scholarly journals Adapting Railway Maintenance to Climate Change

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (24) ◽  
pp. 13856
Author(s):  
A. H. S. Garmabaki ◽  
Adithya Thaduri ◽  
Stephen Famurewa ◽  
Uday Kumar

Railway infrastructure is vulnerable to extreme weather events such as elevated temperature, flooding, storms, intense winds, sea level rise, poor visibility, etc. These events have extreme consequences for the dependability of railway infrastructure and the acceptable level of services by infrastructure managers and other stakeholders. It is quite complex and difficult to quantify the consequences of climate change on railway infrastructure because of the inherent nature of the railway itself. Hence, the main aim of this work is to qualitatively identify and assess the impact of climate change on railway infrastructure with associated risks and consequences. A qualitative research methodology is employed in the study using a questionnaire as a tool for information gathering from experts from several municipalities in Sweden, Swedish transport infrastructure managers, maintenance organizations, and train operators. The outcome of this questionnaire revealed that there was a lower level of awareness about the impact of climate change on the various facets of railway infrastructure. Furthermore, the work identifies the challenges and barriers for climate adaptation of railway infrastructure and suggests recommended actions to improve the resilience towards climate change. It also provides recommendations, including adaptation options to ensure an effective and efficient railway transport service.

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 19-27
Author(s):  
Saifuddin Soz ◽  
Dhananjay Mankar

Climate change is already bringing tremendous influence on people’s lives, particularly the underprivileged. It’s already visible in a variety of ways. In recent decades, Asia and the Pacific have seen consistent warming trends as well as more frequent and powerful extreme weather events such as droughts, cyclones, floods, and hailstorms. This study was done in Ajmer District of Rajasthan, to find out the climate variation in the last 10 years. The study describes the effects due to climate change on the livelihoods of the people, so a descriptive research design was used for the study to find out the impact of climate change on rural livelihood in central Rajasthan. The study is based on a large representative of sample, quantitative data was collected to gain an idea of the impact on the livelihoods due to climate change at the household level. It shows the negative impact of climate change on rural livelihood which forced the people to change their livelihood directly or indirectly. It was found that climate change had an impact on people’s lives and people do understand the variation in climate change in terms of changes in the weather, unseasonal rain, and drought.


2018 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 03072
Author(s):  
Hao Kong ◽  
Wei Yang ◽  
Ping Zhang ◽  
Ricai Peng

Marine economic activities are mainly distributed in areas with extremely fragile ecological environment, rising sea level, rising sea surface temperature, ocean acidification and extreme weather events, etc. These activities have major impacts on the environment and ecosystems of fragile marine and coastal areas, posing a major threat to sustainable development of marine economy. This paper reviews recent researches on the impact of climate change on various marine industries. The results show that climate change has remarkable impacts on marine economy, and some marine industries are especially sensitive. There are both negative and positive consequences of climate change, but no doubt, the negative effects dominate. The government should take pertinent measures to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change.


Agronomy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 619
Author(s):  
Sadeeka Layomi Jayasinghe ◽  
Lalit Kumar

Even though climate change is having an increasing impact on tea plants, systematic reviews on the impact of climate change on the tea system are scarce. This review was undertaken to assess and synthesize the knowledge around the impacts of current and future climate on yield, quality, and climate suitability for tea; the historical roots and the most influential papers on the aforementioned topics; and the key adaptation and mitigation strategies that are practiced in tea fields. Our findings show that a large number of studies have focused on the impact of climate change on tea quality, followed by tea yield, while a smaller number of studies have concentrated on climate suitability. Three pronounced reference peaks found in Reference Publication Year Spectroscopy (RYPS) represent the most significant papers associated with the yield, quality, and climate suitability for tea. Tea yield increases with elevated CO2 levels, but this increment could be substantially affected by an increasing temperature. Other climatic factors are uneven rainfall, extreme weather events, and climate-driven abiotic stressors. An altered climate presents both advantages and disadvantages for tea quality due to the uncertainty of the concentrations of biochemicals in tea leaves. Climate change creates losses, gains, and shifts of climate suitability for tea habitats. Further studies are required in order to fill the knowledge gaps identified through the present review, such as an investigation of the interaction between the tea plant and multiple environmental factors that mimic real-world conditions and then studies on its impact on the tea system, as well as the design of ensemble modeling approaches to predict climate suitability for tea. Finally, we outline multifaceted and evidence-based adaptive and mitigation strategies that can be implemented in tea fields to alleviate the undesirable impacts of climate change.


