scholarly journals Dynamic and thermodynamic impacts of climate change on organized convection in Alaska

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Basile Poujol ◽  
Andreas F. Prein ◽  
Maria J. Molina ◽  
Caroline Muller

AbstractConvective storms can cause economic damage and harm to humans by producing flash floods, lightning and severe weather. While organized convection is well studied in the tropics and mid-latitudes, few studies have focused on the physics and climate change impacts of pan-Arctic convective systems. Using a convection-permitting model we showed in a predecessor study that organized convective storm frequency might triple by the end of the century in Alaska assuming a high emission scenario. The present study assesses the reasons for this rapid increase in organized convection by investigating dynamic and thermodynamic changes within future storms and their environments, in light of canonical existing theories for mid-latitude and tropical deep convection. In a future climate, more moisture originates from Arctic marine basins increasing relative humidity over Alaska due to the loss of sea ice, which is in sharp contrast to lower-latitude land regions that are expected to become drier. This increase in relative humidity favors the onset of organized convection through more unstable thermodynamic environments, increased low-level buoyancy, and weaker downdrafts. Our confidence in these results is increased by showing that these changes can be analytically derived from basic physical laws. This suggests that organized thunderstorms might become more frequent in other pan-Arctic continental regions highlighting the uniqueness and vulnerability of these regions to climate change.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Basile Poujol ◽  
Andreas Prein ◽  
Caroline Muller ◽  
Maria Molina

<p>Organized convective systems produce heavier downpours and can become more intense with climate change. While organized convection is well studied in the tropics and mid-latitudes, few studies have focused on the physics and climate change impacts of pan-Arctic convective systems, where they can produce flash flooding, landslides, or ignite wildfires.</p><p>We use a convection-permitting model to simulate Alaska’s climate under current and end of the century high emission scenario conditions. We apply a precipitation tracking algorithm to identify intense, organized convective systems, which are projected to triple in frequency and extend to the northernmost regions of Alaska under future climate conditions. The present study assesses the reasons for this rapid increase in organized convection by investigating dynamic and thermodynamic changes within future storms and their environments, in light of canonical existing theories for mid-latitude and tropical deep convection.</p><p> </p><p>In a future climate, more moisture originates from Arctic marine basins and relative humidity over continental Alaska is projected to increase due to sea ice loss, which is in sharp contrast to lower-latitude land regions that are expected to become drier. This increase in relative humidity favors the onset of organized convection through more unstable thermodynamic environments, increased low-level buoyancy, and weaker downdrafts.</p><p>Our confidence in these results is increased by showing that these changes can be analytically derived from basic physical laws. This suggests that organized thunderstorms might become more frequent in other pan-Arctic continental regions highlighting the uniqueness and vulnerability of these regions to climate change.</p>



2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pham Quy Giang ◽  
Tran Trung Vy

In developing countries in general and in Vietnam in particular, flood induced economic loss of agriculture is a serious concern since the livelihood of large populations depends on agricultural production. The objective of this study was to examine if climate change would exacerbate flood damage to agricultural production with a case study of rice production in Huong Son District of Ha Tinh Province, North-central Vietnam. The study applied a modeling approach for the prediction. Extreme precipitation and its return periods were calculated by the Generalized Extreme Value distribution method using historical daily observations and output of the MRI-CGCM3 climate model. The projected extreme precipitation data was then employed as an input of the Mike Flood model for flood modeling. Finally, an integrated approach employing flood depth and duration and crop calendar was used for the prediction of potential economic loss of rice production. Results of the study show that in comparison with the baseline period, an increase of 49.14% in the intensity of extreme precipitation was expected, while the frequency would increase 5 times by 2050s. As a result, the seriousness of floods would increase under climate change impacts as they would become more intensified, deeper and longer, and consequently the economic loss of rice production would increase significantly. While the level of peak flow was projected to rise nearly 1 m, leading the area of rice inundated to increase by 12.61%, the value of damage would rise by over 21% by 2050s compared to the baseline period. The findings of the present study are useful for long-term agricultural and infrastructural planning in order to tackle potential flooding threats to agricultural production under climate change impacts.



