scholarly journals Energyscapes and prey fields shape a North Atlantic seabird wintering hotspot under climate change

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 171883 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Amélineau ◽  
J. Fort ◽  
P. D. Mathewson ◽  
D. C. Speirs ◽  
N. Courbin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Spatial Ecology ◽  
Prey Availability ◽  
Calanus Finmarchicus ◽  
Energy Requirements ◽  
Selection Function ◽  
Climate Change Scenarios ◽  
Surface Distribution ◽  
Local Climate

There is an urgent need for a better understanding of animal migratory ecology under the influence of climate change. Most current analyses require long-term monitoring of populations on the move, and shorter-term approaches are needed. Here, we analysed the ecological drivers of seabird migration within the framework of the energyscape concept, which we defined as the variations in the energy requirements of an organism across geographical space as a function of environmental conditions. We compared the winter location of seabirds with their modelled energy requirements and prey fields throughout the North Atlantic. Across six winters, we tracked the migration of 94 little auks ( Alle alle ), a key sentinel Arctic species, between their East Greenland breeding site and wintering areas off Newfoundland. Winter energyscapes were modelled with Niche Mapper™, a mechanistic tool which takes into account local climate and bird ecophysiology. Subsequently, we used a resource selection function to explain seabird distributions through modelled energyscapes and winter surface distribution of one of their main prey, Calanus finmarchicus . Finally, future energyscapes were calculated according to IPCC climate change scenarios. We found that little auks targeted areas with high prey densities and moderately elevated energyscapes. Predicted energyscapes for 2050 and 2095 showed a decrease in winter energy requirements under the high emission scenario, which may be beneficial if prey availability is maintained. Overall, our study demonstrates the great potential of the energyscape concept for the study of animal spatial ecology, in particular in the context of global change.

scholarly journals Ensemble Projections of Regional Climatic Changes over Ontario, Canada

2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (18) ◽  
pp. 7327-7346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiuquan Wang ◽  
Guohe Huang ◽  
Jinliang Liu ◽  
Zhong Li ◽  
Shan Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Climatic Changes ◽  
Climate Projections ◽  
Climate Change Scenarios ◽  
Local Climate ◽  
Ensemble Simulations ◽  
Extreme Precipitation Events ◽  
Data Portal

Abstract In this study, high-resolution climate projections over Ontario, Canada, are developed through an ensemble modeling approach to provide reliable and ready-to-use climate scenarios for assessing plausible effects of future climatic changes at local scales. The Providing Regional Climates for Impacts Studies (PRECIS) regional modeling system is adopted to conduct ensemble simulations in a continuous run from 1950 to 2099, driven by the boundary conditions from a HadCM3-based perturbed physics ensemble. Simulations of temperature and precipitation for the baseline period are first compared to the observed values to validate the performance of the ensemble in capturing the current climatology over Ontario. Future projections for the 2030s, 2050s, and 2080s are then analyzed to help understand plausible changes in its local climate in response to global warming. The analysis indicates that there is likely to be an obvious warming trend with time over the entire province. The increase in average temperature is likely to be varying within [2.6, 2.7]°C in the 2030s, [4.0, 4.7]°C in the 2050s, and [5.9, 7.4]°C in the 2080s. Likewise, the annual total precipitation is projected to increase by [4.5, 7.1]% in the 2030s, [4.6, 10.2]% in the 2050s, and [3.2, 17.5]% in the 2080s. Furthermore, projections of rainfall intensity–duration–frequency (IDF) curves are developed to help understand the effects of global warming on extreme precipitation events. The results suggest that there is likely to be an overall increase in the intensity of rainfall storms. Finally, a data portal named Ontario Climate Change Data Portal (CCDP) is developed to ensure decision-makers and impact researchers have easy and intuitive access to the refined regional climate change scenarios.

scholarly journals Investigating Future Urbanization’s Impact on Local Climate under Different Climate Change Scenarios in MEGA-urban Regions: A Case Study of the Pearl River Delta, China

