The CO2 balance of a boreal fen is more sensitive to drought than surrounding forests

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mats Nilsson ◽  
Joshua Ratcliffe ◽  
Anne Klosterhalfen ◽  
Peng Zhao ◽  
Jinchu Chi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Boreal Forests ◽  
Vapour Pressure Deficit ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Pine Forest ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
Boreal Peatlands ◽  
Weather Events ◽  
Co2 Balance ◽  
First Time ◽  
Boreal Landscape

<p>The boreal zone is one of the most carbon-dense biomes in the world and is comprised of a highly interconnected mosaic of forest and wetlands which are warming at a rate several times the global average with extreme weather events, such as droughts, becoming increasingly common. At the ecosystem scale, both forests and peatlands are often vulnerable to drought-induced carbon loss, however, the relative resilience of these two ecosystems within the boreal landscape is not well understood. Here we study the effect of the 2018 drought on CO<sub>2</sub> fluxes in two boreal forests and a boreal peatland within <20km radius, i.e. experiencing the same weather conditions. The peatland displayed the strongest response to the drought, with the site becoming a net annual source for CO<sub>2</sub> for the first time in 17 years, with the CO<sub>2 </sub>sink slow to recover after the drought broke. In contrast, the response of the forests was mixed, a  spruce/pine forest on glacial till remained unaffected by the drought, whereas a nearby pine forest, situated on drier sandy soil, responded strongly to vapour pressure deficit and declining soil moisture content, decreasing with CO<sub>2</sub> uptake weakening, but still allowing the forest to function as a CO<sub>2</sub> sink. In contrast to the bog, the pine forest CO<sub>2</sub> sink quickly recovered following the end of the drought. We conclude that boreal peatlands are likely to be the most vulnerable component of the boreal landscape to drought and that soil type is likely to play a role in regulating the response of boreal forests.</p>

scholarly journals Weather Literacy in Times of Climate Change

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 435-452 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadine Fleischhut ◽  
Stefan M. Herzog ◽  
Ralph Hertwig
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Extreme Weather ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
The Public ◽  
Weather Events ◽  
The Future ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Weather Risks

AbstractAs climate change unfolds, extreme weather events are on the rise worldwide. According to experts, extreme weather risks already outrank those of terrorism and migration in likelihood and impact. But how well does the public understand weather risks and forecast uncertainty and thus grasp the amplified weather risks that climate change poses for the future? In a nationally representative survey (N = 1004; Germany), we tested the public’s weather literacy and awareness of climate change using 62 factual questions. Many respondents misjudged important weather risks (e.g., they were unaware that UV radiation can be higher under patchy cloud cover than on a cloudless day) and struggled to connect weather conditions to their impacts (e.g., they overestimated the distance to a thunderstorm). Most misinterpreted a probabilistic forecast deterministically, yet they strongly underestimated the uncertainty of deterministic forecasts. Respondents with higher weather literacy obtained weather information more often and spent more time outside but were not more educated. Those better informed about climate change were only slightly more weather literate. Overall, the public does not seem well equipped to anticipate weather risks in the here and now and may thus also fail to fully grasp what climate change implies for the future. These deficits in weather literacy highlight the need for impact forecasts that translate what the weather may be into what the weather may do and for transparent communication of uncertainty to the public. Boosting weather literacy may help to improve the public’s understanding of weather and climate change risks, thereby fostering informed decisions and mitigation support.

scholarly journals Extreme weather events and high Colombian food prices: A non-stationary extreme value approach

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis Fernando Melo-Velandia ◽  
Camilo Andrés Orozco-Vanegas ◽  
Daniel Parra-Amado
Keyword(s):  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Extreme Weather ◽  
Extreme Value ◽  
Food Prices ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
Processed Foods ◽  
Fuel Prices ◽  
Weather Events ◽  
High Precipitation ◽  
Extreme Value Model

