Australian Seaport Infrastructure Resilience to Climate Change

A research project continuing at RMIT University is exploring the resilience of port structures in a changing climate. Research completed to date comprises of identifying types of port infrastructure vulnerable to climate change, establishing materials and exposure conditions, developing deterioration models based on current knowledge to simulate the effect of climate change on key port infrastructure and modeling the selected elements of infrastructure to derive outcomes which will aid in decision making in port infrastructure management. A considerable effort has been concentrated on identifying input climate data most appropriate for the models developed. The modeling approach is presented in this paper for quantitative projections of damage probability on port infrastructure taking into account the variability of material type, design considerations and environmental exposures with a changing climate. This paper provides a summary of the research undertaken in the development of material deterioration models and their responses to a changing climate load. Using climate information drawn from historical weather records and future climate projections, existing deterioration models were refined to include climate data into modeling runs in order to analyse changes to deterioration rates of different materials when impacted by a change in climate variables. Outputs from this modeling process will assist port authorities in making informed decisions on maintenance and capital budget planning allowing for impacts of climate change.

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Equilibrium Spin-up of Cold and Warm Permafrost Models

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-13922 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Cameron Ross ◽

Ryley Beddoe ◽

Greg Siemens

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Temperature Response ◽

Ground Temperature ◽

Future Climate Change ◽

Climate Projections ◽

Multiple Model ◽

Climate Data ◽

Ground Temperatures ◽

C Cycle ◽

Warm Permafrost

Initialization (spin-up) of a numerical ground temperature model is a critical but often neglected step for solving heat transfer problems in permafrost. Improper initialization can lead to significant underlying model drift in subsequent transient simulations, distorting the effects on ground temperature from future climate change or applied infrastructure. &#160;In a typical spin-up simulation, a year or more of climate data are applied at the surface and cycled repeatedly until ground temperatures are declared to be at equilibrium with the imposed boundary conditions, and independent of the starting conditions.Spin-up equilibrium is often simply declared after a specified number of spin-up cycles. In few studies, equilibrium is visually confirmed by plotting ground temperatures vs spin-up cycles until temperatures stabilize; or is declared when a certain inter-cycle-temperature-change threshold is met simultaneously at all depths, such as &#8710;T &#8804; 0.01oC per cycle. In this study, we investigate the effectiveness of these methods for determining an equilibrium state in a variety of permafrost models, including shallow and deep (10 &#8211; 200 m), high and low saturation soils (S = 100 and S = 20), and cold and warm permafrost (MAGT = ~-10 oC and >-1 oC). The efficacy of equilibrium criteria 0.01oC/cycle and 0.0001oC/cycle are compared. Both methods are shown to prematurely indicate equilibrium in multiple model scenarios. &#160;Results show that no single criterion can programmatically detect equilibrium in all tested models, and in some scenarios can result in up to 10oC temperature error or 80% less permafrost than at true equilibrium. &#160;A combination of equilibrium criteria and visual confirmation plots is recommended for evaluating and declaring equilibrium in a spin-up simulation.Long-duration spin-up is particularly important for deep (10+&#160;m) ground models where thermal inertia of underlying permafrost slows the ground temperature response to surface forcing, often requiring hundreds or even thousands of spin-up cycles to establish equilibrium. Subsequent transient analyses also show that use of a properly initialized 100 m permafrost model can reduce the effect of climate change on mean annual ground temperature of cold permafrost by more than 1 oC and 3 oC under RCP2.6 and RCP8.5 climate projections, respectively, when compared to an identical 25 m model. These results have important implications for scientists, engineers and policy makers that rely on model projections of long-term permafrost conditions.