Atmosphere ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 771
Author(s):  
Pak Shing Yeung ◽  
Jimmy Chi-Hung Fung ◽  
Chao Ren ◽  
Yong Xu ◽  
Kangning Huang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Pearl River Delta ◽  
Pearl River ◽  
Climate Change Scenarios ◽  
Local Climate ◽  
The Pearl River Delta ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Pearl River

Urbanization is one of the most significant contributing factors to anthropogenic climate change. However, a lack of projected city land use data has posed significant challenges to factoring urbanization into climate change modeling. Thus, the results from current models may contain considerable errors in estimating future climate scenarios. The Pearl River Delta region was selected as a case study to provide insight into how large-scale urbanization and different climate change scenarios impact the local climate. This study adopts projected land use data from freely available satellite imagery and applies dynamic simulation land use results to the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF). The simulation periods cover the summer periods in 2010 and 2029–2031, the latter of which is averaged to represent the year 2030. The WRF simulation used the observed local climate conditions in 2010 to represent the current scenario and the projected local climate changes for 2030 as the future scenario. Under all three future climate change scenarios, the warming trend is prominent (around 1–2 °C increase), with a widespread reduction in wind speed in inland areas (1–2 ms−1). The vulnerability of human health to thermal stress was evaluated by adopting the wet-bulb globe temperature (WBGT). The results from the future scenarios suggest a high public health risk due to rising temperatures in the future. This study provides a methodology for a more comprehensive understanding of future urbanization and its impact on regional climate by using freely available satellite images and WRF simulation tools. The simulated temperature and WBGT results can serve local governments and stakeholders in city planning and the creation of action plans that will reduce the potential vulnerability of human health to excessive heat.

scholarly journals Environmental response to the cold climate event 8200 years ago as recorded at Højby Sø, Denmark

2008 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 57-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Rasmussen ◽  
Mikkel Ulfeldt Hede ◽  
Nanna Noe-Nygaard ◽  
Annemarie L. Clarke ◽  
Rolf D. Vinebrooke
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Ice Cores ◽  
Cold Climate ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
Lake Ecosystem ◽  
Climate Change Scenarios ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Atlantic

The need for accurate predictions of future environmental change under conditions of global warming has led to a great interest in the most pronounced climate change known from the Holocene: an abrupt cooling event around 8200 years before present (present = A.D. 1950), also known as the ‘8.2 ka cooling event’ (ka = kilo-annum = 1000 years). This event has been recorded as a negative δ18O excursion in the central Greenland ice cores (lasting 160 years with the lowest temperature at 8150 B.P.; Johnsen et al. 1992; Dansgaard 1993; Alley et al. 1997; Thomas et al. 2007) and in a variety of other palaeoclimatic archives including lake sediments, ocean cores, speleothems, tree rings, and glacier oscillations from most of the Northern Hemisphere (e.g. Alley & Ágústsdóttir 2005; Rohling & Pälike 2005). In Greenland the maximum cooling was estimated to be 6 ± 2°C (Alley et al. 1997) while in southern Fennoscandia and the Baltic countries pollenbased quantitative temperature reconstructions indicate a maximum annual mean temperature decrease of around 1.5°C (e.g. Seppä et al. 2007). Today there is a general consensus that the primary cause of the cooling event was the final collapse of the Laurentide ice sheet near Hudson Bay and the associated sudden drainage of the proglacial Lake Agassiz into the North Atlantic Ocean around 8400 B.P. (Fig. 1; Barber et al. 1999; Kleiven et al. 2008). This freshwater outflow, estimated to amount to c. 164,000 km3 of water, reduced the strength of the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation and thereby the heat transported to the North Atlantic region, resulting in an atmospheric cooling (Barber et al. 1999; Clark et al. 2001; Teller et al. 2002). The climatic consequences of this meltwater flood are assumed to be a good geological analogue for future climate-change scenarios, as a freshening of the North Atlantic is projected by almost all global-warming models (e.g. Wood et al. 2003; IPCC 2007) and is also currently being registered in the region (Curry et al. 2003). In an ongoing project, the influence of the 8.2 ka cooling event on a Danish terrestrial and lake ecosystem is being investigated using a variety of biological and geochemical proxy data from a sediment core extracted from Højby Sø, north-west Sjælland (Fig. 2). Here we present data on changes in lake hydrology and terrestrial vegetation in response to climate change, inferred from macrofossil data and pollen analysis, respectively.

