scholarly journals Climate change in Victoria: trends, predictions and impacts

2013 ◽  
Vol 125 (1) ◽  
pp. 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lesley Hughes ◽  
Will Steffen

Australia’s climate is changing, consistent with global trends. Continental average temperatures have increased nearly 1°C since the early 20th century, with warming accelerating since the 1950s. The number of extreme hot days is increasing, whereas the number of cold days and frosts is decreasing. With an average temperature over 1.0°C above the long-term mean, 2005 was Australia’s warmest year on record; 2009 was the second warmest year on record. The decade 2000–2009 was Australia’s warmest. Rainfall has been decreasing in the south-west and south-east of Australia, but increasing in the north-west. The ocean is warming and sea levels are rising, consistent with global averages. Consistent with global and national trends, Victoria’s climate is already changing and will continue to do so, posing significant risks to the State. Over the past few decades Victoria has become hotter and drier, and these trends are likely to continue, together with an increasing intensity and/or frequency of extreme events, such as heatwaves, droughts, bushfires and floods, posing significant risks to the State’s infrastructure, coasts, ecosystems, agriculture and health.

Author(s):  
Adriano Maglica

<p>The Älvsborg Bridge was opened to traffic in 1966. The Bridge was built between 1963 and 1966 and the bridge has undergone rehabilitation and improvement during its lifetime. The secondary hangers have been exchanged and dehumidification have been installed on the cables. Railing separating pedestrians and vehicles has been improved and the waterproofing is undergoing exchange.<p>During a routine inspection of dehumidification, aug 2016, an anchorage failure was observed. In the north west anchorage one of the fiftyfive lock coil cables was spotted laying on the bottom of the spreading chamber.<p>A number of inspections and investigations including endoscope inspections and safety calculation has been performed. Short term measurements and long term has been evaluated. Starting from limited knowledge of the condition the owner, Swedish Transport Administration (STA) now has a good picture of the condition and plans for repairs.<P>The damage highlights the need of inspection methods of “non inspectable” parts on bridges from the past as well as needs to design inspectable solutions on critical bridge parts in the future.


Author(s):  
Tatiana Vasilievna Pomogaeva ◽  
Aliya Ahmetovna Aseinova ◽  
Yuriy Aleksandrovich Paritskiy ◽  
Vjacheslav Petrovich Razinkov

The article presents annual statistical data of the Caspian Research Institute of Fishery. There has been kept track of the long term dynamics of the stocks of three species of Caspian sprat (anchovy, big-eyed kilka, sprat) and investigated a process of substituting a food item of sprats Eurytemora grimmi to a small-celled copepod species Acartia tonsa Dana. According to the research results, there has been determined growth potential of stocks of each species. Ctenophoran-Mnemiopsis has an adverse effect on sprat population by eating fish eggs and larvae. Ctenophoram - Mnemiopsis is a nutritional competitor to the full-grown fishes. The article gives recommendations on reclamation of stocks of the most perspective species - common sprat, whose biological characteristics helped not to suffer during Ctenophoram outburst and to increase its population during change of the main food item. Hydroacoustic survey data prove the intensive growth of common sprat biomass in the north-west part of the Middle Caspian. According to the results of the research it may be concluded that to realize the volumes of recommended sprat catch it is necessary to organize the marine fishery of common sprat at the Russian Middle Caspian shelf.


Forests ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 752
Author(s):  
Liu ◽  
Bao ◽  
Bao

Chinese pine (Pinus tabulaeformis Carr.) plays an important role in maintaining ecosystem health and stability in western Liaoning Province and the southern Horqin sand land, Northeast China, with benefits including sand fixation and soil erosion. In the context of climate change, developing a better understanding of the relationship between climate factors and growth rates of this species will be extremely valuable in guiding management activities and meeting regional conservation objectives. Here, the results based on two groups of tree-ring samples show that the radial growth of Chinese pine is controlled primarily by water conditions. The longer chronology had the highest correlation coefficient with the January–September mean self-calibrating Palmer Drought Severity Index (scPDSI); therefore, drought variability was reconstructed for the period 1859–2014. Statistical analysis showed that our model explained 41.9% of the variance in radial growth during the 1951–2014 calibration period. Extreme dry and wet events, defined as the criteria of one standard deviation less or greater than the mean value, accounted for 19.9% and 18.6% of the 156-year climate record, respectively. During the past century, the regional hydroclimate experienced significant long-term fluctuations. The dry periods occurred from the early-1900s–1930s and 1980s–2000s, and the wet periods occurred from the 1940s–1970s. The drought reconstruction was consistent with the decreasing trend of the East Asian summer monsoon since the late 1970s. The reconstructed temporal patterns in hydroclimate in western Liaoning were closely related to the large-scale climate drivers in the North Pacific and the tropical equatorial Pacific. The teleconnections were confirmed by spatial correlations between the reconstructed sequence and sea surface temperature (SST) in the North Pacific, as well as the correlations with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) indices. Aerosols played an important role in affecting drought variations over the past several decades. Moisture stress caused by global warming and interdecadal changes in the PDO will have long-term effects on the growth of pines in the study area in the future.


2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (33) ◽  
pp. 8252-8259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Steffen ◽  
Johan Rockström ◽  
Katherine Richardson ◽  
Timothy M. Lenton ◽  
Carl Folke ◽  
...  