2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (21) ◽  
pp. 6051 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hyun Il Choi

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Reports, climate variability and changes increase the possibility of extreme weather events causing climate-related hazards and the risk of natural disasters. A storm is one of the most common and serious natural hazards that pose significant human and economic damage costs worldwide. The Korean Peninsula is also at persistent risk of hydro-meteorological disasters induced by rainstorms and typhoons due to geomorphological features and climate change impacts. This study has, therefore, proposed the damage vulnerability index for a spatial assessment of the damage vulnerability to storms, based on the IPCC’s vulnerability assessment concept. The damage vulnerability index is aggregated from the potential indicator for the potential damage targets, estimated by the population and major facility densities, and the risk indicator for the expected damage risk, estimated by the risk analysis for integrating both frequency and severity of human and economic damage cost records. The damage vulnerability index can assess regions vulnerable to the disaster damage induced by rainstorms, typhoons, and both, respectively, over the 231 administrative districts in the Republic of Korea. It is expected that the proposed damage vulnerability index can provide realistic and practical information on sustainable damage mitigation plans for the nationwide administrative districts against storm-induced disasters.



Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 1218
Author(s):  
Hemakanth Selvarajah ◽  
Toshio Koike ◽  
Mohamed Rasmy ◽  
Katsunori Tamakawa ◽  
Akio Yamamoto ◽  
...  

Climate change is increasingly sensed by nations vulnerable to water-related disasters, and governments are acting to mitigate disasters and achieve sustainable development. Uncertainties in General Circulation Models’ (GCM) rainfall projections and seamless long-term hydrological simulations incorporating warming effects are major scientific challenges in assessing climate change impacts at the basin scale. Therefore, the Data Integration and Analysis System (DIAS) of Japan and the Water Energy Budget-based Rainfall-Runoff-Inundation model (WEB-RRI) were utilized to develop an integrated approach, which was then applied to the Mahaweli River Basin (MRB) in Sri Lanka to investigate climate change impacts on its hydro-meteorological characteristics. The results for the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP8.5) scenario from four selected GCMs showed that, with an average temperature increase of 1.1 °C over the 20 years in future (2026 to 2045), the basin will experience more extreme rainfall (increase ranging 204 to 476 mm/year) and intense flood disasters and receive sufficient water in the future climate (inflow increases will range between 11 m3/s to 57 m3/s). The socio-economic damage due to flood inundation will also increase in the future climate. However, qualitatively, the overall trend of model responses showed an increasing pattern in future meteorological droughts whereas there is uncertainty in hydrological droughts. Policymakers can utilize these results and react to implementing soft or hard countermeasures for future policymaking. The approach can be implemented for climate change impact assessment of hydro-meteorology in any other river basin worldwide.



2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andries Jan de Vries ◽  
Franziska Aemisegger ◽  
Stephan Pfahl ◽  
Heini Wernli

Abstract. Tropical ice clouds have an important influence on the Earth’s radiative balance. They often form as a result of tropical deep convection, which strongly affects the water budget of the tropical tropopause layer. Ice cloud formation involves complex interactions on various scales, which are not fully understood yet and lead to large uncertainties in climate predictions. In this study, we investigate the formation of tropical ice clouds related to deep convection in the West African monsoon, using stable water isotopes as tracers of moist atmospheric processes. We perform simulations using the regional isotope-enabled model COSMOiso with different resolutions and treatments of convection for the period of June–July 2016. First, we evaluate the ability of our simulations to represent the isotopic composition of monthly precipitation through comparison with GNIP observations, and the precipitation characteristics related to the monsoon evolution and convective storms based on insights from the DACCIWA field campaign in 2016. Next, a case study of a mesoscale convective system (MCS) explores the isotope signatures of tropical deep convection in atmospheric water vapour and ice. Convective updrafts within the MCS inject enriched ice into the upper troposphere leading to depletion of vapour within these updrafts due to the preferential condensation and deposition of heavy isotopes. Water vapour in downdrafts within the same MCS are enriched by non-fractionating sublimation of ice. In contrast to ice within the MCS core regions, ice in widespread cirrus shields is isotopically in approximate equilibrium with the ambient vapour, which is consistent with in situ formation of ice. These findings from the case study are supported by a statistical evaluation of isotope signals in the West African monsoon ice clouds. The following five key processes related to tropical ice clouds can be distinguished based on their characteristic isotope signatures: (1) convective lofting of enriched ice into the upper troposphere, (2) cirrus clouds that form in situ from ambient vapour under equilibrium fractionation, (3) sedimentation and sublimation of ice in the mixed-phase cloud layer in the vicinity of convective systems and underneath cirrus shields, (4) sublimation of ice in convective downdrafts that enriches the environmental vapour, and (5) the freezing of liquid water in the mixed-phase cloud layer at the base of convective updrafts. Importantly, the results show that convective systems strongly modulate the humidity budget and the isotopic composition of the lower tropical tropopause layer. They contribute to about 40 % of the total water and 60 % of HDO in the 175–125 hPa layer in the African monsoon region according to estimates based on our model simulations. Overall, this study demonstrates that isotopes can serve as useful tracers to disentangle the role of different processes in the Earth’s water cycle, including convective transport, the formation of ice clouds, and their impact on the tropical tropopause layer.