scholarly journals A Review of Ocean Dynamics in the North Atlantic: Achievements and Challenges

Climate ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 49
Author(s):  
Knut Lehre Seip
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Temperature Change ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Ocean Dynamics ◽  
Local Climate ◽  
The North ◽  
Local Climate Change ◽  
Global Temperature Change ◽  
The North Atlantic ◽  
Over Time

I address 12 issues related to the study of ocean dynamics and its impact on global temperature change, regional and local climate change, and on the North Atlantic ecosystem. I outline the present achievements and challenges that lie ahead. I start with observations and methods to extend the observations of ocean oscillations over time and end with challenges to find connections between ocean dynamics in the North Atlantic and dynamics in other parts of the globe.

scholarly journals Preparing local climate change scenarios for the Netherlands using resampling of climate model output

2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. 115008 ◽  
Author(s):  
G Lenderink ◽  
B J J M van den Hurk ◽  
A M G Klein Tank ◽  
G J van Oldenborgh ◽  
E van Meijgaard ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Climate Change Scenarios ◽  
Model Output ◽  
Local Climate ◽  
Local Climate Change ◽  
Climate Model Output

ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON THE FATIGUE LIFE OF OFFSHORE STRUCTURES

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-35
Author(s):  
Irvin Alberto Mosquera ◽  
Luis V. S. Sagrilo ◽  
Paulo M. Videiro ◽  
Fernando Sousa
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Fatigue Life ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Global Climate Model ◽  
Offshore Structures ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
Climate Change Scenarios ◽  
Future Scenarios ◽  
Impact Of Climate Change ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Design life of offshore structures is in general in the 20-30 years range, with some cases going up to 50 years. Fatigue is one of the major design criteria for such structures. Climate change may affect the fatigue life of offshore structures, it would be necessary to update the design procedures to take into account climate change effects on structural performance. This paper aims to investigate the impact of climate change in the long-term fatigue life of offshore structures due to wave loading. For this purpose, available environmental conditions for two locations (South East Brazilian Coast and North Atlantic Ocean) generated by the HadGEM-2S global climate model, considering RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 (Representative Concentration Pathway - RCP) future scenarios and the historical (past) scenarios are considered. The assessment in both locations is performed for two structural models: an idealized stress spectrum for a generic fatigue hot-spot and a Steel Lazy Wave Riser (SLWR) connected to a Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO). Fatigue life is estimated using the S-N curve approach. Results show that the impact on the fatigue life depends on the structure dynamic characteristics, on the geographic location and mainly on the greenhouse emission scenario. In general, for the Brazilian location, when compared to the historical scenario, most of the future scenarios lead to slightly higher fatigue damages (lower fatigue lives). On the other hand, for the North Atlantic location, there is not a clear trend for future climate change scenarios.

Simulation of Late-Twenty-First-Century Changes in Wintertime Atmospheric Circulation over Europe Due to Anthropogenic Causes

2004 ◽  
Vol 17 (24) ◽  
pp. 4630-4635 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurent Terray ◽  
Marie-Estelle Demory ◽  
Michel Déqué ◽  
Gaelle de Coetlogon ◽  
Eric Maisonnave
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
General Circulation ◽  
Circulation Model ◽  
Horizontal Resolution ◽  
Anthropogenic Climate Change ◽  
Strong Increase ◽  
Climate Change Scenarios ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Atlantic