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Future humidity extremes in an urban-rural context - using regional climate model projections down to convection permitting scales for Berlin

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-12054 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Gaby S. Langendijk ◽

Diana Rechid ◽

Daniela Jacob

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Climate Models ◽

Climate Model ◽

Regional Climate ◽

Climate Change Impacts ◽

Regional Climate Models ◽

Climate Projections ◽

Climate Data ◽

Urban Rural

Urban areas are prone to climate change impacts. A transition towards sustainable and climate-resilient urban areas is relying heavily on useful, evidence-based climate information on urban scales. However, current climate data and information produced by urban or climate models are either not scale compliant for cities, or do not cover essential parameters and/or urban-rural interactions under climate change conditions. Furthermore, although e.g. the urban heat island may be better understood, other phenomena, such as moisture change, are little researched. Our research shows the potential of regional climate models, within the EURO-CORDEX framework, to provide climate projections and information on urban scales for 11km and 3km grid size. The city of Berlin is taken as a case-study. The results on the 11km spatial scale show that the regional climate models simulate a distinct difference between Berlin and its surroundings for temperature and humidity related variables. There is an increase in urban dry island conditions in Berlin towards the end of the 21st century. To gain a more detailed understanding of climate change impacts, extreme weather conditions were investigated under a 2&#176;C global warming and further downscaled to the 3km scale. This enables the exploration of differences of the meteorological processes between the 11km and 3km scales, and the implications for urban areas and its surroundings. The overall study shows the potential of regional climate models to provide climate change information on urban scales.

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Evaluating the Tourist Climate Comfortable Period of China in a Changing Climate

Advances in Meteorology ◽

10.1155/2020/8886316 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 2020 ◽

pp. 1-11

Author(s):

Dan-Dan Yu ◽

Shan Li ◽

Zhong-Yang Guo

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Global Climate ◽

Scientific Evidence ◽

Climatic Conditions ◽

Climate Index ◽

Climate Indices ◽

Climate Data ◽

Climate Conditions ◽

Positive Effects ◽

Changing Climate

The evaluation of climate comfort for tourism can provide information for tourists selecting destinations and tourism operators. Understanding how climate conditions for tourism evolve is increasingly important for strategic tourism planning, particularly in rapidly developing tourism markets like China in a changing climate. Multidimensional climate indices are needed to evaluate climate for tourism, and previous studies in China have used the much criticized “climate index” with low resolution climate data. This study uses the Holiday Climate Index (HCI) and daily data from 775 weather stations to examine interregional differences in the tourist climate comfortable period (TCCP) across China and summarizes the spatiotemporal evolution of TCCP from 1981 to 2010 in a changing climate. Overall, most areas in China have an “excellent” climate for tourism, such that tourists may visit anytime with many choices available. The TCCP in most regions shows an increasing trend, and China benefits more from positive effects of climate change in climatic conditions for tourism, especially in spring and autumn. These results can provide some scientific evidence for understanding human settlement environmental constructions and further contribute in improving local or regional resilience responding to global climate change.

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Climate Perspectives in the Intra–Americas Seas

Atmosphere ◽

10.3390/atmos11090959 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 11 (9) ◽

pp. 959

Author(s):

