Impacts of climate change, population growth, and urbanization on future population exposure to long-term temperature change during the warm season in China

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (8) ◽  
pp. 8481-8491 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Zhang ◽  
Ying Li ◽  
Zhuang Li ◽  
Xin Wei ◽  
Ting Ren ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Population Growth ◽  
Temperature Change ◽  
Warm Season ◽  
Population Exposure ◽  
Future Population ◽  
Impacts Of Climate Change

Demography and Health in the Context of Climate Change

2021 ◽  
pp. 248-268
Author(s):  
Alisha Graves ◽  
Nouhou Abdoul Moumouni ◽  
Malcolm Potts
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Population Growth ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Child Survival ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Rapid Population Growth ◽  
Scarce Resources ◽  
Population Policies ◽  
Impacts Of Climate Change

The Sahel is subject to uniquely rapid population growth—putting pressure on already scarce resources. The challenge to meet the basic needs of a rapidly growing population is compounded by the impacts of climate change. Despite the recent gains in child survival in the Sahel, three contextual factors combine to suggest that mortality rates could rise—especially among the most vulnerable populations, that is, infants and the elderly. These factors are: an ongoing protracted nutrition crisis, rapid population growth, and impacts of climate change on food production. Evidence-based population policies and large-scale investment in family planning and girls’ secondary education have the potential to curb current demographic trends, making it easier for the region to adapt to climate change and achieve long-term food security.

scholarly journals Role of dams in reducing global flood exposure under climate change

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Julien Boulange ◽  
Naota Hanasaki ◽  
Dai Yamazaki ◽  
Yadu Pokhrel
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Population Growth ◽  
Flood Risk ◽  
Impact Analysis ◽  
Flow Regulation ◽  
Flood Mitigation ◽  
Population Exposure ◽  
Flood Exposure ◽  
Future Population

AbstractGlobally, flood risk is projected to increase in the future due to climate change and population growth. Here, we quantify the role of dams in flood mitigation, previously unaccounted for in global flood studies, by simulating the floodplain dynamics and flow regulation by dams. We show that, ignoring flow regulation by dams, the average number of people exposed to flooding below dams amount to 9.1 and 15.3 million per year, by the end of the 21st century (holding population constant), for the representative concentration pathway (RCP) 2.6 and 6.0, respectively. Accounting for dams reduces the number of people exposed to floods by 20.6 and 12.9% (for RCP2.6 and RCP6.0, respectively). While environmental problems caused by dams warrant further investigations, our results indicate that consideration of dams significantly affect the estimation of future population exposure to flood, emphasizing the need to integrate them in model-based impact analysis of climate change.

scholarly journals Past temperature reconstructions from deep ice cores: relevance for future climate change

2006 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Masson-Delmotte ◽  
G. Dreyfus ◽  
P. Braconnot ◽  
S. Johnsen ◽  
J. Jouzel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Temperature Change ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Ice Core ◽  
Ice Cores ◽  
Future Climate ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
Interglacial Period ◽  
Temperature Reconstructions