Abstract Evidence is presented, based on an ensemble of climate change scenarios performed with a global general circulation model of the atmosphere with high horizontal resolution over Europe, to suggest that the end-of-century anthropogenic climate change over the North Atlantic–European region strongly projects onto the positive phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation during wintertime. It is reflected in a doubling of the residence frequency of the climate system in the associated circulation regime, in agreement with the nonlinear climate perspective. The strong increase in the amplitude of the response, compared to coarse-resolution coupled model studies, suggests that improved model representation of regional climate is needed to achieve more reliable projections of anthropogenic climate change on European climate.

scholarly journals The response of Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) to future climate change

2005 ◽  
Vol 62 (7) ◽  
pp. 1327-1337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth F. Drinkwater
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Atlantic Cod ◽  
Future Climate ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
Climate Change Scenarios ◽  
Total Production ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Atlantic

Abstract Future CO2-induced climate change scenarios from Global Circulation Models (GCMs) indicate increasing air temperatures, with the greatest warming in the Arctic and Subarctic. Changes to the wind fields and precipitation patterns are also suggested. These will lead to changes in the hydrographic properties of the ocean, as well as the vertical stratification and circulation patterns. Of particular note is the expected increase in ocean temperature. Based upon the observed responses of cod to temperature variability, the expected responses of cod stocks throughout the North Atlantic to the future temperature scenarios are reviewed and discussed here. Stocks in the Celtic and Irish Seas are expected to disappear under predicted temperature changes by the year 2100, while those in the southern North Sea and Georges Bank will decline. Cod will likely spread northwards along the coasts of Greenland and Labrador, occupy larger areas of the Barents Sea, and may even extend onto some of the continental shelves of the Arctic Ocean. In addition, spawning sites will be established further north than currently. It is likely that spring migrations will occur earlier, and fall returns will be later. There is the distinct possibility that, where seasonal sea ice disappears altogether, cod will cease their migration. Individual growth rates for many of the cod stocks will increase, leading to an overall increase in the total production of Atlantic cod in the North Atlantic. These responses of cod to future climate changes are highly uncertain, however, as they will also depend on the changes to climate and oceanographic variables besides temperature, such as plankton production, the prey and predator fields, and industrial fishing.

scholarly journals Assessing the Impact of Projected Climate Change on Zoo Visitation in Toronto (Canada)

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Micah J. Hewer ◽  
William A. Gough
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Global Climate Models ◽  
Change Scenario ◽  
Climate Change Scenarios ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Local Climate ◽  
The Impact

Weather and climate have been widely recognised as having an important influence on tourism and recreational activities. However, the nature of these relationships varies depending on the type, timing and location of these activities. Climate change is expected to have considerable and diverse impacts on recreation and tourism. Nonetheless, the potential impact of climate change on zoo visitation has yet to be assessed in a scientific manner. This case study begins by establishing the baseline conditions and statistical relationship between weather and zoo visitation in Toronto, Canada. Regression analysis, relying on historical weather and visitation data, measured at the daily time scale, formed the basis for this analysis. Climate change projections relied on output produced by Global Climate Models (GCMs) for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2013 Fifth Assessment Report, ranked and selected using the herein defined Selective Ensemble Approach. This seasonal GCM output was then used to inform daily, local, climate change scenarios, generated using Statistical Down-Scaling Model Version 5.2. A series of seasonal models were then used to assess the impact of projected climate change on zoo visitation. While accounting for the negative effects of precipitation and extreme heat, the models suggested that annual visitation to the zoo will likely increase over the course of the 21st century due to projected climate change: from +8% in the 2020s to +18% by the 2080s, for the least change scenario; and from +8% in the 2020s to +34% in the 2080s, for the greatest change scenario. The majority of the positive impact of projected climate change on zoo visitation in Toronto will likely occur in the shoulder season (spring and fall); with only moderate increases in the off season (winter) and potentially negative impacts associated with the peak season (summer), especially if warming exceeds 3.5 °C.

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