Integrated Assessments of Meteorological Hazards across the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau of China

Recent decades have witnessed accelerated climate changes across the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) and elevated socioeconomic exposure to meteorological hazards. The QTP is called the “the third pole”, exerting remarkable impact on environmental changes in its surrounding regions. While few reports are available for addressing multi-hazard risks over the QTP, we develop an integrated indicator system involving multiple meteorological hazards, i.e., droughts, rainstorms, snowstorms and hailstorms, investigating the spatiotemporal patterns of major hazards over the QTP. The hazard zones of droughts and rainstorms are identified in the southern Gangdise Mountains, the South Tibet Valley, the eastern Nyenchen-Tanglha Mountains, the Hengduan Mountains and West Sichuan Basin. Snowstorm hazard zones distribute in the Himalayas, the Bayan Har Mountains and the central Nyenchen-Tanglha Mountains, while hailstorm hazard zones cluster in central part of the QTP. Since the 21st century, intensified rainstorms are detectable in the densely populated cities of Xining and Lhasa and their adjacent areas, while amplified droughts are observed in grain production areas of the South Tibet Valley and the Hengduan Mountains. Snowstorm hazards show large interannual variations and an increase in pastoral areas, although the overall trend is declining slightly. The frequency of hailstorms gradually decreases in human settlements due to thermal and landscape effects. Mapping meteorological hazards regionalization could help to understand climate risks in the QTP, and provide scientific reference for human adaptation to climate changes in highly sensitive areas.

Multi-hazard mitigation challenges during the Covid-19 crisis? Evidence from the tropical regions

<p>Across the world, health and disaster managers face the challenge of responding to natural hazards such as cyclones, floods, and droughts while minimizing the impacts of Covid-19. The tropical cyclones and floods affect vulnerable communities and result in losses of life and damages. The drought situations can weaken the agricultural economy and local livelihoods. How these impacts could be amplified by the Covid-19, mainly during the monsoon season, is of great importance for informed-planning. The present study aims to assess exposure to hydro-meteorological hazards (tropical cyclones, floods, and droughts) in terms of the number of people affected, economic activities exposed, and how these hazards superimposed over the Covid-19 pandemic could impact the different phases of disaster risk management cycle. The study focuses on three deltas, namely, Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM) delta spanning over India and Bangladesh, and Red River (RR) and Mekong River (MK) deltas in Vietnam.</p><p>Present research found that the GBM delta suffers from frequent cyclones and floods and less with coastal floods and droughts, whereas the MK delta suffers from riverine and coastal floods and droughts. The RR delta faces frequent tropical cyclones, riverine and coastal floods, and droughts. Populations living in Red delta (100%) exposed more to tropical cyclone as compared to GBM (2.22%) and the Mekong delta (0%) with 50-year return period (RP). Similarly, about 36.46 (0.28), 83.24 (47.23), and 72.76 (33.49) % population of the GBM, RR, and MK deltas are exposed to riverine (coastal) flood hazards with 10-year RP, respectively. During May-Aug 2020, a maximum of 0.76, 100, and 33.49 % population in a month was exposed to meteorological drought (SPI3 below -1) in the GBM, RR, and MK deltas, respectively.</p><p>The results include probabilistic exposure of urban area, cropland, livestock, and GDP to major hydro-meteorological hazards on a similar line. In the second part, the study explores the number of Covid-19 cases reported at the administrative level 2 and draws qualitative inferences on how tackling multi-hazards in the deltas could have become more challenging during the ongoing pandemic and vice versa.  The study recommends that the pandemic has resulted in an urgent need to incorporate health emergency disasters while designing hydro-meteorological disaster management plans.</p>

