scholarly journals Space–time dependence of compound hot–dry events in the United States: assessment using a multi-site multi-variable weather generator

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 621-634
Author(s):  
Manuela I. Brunner ◽  
Eric Gilleland ◽  
Andrew W. Wood
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Weather Generator ◽  
Spatial Extent ◽  
Event Analysis ◽  
Temperature And Precipitation ◽  
Compound Event ◽  
Compound Events ◽  
Variable Weather

Abstract. Compound hot and dry events can lead to severe impacts whose severity may depend on their timescale and spatial extent. Despite their potential importance, the climatological characteristics of these joint events have received little attention regardless of growing interest in climate change impacts on compound events. Here, we ask how event timescale relates to (1) spatial patterns of compound hot–dry events in the United States, (2) the spatial extent of compound hot–dry events, and (3) the importance of temperature and precipitation as drivers of compound events. To study such rare spatial and multivariate events, we introduce a multi-site multi-variable weather generator (PRSim.weather), which enables generation of a large number of spatial multivariate hot–dry events. We show that the stochastic model realistically simulates distributional and temporal autocorrelation characteristics of temperature and precipitation at single sites, dependencies between the two variables, spatial correlation patterns, and spatial heat and meteorological drought indicators and their co-occurrence probabilities. The results of our compound event analysis demonstrate that (1) the northwestern and southeastern United States are most susceptible to compound hot–dry events independent of timescale, and susceptibility decreases with increasing timescale; (2) the spatial extent and timescale of compound events are strongly related to sub-seasonal events (1–3 months) showing the largest spatial extents; and (3) the importance of temperature and precipitation as drivers of compound events varies with timescale, with temperature being most important at short and precipitation at seasonal timescales. We conclude that timescale is an important factor to be considered in compound event assessments and suggest that climate change impact assessments should consider several timescales instead of a single timescale when looking at future changes in compound event characteristics. The largest future changes may be expected for short compound events because of their strong relation to temperature.

scholarly journals Space-time dependence of compound hot-dry events in the United States: assessment using a multi-site multi-variable weather generator

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuela I. Brunner ◽  
Eric Gilleland ◽  
Andrew W. Wood
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Time Scale ◽  
The United States ◽  
Weather Generator ◽  
Spatial Extent ◽  
Temperature And Precipitation ◽  
Compound Event ◽  
Compound Events ◽  
Variable Weather

Abstract. Compound hot and dry events can lead to severe impacts whose severity may depend on their time scale and spatial extent. Despite their potential importance, the climatological characteristics of these joint events have received little attention regardless of growing interest in climate change impacts on compound events. Here, we ask how event time scale relates to (1) spatial patterns of compound hot-dry events in the United States, (2) the spatial extent of compound hot-dry events, and (3) the importance of temperature and precipitation as drivers of compound event occurrence. To study such rare spatial and multivariate events, we introduce a multi-site multi-variable weather generator (PRSim.weather), which enables generation of a large number of spatial compound hot-dry events. We show that the stochastic model realistically simulates distributional and temporal autocorrelation characteristics of temperature and precipitation at single sites, dependencies between the two variables, spatial correlation patterns, and spatial heat and drought indicators and their co-occurrence probabilities. The results of our compound event analysis demonstrate that (1) the Northwestern and Southeastern United States are most susceptible to compound hot-dry events independent of time scale and susceptibility decreases with increasing time scale, (2) the spatial extent and time scale of compound events are strongly related with sub-seasonal events (1–3 months) showing the largest spatial extents, and (3) the importance of temperature and precipitation as drivers of compound events varies with time scale where temperature is most important at short and precipitation at seasonal time scales. We conclude that time scale is an important factor to be considered in compound event assessments and suggest that climate change impact assessments should consider several instead of a single time scale when looking at future changes in compound event characteristics. The largest future changes may be expected for short compound events because of their strong relation to temperature.