We explore the risk that self-reinforcing feedbacks could push the Earth System toward a planetary threshold that, if crossed, could prevent stabilization of the climate at intermediate temperature rises and cause continued warming on a “Hothouse Earth” pathway even as human emissions are reduced. Crossing the threshold would lead to a much higher global average temperature than any interglacial in the past 1.2 million years and to sea levels significantly higher than at any time in the Holocene. We examine the evidence that such a threshold might exist and where it might be. If the threshold is crossed, the resulting trajectory would likely cause serious disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies. Collective human action is required to steer the Earth System away from a potential threshold and stabilize it in a habitable interglacial-like state. Such action entails stewardship of the entire Earth System—biosphere, climate, and societies—and could include decarbonization of the global economy, enhancement of biosphere carbon sinks, behavioral changes, technological innovations, new governance arrangements, and transformed social values.


Author(s):  
Partha Sarathi Datta

In many parts of the world, freshwater crisis is largely due to increasing water consumption and pollution by rapidly growing population and aspirations for economic development, but, ascribed usually to the climate. However, limited understanding and knowledge gaps in the factors controlling climate and uncertainties in the climate models are unable to assess the probable impacts on water availability in tropical regions. In this context, review of ensemble models on δ18O and δD in rainfall and groundwater, 3H- and 14C- ages of groundwater and 14C- age of lakes sediments helped to reconstruct palaeoclimate and long-term recharge in the North-west India; and predict future groundwater challenge. The annual mean temperature trend indicates both warming/cooling in different parts of India in the past and during 1901–2010. Neither the GCMs (Global Climate Models) nor the observational record indicates any significant change/increase in temperature and rainfall over the last century, and climate change during the last 1200 yrs BP. In much of the North-West region, deep groundwater renewal occurred from past humid climate, and shallow groundwater renewal from limited modern recharge over the past decades. To make water management to be more responsive to climate change, the gaps in the science of climate change need to be bridged.


2005 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 140-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. RICARDO GRAU ◽  
N. IGNACIO GASPARRI ◽  
T. MITCHELL AIDE

In Argentina, deforestation due to agriculture expansion is threatening the Semi-arid Chaco, one of the largest forested biomes of South America. This study focuses on the north-west boundary of the Argentine Semi-arid Chaco, where soybean is the most important crop. Deforestation was estimated for areas with different levels of soil and rainfall limitation for agriculture between 1972 and 2001, with a finer analysis in three periods starting in 1984, which are characterized by differences in rainfall, soybean price, production cost, technology-driven yield and national gross domestic product. Between 1972 and 2001, 588 900 ha (c. 20% of the forests) were deforested. Deforestation has been accelerating, reaching >28 000 ha yr−1 after 1997. The initial deforestation was associated with black bean cultivation following an increase in rainfall during the 1970s. In the 1980s, high soybean prices stimulated further deforestation. Finally, the introduction of soybean transgenic cultivars in 1997 reduced plantation costs and stimulated a further increase in deforestation. The domestic economy had little association with deforestation. Although deforestation was more intense in the moister (rainfall >600 mm yr−1) areas, more than 300 000 ha have already been deforested in the drier areas, suggesting that climatic limitations are being overcome by technological and genetic improvement. Furthermore, more than 300 000 ha of forest occur in sectors without major soil and rainfall limitations. If global trends of technology, soybean markets and climate continue, and no active conservation policies are applied, vast areas of the Chaco will be deforested in the coming decades.


1894 ◽  
Vol 1 (9) ◽  
pp. 394-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Burr Tyrrell

In the extreme northernmost part of Canada, lying between North Latitudes 56° and 68° and West Longitudes 88° and 112°, is an area of about 400,000 square miles, which had up to the past two years remained geologically unexplored.In 1892 the Director of the Geological Survey of Canada sent the writer to explore the country north of Churchill River, and south-west of Lake Athabasca;in1893 the exploration was continued northward, along the north shore of Athabasca Lake


2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 172-177
Author(s):  
Jarrad Grahame ◽  
Victoria Cole

The North West Shelf (NWS) of Australia is a prolific hydrocarbon province hosting significant volumes of hydrocarbons, primarily derived from Jurassic and Cretaceous targets. A new regional, integrated geoscience study has been undertaken to develop insights into the paleogeography and petroleum systems of Late Permian to Triassic successions, which have been underexplored historically in favor of Jurassic to Cretaceous targets. Within the NWS study area, graben and half-graben depocenters developed in response to intracratonic rifting that preceded later fragmentation and northward rifting of small continental blocks. This, coupled with contemporaneous cycles of rising sea levels, brought about the development of large embayments and shallow, epeiric seas between the Australian continental landmass and outlying continental fragments in the early stages of divergence. Key elements of the study results discussed herein include the study methodology, the paleogeographic and gross depositional environment mapping, and the reservoir and source kitchen modeling. The study results highlight the presence of depocenters that developed within oblique rift zones due to regional Permo-Triassic strike-slip tectonics that bear compelling similarities to modern-day analogues. These intracratonic rift zones are well-known and prominent tectonic features resulting from mantle upwelling and weakening of overlying lithospheric crust, initiating the development of divergent intraplate depocenters. The comprehensive analysis of these depocenters from a paleogeographic and petroleum system perspective provides a basin evaluation tool for Triassic prospectivity.


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