Abstract. Ice cores provide unique archives of past climate and environmental changes based only on physical processes. Quantitative temperature reconstructions are essential for the comparison between ice core records and climate models. We give an overview of the methods that have been developed to reconstruct past local temperatures from deep ice cores and highlight several points that are relevant for future climate change. We first analyse the long term fluctuations of temperature as depicted in the long Antarctic record from EPICA Dome C. The long term imprint of obliquity changes in the EPICA Dome C record is highlighted and compared to simulations conducted with the ECBILT-CLIO intermediate complexity climate model. We discuss the comparison between the current interglacial period and the long interglacial corresponding to marine isotopic stage 11, ~400 kyr BP. Previous studies had focused on the role of precession and the thresholds required to induce glacial inceptions. We suggest that, due to the low eccentricity configuration of MIS 11 and the Holocene, the effect of precession on the incoming solar radiation is damped and that changes in obliquity must be taken into account. The EPICA Dome C alignment of terminations I and VI published in 2004 corresponds to a phasing of the obliquity signals. A conjunction of low obliquity and minimum northern hemisphere summer insolation is not found in the next tens of thousand years, supporting the idea of an unusually long interglacial ahead. As a second point relevant for future climate change, we discuss the magnitude and rate of change of past temperatures reconstructed from Greenland (NorthGRIP) and Antarctic (Dome C) ice cores. Past episodes of temperatures above the present-day values by up to 5°C are recorded at both locations during the penultimate interglacial period. The rate of polar warming simulated by coupled climate models forced by a CO2 increase of 1% per year is compared to ice-core-based temperature reconstructions. In Antarctica, the CO2-induced warming lies clearly beyond the natural rhythm of temperature fluctuations. In Greenland, the CO2-induced warming is as fast or faster than the most rapid temperature shifts of the last ice age. The magnitude of polar temperature change in response to a quadrupling of atmospheric CO2 is comparable to the magnitude of the polar temperature change from the Last Glacial Maximum to present-day. When forced by prescribed changes in ice sheet reconstructions and CO2 changes, climate models systematically underestimate the glacial-interglacial polar temperature change.

Microbiological requirements for safe drinking water production at a large river impacted by human wastewater: a scenario analysis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katalin Demeter ◽  
Julia Derx ◽  
Jürgen Komma ◽  
Juraj Parajka ◽  
Jack Schijven ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Drinking Water ◽  
Wastewater Treatment ◽  
Population Growth ◽  
Water Supply ◽  
Large River ◽  
Wastewater Management ◽  
Reference Scenario ◽  
Safe Drinking Water

<p><strong>Background</strong>: Rivers are important sources for drinking water supply, however, they are often impacted by wastewater discharges from wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) and combined sewer overflows (CSO). Reduction of the faecal pollution burden is possible through enhanced wastewater treatment or prevention of CSOs. Few methodological efforts have been made so far to investigate how these measures would affect the long-term treatment requirements for microbiologically safe drinking water supply under future changes.</p><p><strong>Objectives</strong>: This study aimed to apply a new integrative approach to decipher the interplay between the effects of future changes and wastewater management measures on the required treatment of river water to produce safe drinking water. We investigated scenarios of climate change and population growth, in combination with different wastewater management scenarios (i.e., no upgrades and upgrades at WWTPs, CSOs, and both). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate this interplay. We focussed on the viral index pathogens norovirus and enterovirus and made a cross-comparison with a bacterial and a protozoan reference pathogen (Campylobacter and Cryptosporidium).</p><p><strong>Methods</strong>: We significantly extended QMRAcatch (v1.0 Python), a probabilistic-deterministic model that combines virus fate and transport modelling in the river with quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA). To investigate the impact of climatic changes, we used a conceptual semi-distributed hydrological model and regional climate model outputs to simulate river discharges for the period 2035 – 2049. We assumed that population growth leads to a corresponding increase in WWTP discharges. QMRAcatch was successfully calibrated and validated based on a four-year dataset of a human-associated genetic MST marker and enterovirus. The study site was the Danube in Vienna, Austria.</p><p><strong>Results</strong>: In the reference scenario, approx. 98% of the enterovirus and norovirus loads at the study site (median: 10<sup>10</sup> and 10<sup>13</sup> N/d) originated from WWTP effluent, while the remainder was via CSO events. The required log reduction value (LRV) to produce safe drinking water was 6.3 and 8.4 log<sub>10</sub> for enterovirus and norovirus. Future changes in population size, river flows and CSO events did not affect these treatment requirements, and neither did the prevention of CSOs. In contrast, in the scenario of enhanced wastewater treatment, which showed lower LRVs by 2.0 and 1.3 log<sub>10</sub>, climate-change-driven increases in CSO events had a considerable impact on the treatment requirements, as they affected the main pollution source. Preventing CSOs and installing enhanced treatment at the WWTPs together had the most significant positive effect with a reduction of LRVs by 3.9 and 3.8 log<sub>10</sub> compared to the reference scenario.</p><p><strong>Conclusions</strong>: The integrative modelling approach was successfully realised. The simultaneous consideration of source apportionment and concentrations of the reference pathogens were found crucial to understand the interplay among the effects of climate change, population growth and pollution control measures. The approach was demonstrated for a study site representing a large river impacted by WWTP and CSO discharges, but is applicable at other sites to support long term water safety planning.</p>