Author(s):  
Pietro Croce ◽  
Paolo Formichi ◽  
Filippo Landi ◽  
Francesca Marsili

<p>As consequence of global warming extreme weather events might become more frequent and severe across the globe. The evaluation of the impact of climate change on extremes is then a crucial issue for the resilience of infrastructures and buildings and is a key challenge for adaptation planning. In this paper, a suitable procedure for the estimation of future trends of climatic actions is presented starting from the output of regional climate models and taking into account the uncertainty in the model itself. In particular, the influence of climate change on ground snow loads is discussed in detail and the typical uncertainty range is determined applying an innovative algorithm for weather generation. Considering different greenhouse gasses emission scenarios, some results are presented for the Italian Mediterranean region proving the ability of the method to define factors of change for climate extremes also allowing a sound estimate of the uncertainty range associated with different models.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Massano ◽  
Giorgia Fosser ◽  
Marco Gaetani

&lt;p&gt;In Italy the wine industry is an economic asset representing the 8% of the annual turnover of the Food &amp; Beverage sector, according to Unicredit Industry Book 2019. Viticulture is strongly influenced by weather and climate, and winegrowers in Europe have already experienced the impact of climate change in terms of more frequent drought periods, warmer and longer growing seasons and an increased frequency of weather extremes. These changes impact on both yield production and wine quality.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Our study aims to understand the impact of climate change on wine production, to estimate the risks associated with climate factors and to suggest appropriate adaptation measurement. The weather variables that most influence grape growth are: temperature, precipitation and evapotranspiration. Starting for these variables we calculate a range of bioclimatic indices, selected following the International Organisation of Vine and Wine Guidelines (OIV), and correlate these with wine productivity data. According to the values of different indices it is possible to determine the more suitable areas for wine production, where we expect higher productivity, although the climate is not the only factor influencing yield.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Using the convection-permitting models (CPMs &amp;#8211; 2.2 horizontal resolution) we investigate how the bioclimatic indices changed in the last 20 years, and the impact of this change on grapes productivity. We look at possible climate trends and at the variation in the frequency distribution of extreme weather events. The CPMs are likely the best available option for this kind of impact studies since they allow a better representation of surface and orography field, explicitly resolve deep convection and show an improved representation of extremes events. In our study, we compare CPMs with regional climate models (RCMs &amp;#8211; 12 km horizontal resolution) to evaluate the possible added value of high resolution models for impact studies. To compare models' output to observation the same analysis it carried out using E-OBS dataset.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Through our impact study, we aim to provide a tool that winegrower and stakeholders involved in the wine business can use to make their activities more sustainable and more resilient to climate change.&lt;/p&gt;


Author(s):  
Mohd Danish Khan ◽  
Hong Ha Thi Vu ◽  
Quang Tuan Lai ◽  
Ji Whan Ahn

For decades, researchers have debated whether climate change has an adverse impact on diseases, especially infectious diseases. They have identified a strong relationship between climate variables and vector’s growth, mortality rate, reproduction, and spatiotemporal distribution. Epidemiological data further indicates the emergence and re-emergence of infectious diseases post every single extreme weather event. Based on studies conducted mostly between 1990-2018, three aspects that resemble the impact of climate change impact on diseases are: (a) emergence and re-emergence of vector-borne diseases, (b) impact of extreme weather events, and (c) social upliftment with education and adaptation. This review mainly examines and discusses the impact of climate change based on scientific evidences in published literature. Humans are highly vulnerable to diseases and other post-catastrophic effects of extreme events, as evidenced in literature. It is high time that human beings understand the adverse impacts of climate change and take proper and sustainable control measures. There is also the important requirement for allocation of effective technologies, maintenance of healthy lifestyles, and public education.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keh-Jian Shou