Given the importance of climate change and the increase of its severity under extreme weather events, we analyze the main drivers of high food prices in Colombia between 1985 and 2020 focusing on extreme weather shocks like a strong El Ni˜no.We estimate a non-stationary extreme value model for Colombian food prices. Our findings suggest that perishable foods are more exposed to extreme weather conditions in comparison to processed foods. In fact, an extremely low precipitation level explains only high prices in perishable foods. The risk of high perishable food prices is significantly larger for low rainfall levels (dry seasons) compared to high precipitation levels (rainy seasons). This risk gradually results in higher perishable food prices. It is non linear and is also significantly larger than the risk related to changes in the US dollar-Colombian peso exchange rate and fuel prices. Those covariates also explain high prices for both perishable and processed foods. Finally, we find that the events associated with the strongest El Ni˜no in 1988 and 2016 are expected to reoccur once every 50 years.

scholarly journals From Theory to Field Evidence: Observations on the Evolution of the Settlements of an Earthfill Dam, over Long Time Scales

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pytharouli ◽  
Michalis ◽  
Raftopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
Field Evidence ◽  
Weather Events ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Clay Core ◽  
Earthfill Dams ◽  
Downstream Communities ◽  
Flooding Events ◽  
First Time

Unprecedented flooding events put dams and downstream communities at risk, as evidenced by the recent cases of the Oroville and Whaley bridge dams. Empirical models may describe expected ‘normal’ dam behaviour, but they do not account for changes due to recurring extreme weather events. Numerical modelling provides insights into this, but results are affected by the chosen material properties. Long-term field monitoring data can help with understanding the mechanical behaviour of earthfill dams and how this is affected by the environment over decades. We analyse the recorded settlements for one of the largest earthfill dams in Europe. We compare the evolution of these settlements to the reservoir level, rainfall, and the occurrence of earthquakes for a period of 31 years after first impoundment. We find that the clay core responds to the reservoir fluctuations with an increasing (from 0 to 6 months) time delay. This is the first time that a change in the behaviour of a central clay core dam, as observed from field data, is reported in the international literature. Seepage rates, as recorded within the drainage galleries, are directly affected by cumulative rainfall depths exceeding 67 mm per fortnight.

scholarly journals Evaluation of Spatial Resilience of Highway Networks in Response to Adverse Weather Conditions

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (8) ◽  
pp. 480
Author(s):  
Fei Han ◽  
Su Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Hot Spot ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
K Nearest Neighbors ◽  
Highway Infrastructure ◽  
Spatial Resilience ◽  
Highway Networks ◽  
Weather Events ◽  
Adverse Weather ◽  
Traditional Service

Adverse weather poses a significant threat to the serviceability of highway infrastructure, as it causes more frequent and severe crash incidents. This study focuses on evaluating the resilience of highway networks by examining the crash-induced safety impact in response to extreme weather events. Unlike traditional service drop-based methods for resilience evaluation, this study endeavors to evaluate highway resilience in a spatial context. Three spatial metrics, including K-nearest neighbors, proximity to highways, and Kernel density hot spot, are introduced and employed to compare and analyze the spatial patterns (magnitude and distribution) of crashes in pre- and post-weather conditions. An illustrative example is also provided to showcase the applications of the proposed spatial resilience metrics for two study areas in the State of Illinois, U.S. The contribution of this study is to provide transportation practitioners with a tool to evaluate highway spatial resilience both visually and quantitatively, and ultimately improve highway safety and operation.

The Assessment of the Refurbished Reinforced Concrete Buildings in Point of the Climate Change

2014 ◽  
Vol 899 ◽  
pp. 440-445
Author(s):  
Sára Hrabovszky-Horváth
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Reinforced Concrete ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
Adaptive Capacity ◽  
Residential Buildings ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Building Design ◽  
Extreme Weather ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
Weather Events

Changes in climate have various impacts on the built environment: e.g. the building design and the materials together with the operation and the maintenance. Therefore, it is extremely important to account for the future weather conditions during both the design of new buildings and the renovation of existing buildings. According to the Hungarian meteorological researches as a consequence of the global warming the climate of Hungary is going to become warmer and drier as well as the number and the intensity of the extreme weather events is expected to grow. One of the main directions of actions in the Climate Change Strategy is the adaptation to the changing circumstances, the improvement of the adaptive capacity of the built environment. In this study, the prefabricated reinforced concrete large-panel residential buildings are analysed: a bottom-up methodology was developed based on typological approach to assess the vulnerability of the ‘panel buildings’ to climate change by analysing the extreme weather events. After assessing the sensitivity and the adaptive capacity of the determined building types, their vulnerability to the increased number of windstorms and extreme rainfalls was estimated and the influence of their refurbishment was analysed.