scholarly journals Impact of population growth and population ethics on climate change mitigation policy

2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (46) ◽  
pp. 12338-12343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noah Scovronick ◽  
Mark B. Budolfson ◽  
Francis Dennig ◽  
Marc Fleurbaey ◽  
Asher Siebert ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Population Growth ◽  
Cost Savings ◽  
Population Means ◽  
Development Policies ◽  
Climate Change Mitigation Policy ◽  
Lower Fertility ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Near Term ◽  
Future Population

Future population growth is uncertain and matters for climate policy: higher growth entails more emissions and means more people will be vulnerable to climate-related impacts. We show that how future population is valued importantly determines mitigation decisions. Using the Dynamic Integrated Climate-Economy model, we explore two approaches to valuing population: a discounted version of total utilitarianism (TU), which considers total wellbeing and is standard in social cost of carbon dioxide (SCC) models, and of average utilitarianism (AU), which ignores population size and sums only each time period’s discounted average wellbeing. Under both approaches, as population increases the SCC increases, but optimal peak temperature decreases. The effect is larger under TU, because it responds to the fact that a larger population means climate change hurts more people: for example, in 2025, assuming the United Nations (UN)-high rather than UN-low population scenario entails an increase in the SCC of 85% under TU vs. 5% under AU. The difference in the SCC between the two population scenarios under TU is comparable to commonly debated decisions regarding time discounting. Additionally, we estimate the avoided mitigation costs implied by plausible reductions in population growth, finding that large near-term savings ($billions annually) occur under TU; savings under AU emerge in the more distant future. These savings are larger than spending shortfalls for human development policies that may lower fertility. Finally, we show that whether lowering population growth entails overall improvements in wellbeing—rather than merely cost savings—again depends on the ethical approach to valuing population.

scholarly journals Climate change and plant reproduction: trends and drivers of mast seeding change

2021 ◽  
Vol 376 (1839) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Hacket-Pain ◽  
Michał Bogdziewicz
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Seed Production ◽  
Mast Seeding ◽  
Ecosystem Impacts ◽  
Proximate Mechanisms ◽  
Proximate Factors ◽  
Global Vegetation ◽  
Term Response ◽  
Impacts Of Climate Change

Climate change is reshaping global vegetation through its impacts on plant mortality, but recruitment creates the next generation of plants and will determine the structure and composition of future communities. Recruitment depends on mean seed production, but also on the interannual variability and among-plant synchrony in seed production, the phenomenon known as mast seeding. Thus, predicting the long-term response of global vegetation dynamics to climate change requires understanding the response of masting to changing climate. Recently, data and methods have become available allowing the first assessments of long-term changes in masting. Reviewing the literature, we evaluate evidence for a fingerprint of climate change on mast seeding and discuss the drivers and impacts of these changes. We divide our discussion into the main characteristics of mast seeding: interannual variation, synchrony, temporal autocorrelation and mast frequency. Data indicate that masting patterns are changing but the direction of that change varies, likely reflecting the diversity of proximate factors underlying masting across taxa. Experiments to understand the proximate mechanisms underlying masting, in combination with the analysis of long-term datasets, will enable us to understand this observed variability in the response of masting. This will allow us to predict future shifts in masting patterns, and consequently ecosystem impacts of climate change via its impacts on masting. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The ecology and evolution of synchronized seed production in plants’.

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