Ana María Durán-Quesada ◽

Rogert Sorí ◽

Paulina Ordoñez ◽

Luis Gimeno

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Extreme Events ◽

Large Scale ◽

Negative Impact ◽

Current Knowledge ◽

Regional Climate ◽

Climate Projections ◽

Economic Activities ◽

Weather And Climate ◽

The Impact

The Intra–Americas Seas region is known for its relevance to air–sea interaction processes, the contrast between large water masses and a relatively small continental area, and the occurrence of extreme events. The differing weather systems and the influence of variability at different spatio–temporal scales is a characteristic feature of the region. The impact of hydro–meteorological extreme events has played a huge importance for regional livelihood, having a mostly negative impact on socioeconomics. The frequency and intensity of heavy rainfall events and droughts are often discussed in terms of their impact on economic activities and access to water. Furthermore, future climate projections suggest that warming scenarios are likely to increase the frequency and intensity of extreme events, which poses a major threat to vulnerable communities. In a region where the economy is largely dependent on agriculture and the population is exposed to the impact of extremes, understanding the climate system is key to informed policymaking and management plans. A wealth of knowledge has been published on regional weather and climate, with a majority of studies focusing on specific components of the system. This study aims to provide an integral overview of regional weather and climate suitable for a wider community. Following the presentation of the general features of the region, a large scale is introduced outlining the main structures that affect regional climate. The most relevant climate features are briefly described, focusing on sea surface temperature, low–level circulation, and rainfall patterns. The impact of climate variability at the intra–seasonal, inter–annual, decadal, and multi–decadal scales is discussed. Climate change is considered in the regional context, based on current knowledge for natural and anthropogenic climate change. The present challenges in regional weather and climate studies have also been included in the concluding sections of this review. The overarching aim of this work is to leverage information that may be transferred efficiently to support decision–making processes and provide a solid foundation on regional weather and climate for professionals from different backgrounds.

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Climate Change Explorer: Extracting localized data for developing Climate Services

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-12336 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Christine Nam ◽

Bente Tiedje ◽

Susanne Pfeifer ◽

Diana Rechid ◽

Daniel Eggert

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Regional Climate Model ◽

Climate Model ◽

Regional Climate ◽

Heavy Precipitation ◽

Climate Projections ◽

Climate Data ◽

Climate Services ◽

Mitigation And Adaptation ◽

Data Formats

Everyone, politicians, public administrations, business owners, and citizens want to know how climate changes will affect them locally. Having such knowledge offers everyone the opportunity to make informed choices and take action towards mitigation and adaptation.&#160;In order to develop locally relevant climate service products and climate advisory services, as we do at GERICS, we must extract localized climate change information from Regional Climate Model ensemble simulations.&#160;Common challenges associated with developing such services include the transformation of petabytes of data from physical quantities such as precipitation, temperature, or wind, into user-applicable quantities such as return periods of heavy precipitation, e.g. for legislative or construction design frequency. Other challenges include the technical and physical barriers in the use and interpretation of climate data, due to large data volume, unfamiliar software and data formats, or limited technical infrastructure. The interpretation of climate data also requires scientific background knowledge, which limit or influence the interpretation of results.&#160;These barriers hinder the efficient and effective transformation of big data into user relevant information in a timely and reliable manner. To enable our society to adapt and become more resilient to climate change, we must overcome these barriers. In the Helmholtz funded Digital Earth project we are tackling these challenges by developing a Climate Change Workflow.&#160;In the scope of this Workflow, the user can easily define a region of interest and extract the relevant climate data from the simulations available at the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF). Following which, a general overview of the projected changes, in precipitation for example, for multiple climate projections is presented. It conveys the bandwidth, i.e. the minimum/maximum range by an ensemble of regional climate model projections. We implemented the sketched workflow in a web-based tool called The Climate Change Explorer. It addresses barriers associated with extracting locally relevant climate data from petabytes of data, in unfamilar data formats, and deals with interpolation issues, using a more intuitive and user-friendly web interface.&#160;Ultimately, the Climate Change Explorer provides concise information on the magnitude of projected climate change and the range of these changes for individually defined regions, such as found in GERICS &#8216;Climate Fact Sheets&#8217;. This tool has the capacity to also improve other workflows of climate services, allowing them to dedicate more time in deriving user relevant climate indicies; enabling politicians, public administrations, and businesses to take action.