scholarly journals Passenger Aviation and High Speed Rail: A Comparison of Emissions Profiles on Selected European Routes

2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matteo Prussi ◽  
Laura Lonza
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Transport System ◽  
High Speed ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
High Speed Rail ◽  
Eu Member States ◽  
Weather Events ◽  
High Speed Trains

Air transport has been constantly growing and forecasts seem to confirm the trend; the resulting environmental impact is relevant, both at local and at global scale. In this paper, data from various datasets have been integrated to assess the environmental impact of modal substitution with high speed rail. Six intra-EU28 routes and a domestic route have been defined for comparison. The airports have been chosen considering the share of the total number of passengers on flights to/from other EU Member States. Three scenarios have been proposed in the time period 2017–2025; aircraft types, distance bands, and occupancy rate are investigated on each scenario. The comparison with HSR service has been carried out only on passenger service and not for freight. The energy consumption and the consequent emissions for the aircraft have been estimated on the base of the available data for the mix of aircraft types, performing the routes. The results indicate the advantage of the high speed trains, in terms of direct CO2eq emissions per passenger km. Compared to a neutral scenario, with an annual passenger increment of 3.5%, the HSR substitution of the 5% and the 25% of this increment allow a GHG saving of 4% and 20%, respectively. Some of the analysed routes (e.g., Frankfurt Main–Paris CDG) have interesting GHG savings but the duration of the trip today is limiting for a real substitution. Moreover, there is general agreement that the extreme weather events induced by climate change will affect the functioning of the European transport system. In this sense, transportation by the rail mode is expected to play a significant role in strengthening the EU transport system, its resilience, and its reliability, as it is less immediately subject to the impacts of severe weather conditions.

scholarly journals A probabilistic risk assessment for the vulnerability of the European carbon cycle to weather extremes: the ecosystem perspective

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 1813-1831 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Rolinski ◽  
A. Rammig ◽  
A. Walz ◽  
W. von Bloh ◽  
M. van Oijen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Time Series ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Probabilistic Risk Assessment ◽  
Extreme Weather ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Weather Events ◽  
Probabilistic Risk

Abstract. Extreme weather events are likely to occur more often under climate change and the resulting effects on ecosystems could lead to a further acceleration of climate change. But not all extreme weather events lead to extreme ecosystem response. Here, we focus on hazardous ecosystem behaviour and identify coinciding weather conditions. We use a simple probabilistic risk assessment based on time series of ecosystem behaviour and climate conditions. Given the risk assessment terminology, vulnerability and risk for the previously defined hazard are estimated on the basis of observed hazardous ecosystem behaviour. We apply this approach to extreme responses of terrestrial ecosystems to drought, defining the hazard as a negative net biome productivity over a 12-month period. We show an application for two selected sites using data for 1981–2010 and then apply the method to the pan-European scale for the same period, based on numerical modelling results (LPJmL for ecosystem behaviour; ERA-Interim data for climate). Our site-specific results demonstrate the applicability of the proposed method, using the SPEI to describe the climate condition. The site in Spain provides an example of vulnerability to drought because the expected value of the SPEI is 0.4 lower for hazardous than for non-hazardous ecosystem behaviour. In northern Germany, on the contrary, the site is not vulnerable to drought because the SPEI expectation values imply wetter conditions in the hazard case than in the non-hazard case. At the pan-European scale, ecosystem vulnerability to drought is calculated in the Mediterranean and temperate region, whereas Scandinavian ecosystems are vulnerable under conditions without water shortages. These first model-based applications indicate the conceptual advantages of the proposed method by focusing on the identification of critical weather conditions for which we observe hazardous ecosystem behaviour in the analysed data set. Application of the method to empirical time series and to future climate would be important next steps to test the approach.

scholarly journals Identification of Extreme Wind Events Using a Weather Type Classification

