scholarly journals CLIMATE CHANGE VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT FOR AMERICAN SAMOA: FOCUS ON TRANSPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURE

Author(s):  
Jessica Podoski ◽  
Dane Sjoblom ◽  
Shelley Franklin

Essential transportation infrastructure around the globe will be increasingly compromised by interrelated climate change impacts. Due to geographic isolation and limited natural resources, the economy and security of many Pacific territories and nations, including American Samoa, depend heavily on the resilience of these transportation infrastructure systems. Of particular relevance are the coastal impacts of climate changes such as sea level rise and storm surges which will threaten transportation infrastructure including both temporary and long-term flooding of airports, ports and harbors, and roads which are vital lifelines for trans-Pacific, interisland, and intra-island commerce and community services. The majority of the transportation assets in American Samoa are along a narrow coastal plain backed by steep topography, precluding relocation or retreat in response to increased coastal flooding accompanying a changing climate.Recorded Presentation from the vICCE (YouTube Link): https://youtu.be/k-qJPMVwvVc

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 595
Author(s):  
Américo Soares Ribeiro ◽  
Carina Lurdes Lopes ◽  
Magda Catarina Sousa ◽  
Moncho Gomez-Gesteira ◽  
João Miguel Dias

Ports constitute a significant influence in the economic activity in coastal areas through operations and infrastructures to facilitate land and maritime transport of cargo. Ports are located in a multi-dimensional environment facing ocean and river hazards. Higher warming scenarios indicate Europe’s ports will be exposed to higher risk due to the increase in extreme sea levels (ESL), a combination of the mean sea level, tide, and storm surge. Located on the west Iberia Peninsula, the Aveiro Port is located in a coastal lagoon exposed to ocean and river flows, contributing to higher flood risk. This study aims to assess the flood extent for Aveiro Port for historical (1979–2005), near future (2026–2045), and far future (2081–2099) periods scenarios considering different return periods (10, 25, and 100-year) for the flood drivers, through numerical simulations of the ESL, wave regime, and riverine flows simultaneously. Spatial maps considering the flood extent and calculated area show that most of the port infrastructures' resilience to flooding is found under the historical period, with some marginal floods. Under climate change impacts, the port flood extent gradually increases for higher return periods, where most of the terminals are at high risk of being flooded for the far-future period, whose contribution is primarily due to mean sea-level rise and storm surges.


2010 ◽  
Vol 278 (1712) ◽  
pp. 1661-1669 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Alonso ◽  
Menno J. Bouma ◽  
Mercedes Pascual

Climate change impacts on malaria are typically assessed with scenarios for the long-term future. Here we focus instead on the recent past (1970–2003) to address whether warmer temperatures have already increased the incidence of malaria in a highland region of East Africa. Our analyses rely on a new coupled mosquito–human model of malaria, which we use to compare projected disease levels with and without the observed temperature trend. Predicted malaria cases exhibit a highly nonlinear response to warming, with a significant increase from the 1970s to the 1990s, although typical epidemic sizes are below those observed. These findings suggest that climate change has already played an important role in the exacerbation of malaria in this region. As the observed changes in malaria are even larger than those predicted by our model, other factors previously suggested to explain all of the increase in malaria may be enhancing the impact of climate change.


2015 ◽  
Vol 105 (5) ◽  
pp. 232-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond Guiteras ◽  
Amir Jina ◽  
A. Mushfiq Mobarak

A burgeoning “Climate-Economy” literature has uncovered many effects of changes in temperature and precipitation on economic activity, but has made considerably less progress in modeling the effects of other associated phenomena, like natural disasters. We develop new, objective data on floods, focusing on Bangladesh. We show that rainfall and self-reported exposure are weak proxies for true flood exposure. These data allow us to study adaptation, giving accurate measures of both long-term averages and short term variation in exposure. This is important in studying climate change impacts, as people will not only experience new exposures, but also experience them differently.


Author(s):  
Mark Maslin

What is dangerous climate change? What is our coping range? ‘Climate change impacts’ assesses the potential effects of climate change on the natural environment as well as on human societies and our economies. Climate change impacts will increase significantly as global temperature rises. Climate change will affect the return period and severity of floods, droughts, heat waves, and storms. Coastal cities and towns will be especially vulnerable as sea-level rise will worsen the effects of floods and storm surges. Water and food security and public health will become the most important problems facing all countries. Climate change also threatens global biodiversity and the well being of billions of people.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (8) ◽  
pp. 1974-1988
Author(s):  
Maroof Hamid ◽  
Anzar Ahmad Khuroo ◽  
Akhtar Hussain Malik ◽  
Rameez Ahmad ◽  
Chandra Prakash Singh

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Pergola ◽  
Carmine Serio ◽  
Francesco Ripullone ◽  
Francesco Marchese ◽  
Giuseppe Naviglio ◽  
...  

<p>The OT4CLIMA project, funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research, within the PON 2014-2020 Industrial Research program, “Aerospace” thematic domain, aims at developing advanced Earth Observation (EO) technologies and methodologies for improving our capability to better understand the effects of Climate Change (CC) and our capability to mitigate them at the regional and sub-regional scale. Both medium-to-long term impacts (e.g. vegetation stress, drought) and extreme events with rapid dynamics (e.g. intense meteorological phenomena, fires) will be investigated, trying a twofold (i.e. interesting both “products” and “processes”) technological innovation: a) through the design and the implementation of advanced sensors to be mounted on multiplatform EO systems; b) through the development of advanced methodologies for EO data analysis, interpretation, integration and fusion.</p><p>Activities will focus on two of the major natural processes strictly related to Climate Change, namely the Carbon and Water Cycles by using an inter-disciplinary approach.</p><p>As an example, the project will make it possible the measurements, with an unprecedented accuracy of atmospheric (e.g. OCS, carbon-sulphide) and surface (e.g. soil moisture) parameters that are crucial in determining the vegetation contribution to the CO2 balance, suggesting at the same time solutions based on the analysis and integration of satellite, airborne and unmanned data, in order to significantly improve the capability of local communities to face the short- and long-term CC-related effects.</p><p>OT4CLIMA benefits from a strong scientific expertise (14 CNR institutes, ASI, INGV, CIRA, 3 Universities), considerable research infrastructures and a wide industrial partnership (including both big national players, i.e. E-Geos and IDS companies and well-established italian SMEs consortia, i.e. CREATEC, CORISTA and SIIT, and a spin-off company, Survey Lab) specifically focused on the technological innovation frontier.</p><p>This contribution would summarize the project main objectives and show some activities so far carried out.</p>


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