&lt;p&gt;Due to active tectonic activity, the rock formations are young and highly fractured in Taiwan area. The dynamic changing of river morphology makes the highly weathered formations or colluviums prone to landslide and debris flow. For the past decade, the effect of climate change is significant and creates more and more extreme weather events. The change of rainfall behavior significantly changes the landslide behavior, which makes the large-scale landslides, like the Shiaolin landslide, possible. Therefore, it is necessary to develop the new technologies for landslide investigation, monitoring, analysis, early warning, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Since the landslide hazards in Taiwan area are mainly induced by heavy rainfall, due to climate change and the subsequent extreme weather events, the probability of landslides is also increased. Focusing on the upstreams of the watersheds in Central Taiwan, this project studied the behavior and hazard of shallow and deep-seated landslides. Different types of susceptibility models in different catchment scales were tested, in which the control factors were analyzed and discussed. This study also employs rainfall frequency analysis together with the atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) downscaling estimation to predict the extreme rainfalls in the future. Such that the future hazard of the shallow and deep-seated landslide in the study area can be predicted. The results of predictive analysis can be applied for risk prevention and management in the study area.&lt;/p&gt;


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. e0244512
Author(s):  
Luis Alexis Rodríguez-Cruz ◽  
Meredith T. Niles

Understanding how perceptions around motivation, capacity, and climate change’s impacts relate to the adoption of adaptation practices in light of experiences with extreme weather events is important in assessing farmers’ adaptive capacity. However, very little of this work has occurred in islands, which may have different vulnerabilities and capacities for adaptation. Data of surveyed farmers throughout Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria (n = 405, 87% response rate) were used in a structural equation model to explore the extent to which their adoption of agricultural practices and management strategies was driven by perceptions of motivation, vulnerability, and capacity as a function of their psychological distance of climate change. Our results show that half of farmers did not adopt any practice or strategy, even though the majority perceived themselves capable and motivated to adapt to climate change, and understood their farms to be vulnerable to future extreme events. Furthermore, adoption was neither linked to these adaptation perceptions, nor to their psychological distance of climate change, which we found to be both near and far. Puerto Rican farmers’ showed a broad awareness of climate change’s impacts both locally and globally in different dimensions (temporal, spatial, and social), and climate distance was not linked to reported damages from Hurricane Maria or to previous extreme weather events. These results suggest that we may be reaching a tipping point for extreme events as a driver for climate belief and action, especially in places where there is a high level of climate change awareness and continued experience of compounded impacts. Further, high perceived capacity and motivation are not linked to actual adaptation behaviors, suggesting that broadening adaptation analyses beyond individual perceptions and capacities as drivers of climate adaptation may give us a better understanding of the determinants to strengthen farmers’ adaptive capacity.


Author(s):  
Sarah E Perkins-Kirkpatrick ◽  
Daithi Stone ◽  
Dann M. Mitchell ◽  
Suzanne M. Rosier ◽  
Andrew David King ◽  
...  

Abstract Investigations into the role of anthropogenic climate change in extreme weather events are now starting to extend into analysis of anthropogenic impacts on non-climate (e.g. socio-economic) systems. However, care needs to be taken when making this extension, because methodological choices regarding extreme weather attribution can become crucial when considering the events’ impacts. The fraction of attributable risk (FAR) method, useful in extreme weather attribution research, has a very specific interpretation concerning a class of events, and there is potential to misinterpret results from weather event analyses as being applicable to specific events and their impact outcomes. Using two case studies of meteorological extremes and their impacts, we argue that FAR is not generally appropriate when estimating the magnitude of the anthropogenic signal behind a specific impact. Attribution assessments on impacts should always be carried out in addition to assessment of the associated meteorological event, since it cannot be assumed that the anthropogenic signal behind the weather is equivalent to the signal behind the impact because of lags and nonlinearities in the processes through which the impact system reacts to weather. Whilst there are situations where employing FAR to understand the climate change signal behind a class of impacts is useful (e.g. “system breaking” events), more useful results will generally be produced if attribution questions on specific impacts are reframed to focus on changes in the impact return value and magnitude across large samples of factual and counterfactual climate model and impact simulations. We advocate for constant interdisciplinary collaboration as essential for effective and robust impact attribution assessments.


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