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (13) ◽  
pp. 3944
Author(s):  
António Couto ◽  
Paula Costa ◽  
Teresa Simões
Keyword(s):  
Wind Power ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Power Production ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
Time Duration ◽  
Work Related ◽  
Weather Events ◽  
Extreme Wind ◽  
Wind Events

The identification of extreme wind events and their driving forces are crucial to better integrating wind generation into the power system. Recent work related the occurrence of extreme wind events with some weather circulation patterns, enabling the identification of (i) wind power ramps and (ii) low-generation events as well as their intrinsic features, such as the intensity and time duration. Using Portugal as a case study, this work focuses on the application of a weather classification-type methodology to link the weather conditions with wind power generation, namely, the different types of extreme events. A long-term period is used to assess and characterize the changes in the occurrence of extreme weather events and corresponding intensity on wind power production. High variability is expected under cyclonic regimes, whereas low-generation events are most common in anticyclonic regimes. The results of the work provide significant insights regarding wind power production in Portugal, enabling an increase in its predictability.

scholarly journals Lakes sensitivity to climatic stress – a sociological assessment

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 38-47
Author(s):  
Marta Lackowska ◽  
Barbara Nowicka ◽  
Marta Bałandin ◽  
Mirosław Grochowski
Keyword(s):  
Biosphere Reserve ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Extreme Weather ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
Weather Events ◽  
Local Stakeholders ◽  
Local Decision ◽  
Local Decision Makers

AbstractOne of the conditions for effective water resources management in protected areas is local decision makers’ knowledge about potential threats caused by climate changes. Our study, conducted in the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve of Tuchola Forest in Poland, analyses the perception of threats by local stakeholders. Their assessments of the sensitivity of four lakes to the extreme weather events are compared with hydrological studies. The survey shows that the lakes’ varying responses to extreme weather conditions is rarely noticed by ordinary observers. Their perception is usually far from the hydrological facts, which indicates a lack of relevant information or a failure in making it widely accessible and understandable. Moreover, it is rather the human impact, not climate change, which is seen as the biggest threat to the lakes. Insufficient environmental knowledge may hinder the effective protection and management of natural resources, due to bad decisions and lack of the local communities’ support for adaptation and mitigation policies.

scholarly journals Simultaneous measurements of CO<sub>2</sub> and water exchanges over three agroecosystems in South-West France

2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 2489-2522 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Stella ◽  
E. Lamaud ◽  
Y. Brunet ◽  
J.-M. Bonnefond ◽  
D. Loustau ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Sink ◽  
Vapour Pressure Deficit ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Pine Forest ◽  
Stand Age ◽  
Agricultural Field ◽  
Maize Crop ◽  
Simultaneous Measurements ◽  
South West ◽  
Young Forest

Abstract. During the last few decades, many studies have been performed to determine water and carbon budgets of broadleaf and deciduous forests, crops and grasslands. However, since most measurements have been made in different regions and at different periods, it is difficult to compare the results directly. In order to evaluate accurately the respective contribution of various agroecosystems to global water and carbon exchanges, it is necessary to compare data obtained in similar climatic and weather conditions. To address this question, we present the results from simultaneous measurements carried out from 31 March 2007 to 3 March 2008 over three typical agroecosystems of the Les Landes region in South-West France: an agricultural field with maize from 29 May to 18 October, a young (5 year-old) pine forest and a mature (37 year-old) pine forest. All measurements were collected as part of the Regional Experiment component of the CarboEurope-IP project. During most of the year, the agricultural field without vegetation is a source of CO2, but from late June to early September the maize crop becomes a stronger carbon sink than the forests. Over the whole measurement period the three agroecosystems behave as CO2 sinks with carbon storage of about 500, 330 and 230 gC m−2 for the young forest, the mature forest and the agricultural field, respectively. Daily Water Use Efficiencies (WUE) of the three ecosystems were evaluated and expressed as functions of the mean daily vapour pressure deficit (VPD). Similar trends were observed for the two forests, which suggests that for a given species WUE is independent of stand age. The WUE of the maize crop at maturity was also found to depend upon VPD, but it is about twice as large as for the forests, owing to the physiological advantages of C4 species.

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