Nature-Based Solutions for Hydro-Meteorological Hazards: the OPERANDUM Database

<p>Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) refer to the sustainable management, protection and use of nature to preserve the ecosystem and prevent the loss of biodiversity. Given the multiple environmental, social, and economic benefits they provide to society, NBS have been increasingly promoted and implemented in cities, especially for air pollution mitigation and the improving of human thermal comfort and well-being. Several databases and web platforms already exist, which document these beneficial impacts of NBS in our cities by collecting and exposing existing NBS case studies and projects from around globe. However, the effort of cataloging and storing NBS data according to common and harmonized principles and standards seems yet sporadic and uncoordinated at the global and European level, especially in the context of natural hazard-related disasters. Nature-based solutions have been indeed recently emerged as viable and effective measures to mitigate the impacts of hydro-meteorological phenomena such as floods, landslide, etc. in both urban and rural environments, an aspect not often emphasized in the existing databases.</p><p>Driven by the ambition of overcoming these two main gaps, an innovative geo-catalogue of existing NBS has been developed within the framework of GeoIKP, the NBS web-platform newly created by the EU H2020 project OPERANDUM.</p><p>The geo-catalogue represents a comprehensive, geo-referenced, database of NBS case studies which are specifically designed to mitigate the risk and impacts of hydro-meteorological hazards, under a variety of environmental setting and hazard categories. It therefore represents a novel and open-access data source to learn about, and explore, the usability of NBS in fulfilling climate mitigation and adaptation objectives over a wide range of hydro-meteorological hazards.</p><p>Case studies collected from various resources (NBS platforms, scientific literature, technical reports, OPERANDUM living labs, etc.) are revised, classified and harmonized according to internationally recognized standard and classification schemes (e.g., INSPIRE legislation, MAES classification, etc.) which allow to characterize each NBS through a comprehensive set of parameters, including the type of hazard and ecosystem, the societal challenges and driving policies linked to it, the type of intervention and its spatial coverage, among many others.</p><p>The highly structured and comprehensive data model adopted here enables to query the database and/or filter the results based on a multitude of individual parameters which encompass all different dimensions of NBS (e.g. geophysical, societal, environmental, etc.). This not only allows for a straightforward and automatic association to one or more thematic aspects of NBS, but also enhances standardization, discoverability and interoperability of NBS data.</p>

Impact of Hydrometeorological Hazards on Agricultural Production at Chalan Beel, Bangladesh

Agriculture of Bangladesh is closely dependent on weather, rainfall pattern and land formation. However, frequent hydro-meteorological hazards cause to adversely affect the normal agricultural process and production. This study aimed to assess the impact of Hydro meteorological hazards on the crop cultivation practices, possible mitigation and adaptation measures for the farmers at Chalan Beel area under Pabna district, Bangladesh. There are 90 people having land and engaged with crop cultivation directly at Chalan Beel were been selected by applying purposive sampling method and interviewed by a pre-designed semi-structured questionnaire through face to face interview. The results revealed that Rice (93.75 %) and Garlic (47.5 %) are the major cultivating crops at Chalan Beel and 96 % of the farmers were been experienced with hydrometeorological devastation. The farmers perceived Nor’wester (77.9 %) as the most frequent hazard causing crop damage following by Heavy Rainfall (71.4 %), Hailstorm (68.8 %), Heavy Wind (45.5 %), Flashflood (42.9 %), Heavy Fog and Floods (19.5 % and 11.7 %) respectively. It is also identified that Nor’wester (58.4 %) and Heavy Rainfall (58.4 %) had maximum damage whereas Hailstorm (55.8 %), Heavy Wind and Flashflood also considerable adverse effects on overall crop production at this area. Only 24 % of farmers were found to change their cultivation pattern as the adaptation measure. This study portrayed that hydro-meteorological hazards are adversely affecting the crop production at Chalan Beel area and resulting economic loss. Therefore, government should ensure the participation of farmers along with adopting their deliberative in developing a strategic plan for providing technical support for diversification and training to adapt in this hazard prone area. SAARC J. Agri., 18(2): 181-193 (2020)