scholarly journals Interactions between Climate Change and Complex Topography Drive Observed Streamflow Changes in the Colorado River Basin

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (10) ◽  
pp. 1637-1650 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kurt C. Solander ◽  
Katrina E. Bennett ◽  
Sean W. Fleming ◽  
David S. Gutzler ◽  
Emily M. Hopkins ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
River Basin ◽  
Colorado River ◽  
Food Resource ◽  
The United States ◽  
Colorado River Basin ◽  
Temperature And Precipitation ◽  
Strong Relation ◽  
High Elevations

Abstract The Colorado River basin (CRB) is one of the most important watersheds for energy, water, and food security in the United States. CRB water supports 15% of U.S. food production, more than 50 GW of electricity capacity, and one of the fastest growing populations in the United States. Energy–water–food nexus impacts from climate change are projected to increase in the CRB. These include a higher incidence of extreme events, widespread snow-to-rain regime shifts, and a higher frequency and magnitude of climate-driven disturbances. Here, we empirically show how the historical annual streamflow maximum and hydrograph centroid timing relate to temperature, precipitation, and snow. In addition, we show how these hydroclimatic relationships vary with elevation and how the elevation dependence has changed over this historical observational record. We find temperature and precipitation have a relatively weak relation (|r| < 0.3) to interannual variations in streamflow timing and extremes at low elevations (<1500 m), but a relatively strong relation (|r| > 0.5) at high elevations (>2300 m) where more snow occurs in the CRB. The threshold elevation where this relationship is strongest (|r| > 0.5) is moving uphill at a rate of up to 4.8 m yr−1 (p = 0.11) and 6.1 m yr−1 (p = 0.01) for temperature and precipitation, respectively. Based on these findings, we hypothesize where warming and precipitation-related streamflow changes are likely to be most severe using a watershed-scale vulnerability map to prioritize areas for further research and to inform energy, water, and food resource management in the CRB.

scholarly journals An Attack on the Separation of Powers? Strategic Climate Litigation in the Eyes of U.S. Judges

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (15) ◽  
pp. 8335
Author(s):  
Jasmina Nedevska
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Checks And Balances ◽  
Climate Politics ◽  
The Social ◽  
Domestic Courts ◽  
Research Plan

Climate change litigation has emerged as a powerful tool as societies steer towards sustainable development. Although the litigation mainly takes place in domestic courts, the implications can be seen as global as specific climate rulings influence courts across national borders. However, while the phenomenon of judicialization is well-known in the social sciences, relatively few have studied issues of legitimacy that arise as climate politics move into courts. A comparatively large part of climate cases have appeared in the United States. This article presents a research plan for a study of judges’ opinions and dissents in the United States, regarding the justiciability of strategic climate cases. The purpose is to empirically study how judges navigate a perceived normative conflict—between the litigation and an overarching ideal of separation of powers—in a system marked by checks and balances.

Rethinking U.S. National Security after Covid19

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda J. Bilmes
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
National Security ◽  
The United States ◽  
Emerging Diseases ◽  
Defense Spending ◽  
Federal Spending ◽  
Us Economy ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Military

AbstractThe United States has traditionally defined national security in the context of military threats and addressed them through military spending. This article considers whether the United States will rethink this mindset following the disruption of the Covid19 pandemic, during which a non-military actor has inflicted widespread harm. The author argues that the US will not redefine national security explicitly due to the importance of the military in the US economy and the bipartisan trend toward growing the military budget since 2001. However, the pandemic has opened the floodgates with respect to federal spending. This shift will enable the next administration to allocate greater resources to non-military threats such as climate change and emerging diseases, even as it continues to increase defense spending to address traditionally defined military threats such as hypersonics and cyberterrorism.