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Assessment of potential hydrological climate change impacts in Kastoria basin (Western Macedonia, Greece) using EUROCORDEX regional climate models

Global NEST Journal ◽

10.30955/gnj.003444 ◽

2021 ◽

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Groundwater Level ◽

Climate Models ◽

Regional Climate ◽

Substantial Reduction ◽

Regional Climate Models ◽

Water Yield ◽

Climate Projections ◽

Climate Data ◽

Northern Greece

The Mediterranean region is expected to present reduced availability of water resources due to climate change. This study aims to assess the potential hydrological responses to climate change in the Kastoria basin (Western Macedonia, Northern Greece) for the period 2019-2078. Climate projections from eight regional climate models from EURO-CORDEX were bias-adjusted using the linear scaling method. The bias-adjusted climate data were used to force the FeFLOW hydro-logical model to predict the discharge of the Kastoria aquifer towards lake Orestiada along with the projected groundwater level distribution. Precipitation (temperature) shows a tendency to decrease (increase) mainly in late spring to early autumn while increase (decrease) in the other sea-sons. Moreover, results indicate a significant increase in temperature and a slight decrease in precipitation towards 2078, while the predicted groundwater level of Kastoria aquifer will reduce slightly. However, the future hydrological behavior of the basin indicates a substantial reduction by approximately 15% of total water yield towards the end of the century.

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Selecting climate projections for services: the DRIAS-2020 dataset

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-9527 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Lola Corre ◽

Samuel Somot ◽

Jean-Michel Soubeyroux ◽

Sébastien Bernus ◽

Agathe Drouin ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Regional Climate ◽

Easy Access ◽

Climate Projections ◽

Climate Scenarios ◽

Climate Data ◽

Quantile Mapping ◽

The Past ◽

Climate Service ◽

Climatic Information

The French National Climate Service &#8220;Drias, futures of climate&#8221; was launched in 2012, as a response of the French scientific community to society&#8217;s need for climatic information. It is mainly composed of a website that provides easy access to the best available climate data to characterize climate change over France. Latest advances developed in 2020 include the availability of a new set of regional climate scenarios corrected by a quantile-mapping based method with correction depending on the weather regime. As for the previous set, the climate projections are based on the EURO-CORDEX ensemble, whose contents have been greatly enriched over the past years. Singular effort was done to build a robust and synthetic set that well represents the uncertainties of climate change over France. The different criteria defined to select the simulations will be presented, and the range of the projected climate change will be examined, with respect to larger ensembles.&#160;

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Copernicus Sectoral Information System for the Biodiversity Sector

10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-18377 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Koen De Ridder ◽

Filip Lefebre ◽

Eline Vanuytrecht ◽

Julie Berckmans ◽

Hendrik Wouters

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Information System ◽

High Resolution ◽

Global Climate ◽

Future Climate ◽

Use Cases ◽

Climate Projections ◽

Climate Data ◽

Climate Conditions ◽

Climate Suitability

Biodiversity is increasingly under pressure from climate change, which affects the habitat suitability for species as well as the efficiency of ecosystem services. Management of these issues, for instance through ecosystem restoration or species dispersal measures, is often hindered by a lack of appropriate information about (future) climate conditions.&#160; To address this, an operational Sectoral Information System (SIS) for the Biodiversity sector (SIS Biodiversity) is designed within the Copernicus programme Climate Change Service (C3S). This new SIS provides tailored bio-climatic indicators and applications, and delivers novel evidence regarding impacts of past, present and future climate. As such, it provides support to decision making challenges that are currently facing unmet climate data needs. &#160; The new climate service for SIS Biodiversity will be demonstrated, including the outline, workflow and outcomes of the use cases. The service is built upon the Copernicus Data Store platform (CDS; ), and takes into account (1) the barriers in ongoing bio-climate assessments and (2) the user requirements of diverse stakeholders (e.g. researcher institutes, local NGO&#8217;s, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN),&#8230;). These have been collected during workshops and bilateral meetings in 2019. A common barrier is the lack of reliable and high-resolution information about states and dynamics of the soil, sea, ice and air for the past and the future climate. Therefore, the service provides relevant bio-climatic indicators on the basis of a wealth of available variables from the latest ERA5 reanalysis datasets and the CMIP5 global climate projections available in CDS. In order to provide information at high resolution and minimize inconsistencies between observed and modelled variables, different downscaling and bias-correction techniques are applied. A common requirement is a universal and flexible interface to the bio-climatic indicators in an easy-to-use and coherent platform that is applicable for different fauna and flora species of interest. Therefore, different applications have been developed within CDS for generating bio-climate suitability envelopes from the high-resolution indicators and to evaluate climate suitability and impacts for the species under present and future climate. Finally, the service is currently tested and refined on the basis of specific use cases. Special attention is given to their transferability to other global and topical studies, hence maximizing external user uptake throughout existing research and policy networks.