Author(s):  
Debajani Chakraborty

Bangladesh’s climate is consisting of medium to high rainfall, high relative humidity, and high temperature. Due to global warming effects, Bangladesh subjected to many kinds of natural disasters. To understand climate change impacts in Bangladesh, one has to understand the climatic condition of this country. In this paper, annual rainfall, average maximum and minimum temperature and relative humidity data were collected and analyzed to understand the climatic condition of the country. It has been seen that, the rainfall rate of this country is decreasing year to year but the temperature is increasing than previous years. The average relative humidity is almost constant.



2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giannis Lemesios ◽  
Gianna Kitsara ◽  
Konstantinos V. Varotsos ◽  
Basil Psiloglou ◽  
Christos Giannakopoulos

<p>Ιn the framework of two European Projects, the LIFE URBANPROOF and LIFE TERRACESCAPE, a network of 24 meteorological stations has been installed for recording meteorological parameters and climate indices for the monitoring of impacts of climate change on urban and agricultural areas as well as for the assessment of respective adaptation measures.</p><p>Regarding the urban environment, the study aims to estimate the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect in the Greater Athens’ Municipality of Peristeri, Greece, by analysing data from the meteorological stations installed (since January 2020) in different urban surroundings and investigating relative changes in surface temperatures and perceived thermal discomfort (HUMIDEX) thus identifying hot and cool spots at the local scale. The UHI mapping in the Municipality of Peristeri was designed and implemented in such a way, as to provide accurate information about heat stress conditions across different parts of the city. Fully automated sensors of air temperature and relative humidity were installed at eleven (11) sites throughout the municipality, covering a wide range of urban characteristics, such as densely populated areas, open spaces, municipal parks etc., where local climatic conditions were expected to show a degree of variation.</p><p>As regards the rural environment, the study intends to estimate the anticipated changes of the micro-climate in the Aegean island of Andros, Greece after land-use interventions, which are considering the use of drystone terraces as green infrastructures resilient to climate change impacts. To that end, a network of 13 meteorological stations has been installed in selected rural areas of Andros since June 2018 for monitoring purposes. The thirteen meteorological stations, 12 small autonomous stations and 1 automated, currently operating on Andros Island continue (till now days) to generate baseline (micro-) climatic data, providing basic meteorological parameters such as air temperature and relative humidity. In addition, the valuable information, based on observational data from installed network of the meteorological stations, located either at currently abandoned terrace sites (project plots) or cultivated sites of Andros will be used to provide a solid basis for comparisons with changes projected for the future climate, combined with climatic indices which directly or indirectly affect agriculture in the monitoring areas.</p><p> </p>



2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 57-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danni Guo ◽  
Andrew J. Young ◽  
Philip G. Desmet ◽  
Guy F. Midgley


2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (6) ◽  
pp. 242-245
Author(s):  
Hamadttu A. F. El-Shafie

Four insect species were reported as new potential pests of date palm in recent years. They are sorghum chafer (Pachnoda interrupta), the rose chafer (Potosia opaca), the sericine chafer beetle (Maladera insanablis), and the South American palm borer (Pysandisia archon). The first three species belong to the order Coleoptera and the family Scarabaeidae, while the fourth species is a lepidopteran of the family Castniidae. The injury as well as the economic damage caused by the four species on date palm need to be quantified. Due to climate change and anthropogenic activities, the date palm pest complex is expected to change in the future. To the author's knowledge, this article provides the first report of sorghum chafer as a pest damaging date palm fruit.



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