Stress Testing to Assess Recovery from Extreme Events

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
M. John Plodinec
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Financial Institutions ◽  
Extreme Events ◽  
Stress Testing ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Rapid Spread ◽  
Potential Benefits

Abstract Over the last decade, communities have become increasingly aware of the risks they face. They are threatened by natural disasters, which may be exacerbated by climate change and the movement of land masses. Growing globalization has made a pandemic due to the rapid spread of highly infectious diseases ever more likely. Societal discord breeds its own threats, not the least of which is the spread of radical ideologies giving rise to terrorism. The accelerating rate of technological change has bred its own social and economic risks. This widening spectrum of risk poses a difficult question to every community – how resilient will the community be to the extreme events it faces. In this paper, we present a new approach to answering that question. It is based on the stress testing of financial institutions required by regulators in the United States and elsewhere. It generalizes stress testing by expanding the concept of “capital” beyond finance to include the other “capitals” (e.g., human, social) possessed by a community. Through use of this approach, communities can determine which investments of its capitals are most likely to improve its resilience. We provide an example of using the approach, and discuss its potential benefits.

Epic Cruelty: On Post-Pandemic Performance

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-136
Author(s):  
Rick Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
The United States ◽  
California State University ◽  
The State ◽  
State University ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
Systemic Racism ◽  
Disaster Capitalism

As today’s catastrophic Covid-19 pandemic exacerbates ongoing crises, including systemic racism, rising ethno-nationalism, and fossil-fuelled climate change, the neoliberal world that we inhabit is becoming increasingly hostile, particularly for the most vulnerable. Even in the United States, as armed white-supremacist, pro-Trump forces face off against protesters seeking justice for African Americans, the hostility is increasingly palpable, and often frightening. Yet as millions of Black Lives Matter protesters demonstrated after the brutal police killing of George Floyd, the current, intersecting crises – worsened by Trump’s criminalization of anti-racism protesters and his dismissal of science – demand a serious, engaged, response from activists as well as artists. The title of this article is meant to evoke not only the state of the unusually cruel moment through which we are living, but also the very different approaches to performance of both Brecht and Artaud, whose ideas, along with those of others – including Benjamin, Butler, Latour, Mbembe, and Césaire – inform the radical, open-ended, post-pandemic theatre practice proposed in this essay. A critically acclaimed dramatist as well as Professor of English and Playwriting at California State University, Northridge, Mitchell’s published volumes of plays include Disaster Capitalism; or Money Can’t Buy You Love: Three Plays; Brecht in L.A.; and Ventriloquist: Two Plays and Ventriloquial Miscellany. He is the editor of Experimental O’Neill, and is currently at work on a series of post-pandemic plays.

scholarly journals Assessing Climate Change Impacts on Wildfire Risk in the United States

Forests ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (12) ◽  
pp. 3197-3211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hyunjin An ◽  
Jianbang Gan ◽  
Sung Cho
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
The United States ◽  
Wildfire Risk

scholarly journals Estimating economic damage from climate change in the United States

Science ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 356 (6345) ◽  
pp. 1362-1369 ◽  
Author(s):  
Solomon Hsiang ◽  
Robert Kopp ◽  
Amir Jina ◽  
James Rising ◽  
Michael Delgado ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Economic Damage ◽  
Global Mean Temperature ◽  
Flexible Architecture ◽  
Econometric Analyses ◽  
Business As Usual

Estimates of climate change damage are central to the design of climate policies. Here, we develop a flexible architecture for computing damages that integrates climate science, econometric analyses, and process models. We use this approach to construct spatially explicit, probabilistic, and empirically derived estimates of economic damage in the United States from climate change. The combined value of market and nonmarket damage across analyzed sectors—agriculture, crime, coastal storms, energy, human mortality, and labor—increases quadratically in global mean temperature, costing roughly 1.2% of gross domestic product per +1°C on average. Importantly, risk is distributed unequally across locations, generating a large transfer of value northward and westward that increases economic inequality. By the late 21st century, the poorest third of counties are projected to experience damages between 2 and 20% of county income (90% chance) under business-as-usual emissions (Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5).

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