusion policies were having adverse effects on ecological health, as well as contributing to larger and more damaging wildfires over time. Although federal fire policy has changed to allow fire to be used as a management tool on the landscape, this change has been slow to take place, while the number of people living in high-risk wildland–urban interface communities continues to increase. Under a variety of climate scenarios, in particular for states in the western United States, it is expected that the frequency and severity of fires will continue to increase, posing even greater risks to local communities and regional economies.Resource managers and public safety officials are increasingly aware of the need for strategic communication to both encourage appropriate risk mitigation behavior at the household level, as well as build continued public support for the use of fire as a management tool aimed at reducing future wildfire risk. Household decision making encompasses both proactively engaging in risk mitigation activities on private property, as well as taking appropriate action during a wildfire event to protect personal safety. Very little research has directly explored the connection between climate-related beliefs, wildfire risk perception, and action; however, the limited existing research suggests that climate-related beliefs have little direct effect on wildfire-related action. Instead, action appears to depend on understanding the benefits of different mitigation actions and in engaging the public in interactive, participatory communication programs that build trust between the public and natural resource managers. A relatively new line of research focuses on resource managers as critical decision makers in the risk management process, pointing to the need to thoughtfully engage audiences other than the lay public to improve risk management.Ultimately, improving the decision making of both the public and managers charged with mitigating the risks associated with wildfire can be achieved by carefully addressing several common themes from the literature. These themes are to (1) promote increased efficacy through interactive learning, (2) build trust and capacity through social interaction, (3) account for behavioral constraints and barriers to action, and (4) facilitate thoughtful consideration of risk-benefit tradeoffs. Careful attention to these challenges will improve the likelihood of successfully managing the increasing risks that wildfire poses to the public and ecosystems alike in a changing climate.
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Wendy, Miles. Part III Public International Law Disputes, Climate Disputes, and Sustainable Development in the Energy Sector, 16 International Boundary Disputes and Natural Resources. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/law/9780198805786.003.0016.
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This chapter deals with international boundary disputes and natural resources. After providing an historical context to modern boundaries, the chapter describes how climate change directly impacts land, food, and water access because of increased extreme weather conditions. Thus, climate change can threaten peace and security in fragile regions due to conflicts over diminishing inhabitable territory and natural resources. The chapter assesses how international boundary disputes can be affected by changing demands for oil (eg in Kurdistan and South Sudan), and for renewable energy resources (eg the ownership, use, and control of rivers crossing multiple borders). It also reflects on a more global scope the effects that climate change-related migration has on the modern understanding of international borders.
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Morgan, Philip J., John R. McNeill, Matthew Mulcahy, and Stuart B. Schwartz. Sea and Land. Oxford University PressNew York, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197555446.001.0001.
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Abstract Sea and Land provides an in-depth environmental history of the Caribbean to ca. 1850, comprising a close examination of some of the central forces and characteristics that defined the region, with a coda that takes the story into the modern era. It explores the mixing, movement, and displacement of peoples and the parallel ecological mixing of animals, plants, microbes from Africa, Europe, elsewhere in the Americas, and indeed Asia. It examines first the arrival of Native American to the region and the environmental transformations that followed. It then turns to the even more dramatic changes that accompanied the arrival of Europeans and Africans in the fifteenth century. Throughout it argues that the constant arrival, dispersal, and mingling of new plants and animals gave rise to a creole ecology. Particular attention is given to the emergence of black slavery, sugarcane, and the plantation system, an unholy trinity that thoroughly transformed the region’s demographic and physical landscapes and made the Caribbean a vital site in the creation of the modern western world. This volume integrates research concerning natural resources, conservation, epidemiology, and climate in a new general environmental history of the region. It makes environmental perspectives more accessible and more indispensable, to scholars and students alike, to foster both a fuller appreciation of the extent to which environmental factors shaped historical developments in the Caribbean and the extent to which human actions have transformed the biophysical environment of the region over time.
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Gordon, Deborah. No Standard Oil. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190069476.001.0001.
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The next decade will be decisive in the fight against climate change. It will be impossible to hold the planet to a 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature rise without controlling methane and carbon dioxide emissions from the oil and gas sector. Contrary to popular belief, the world will not run out of these resources anytime soon. Instead, oil and gas are becoming more climate-intensive to supply using technologies like fracking oil and liquefying gas—even as these abundant resources continue to be used to fuel cars, heat homes, and produce consumer goods like shampoo, pajamas, and paint. Policymakers, financial investors, environmental advocates, and citizens need to understand what oils and fossil fuels are doing to our climate to inform decision-making. In No Standard Oil, Deborah Gordon shows that no two oils or gases are environmentally alike. Each has a distinct, quantifiable climate impact. While all oils and gases pollute, some are much worse for the climate than others. In clear, accessible language, Gordon explains the results of the Oil Climate Index Plus Gas (OCI+), an innovative, open-source model that estimates global oil and gas greenhouse gas emissions. Gordon identifies the oils and gases from every region of the globe—along with the specific production, processing, and refining activities—that are the most damaging to the planet and proposes innovative solutions to reduce their climate footprints. Global climate stabilization cannot afford to wait for oil and gas to run out. No Standard Oil shows how people can take immediate, practical steps to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the crucial oil and gas sector while making sustainable progress in transitioning to a carbon-free energy future.