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Uncertainty, Complexity and Constraints: How do We Robustly Assess Biological Responses Under a Rapidly Changing Climate?

10.20944/preprints202111.0244.v1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Imtiaz Rangwala ◽

Wynne Moss ◽

Jane Wolken ◽

Renee Rondeau ◽

Karen Newlon ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Ecological Impacts ◽

Expert Elicitation ◽

Future Climate Change ◽

Climate Projections ◽

Ecological Processes ◽

Changing Climate ◽

Biological Responses ◽

Recent Climate ◽

Spatiotemporal Scales

How robust is our assessment of impacts to ecosystems and species from a rapidly changing climate during the 21st century? We examine the challenges of uncertainty, complexity and constraints associated with applying climate projections to understanding future biological responses. This includes an evaluation of how to incorporate the uncertainty associated with different greenhouse gas emissions scenarios and climate models, and constraints of spatiotemporal scales and resolution of climate data into impact assessments. We describe the challenges of identifying relevant climate metrics for ecological models and evaluate the usefulness and limitations of different methodologies of applying climate change to both quantitative and qualitative ecological response models. We discuss the importance of incorporating extreme climate events and their stochastic tendencies in assessing ecological impacts and transformation, and provide recommendations for better integration of complex climate-ecological interactions at relevant spatiotemporal scales. We further recognize the compounding nature of uncertainty when accounting for our limited understanding of the interactions between climate and biological processes. Given the inherent complexity in ecological processes and their interactions with climate, we recommend integrating quantitative modeling with expert elicitation from diverse disciplines and experiential understanding of recent climate-driven ecological processes to develop more robust understanding of ecological responses under different scenarios of future climate change. Inherently complex interactions between climate and biological systems also provide an opportunity to develop wide-ranging strategies that resource managers can employ to prepare for the future.

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Climate-driven regime shifts in a mangrove–salt marsh ecotone over the past 250 years

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ◽

10.1073/pnas.1902181116 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 116 (43) ◽

pp. 21602-21608 ◽

Cited By ~ 18

Author(s):

Kyle C. Cavanaugh ◽

Emily M. Dangremond ◽

Cheryl L. Doughty ◽

A. Park Williams ◽

John D. Parker ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Salt Marsh ◽

Salt Marshes ◽

Minimum Temperature ◽

Daily Minimum Temperature ◽

Climate Projections ◽

Climate Data ◽

The Past ◽

Decadal Scale ◽

Annual Minimum Temperature

Climate change is driving the tropicalization of temperate ecosystems by shifting the range edges of numerous species poleward. Over the past few decades, mangroves have rapidly displaced salt marshes near multiple poleward mangrove range limits, including in northeast Florida. It is uncertain whether such mangrove expansions are due to anthropogenic climate change or natural climate variability. We combined historical accounts from books, personal journals, scientific articles, logbooks, photographs, and maps with climate data to show that the current ecotone between mangroves and salt marshes in northeast Florida has shifted between mangrove and salt marsh dominance at least 6 times between the late 1700s and 2017 due to decadal-scale fluctuations in the frequency and intensity of extreme cold events. Model projections of daily minimum temperature from 2000 through 2100 indicate an increase in annual minimum temperature by 0.5 °C/decade. Thus, although recent mangrove range expansion should indeed be placed into a broader historical context of an oscillating system, climate projections suggest that the recent trend may represent a more permanent regime shift due to the effects of climate change.

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