scholarly journals Science Directions in a Post COP21 World of Transient Climate Change: Enabling Regional to Local Predictions in Support of Reliable Climate Information

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (11) ◽  
pp. 1498-1507 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Stammer ◽  
A. Bracco ◽  
P. Braconnot ◽  
G. P. Brasseur ◽  
S. M. Griffies ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Information ◽  
Transient Climate Change

scholarly journals 2 °C vs. High Warming: Transitions to Flood-Generating Mechanisms across Canada

Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 1494
Author(s):  
Bernardo Teufel ◽  
Laxmi Sushama
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Adaptation Measures ◽  
Relative Contribution ◽  
Late 21St Century ◽  
Transient Climate Change ◽  
Projected Changes ◽  
Change Mitigation

Fluvial flooding in Canada is often snowmelt-driven, thus occurs mostly in spring, and has caused billions of dollars in damage in the past decade alone. In a warmer climate, increasing rainfall and changing snowmelt rates could lead to significant shifts in flood-generating mechanisms. Here, projected changes to flood-generating mechanisms in terms of the relative contribution of snowmelt and rainfall are assessed across Canada, based on an ensemble of transient climate change simulations performed using a state-of-the-art regional climate model. Changes to flood-generating mechanisms are assessed for both a late 21st century, high warming (i.e., Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5) scenario, and in a 2 °C global warming context. Under 2 °C of global warming, the relative contribution of snowmelt and rainfall to streamflow peaks is projected to remain close to that of the current climate, despite slightly increased rainfall contribution. In contrast, a high warming scenario leads to widespread increases in rainfall contribution and the emergence of hotspots of change in currently snowmelt-dominated regions across Canada. In addition, several regions in southern Canada would be projected to become rainfall dominated. These contrasting projections highlight the importance of climate change mitigation, as remaining below the 2 °C global warming threshold can avoid large changes over most regions, implying a low likelihood that expensive flood adaptation measures would be necessary.

Visual storytelling about future weather extremes in Norway

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jana Sillmann ◽  
Melanie Burford ◽  
Miriam Stackpole Dahl
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
High Impact ◽  
Future Climate ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Climate Information ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Visual Storytelling ◽  
Western Norway ◽  
Event Based

<p>Extreme floods with severe impacts have hit municipalities in Western Norway in recent decades and they will become more intense and frequent with global warming. We present a project that focused on providing an approach for visualizing climate change information for decision-makers challenged with planning resilient infrastructure and preparedness measures for future flood impacts. We have chosen visual storytelling through a short film as the most suitable and effective tool for building a communication strategy to reach out to local and regional decision-makers on the one hand and the research community on the other.</p><p>The objective was to present and communicate results from a research project in a film by focusing on low-probability high-impact events using a storyline approach. The scope of the research project was to provide Norwegian stakeholders with a realistic representation of how an observed high-impact event of the past will look like under projected future climate conditions (Schaller et al. 2020, Hegdahl et al. 2020). Recent high-impact flood events in Norway have emphasized the need for more proactive climate change adaptation. This requires local, actionable and reliable climate information to support the decision making as well as awareness and consideration of barriers to adaptation. Thus, a seamless chain from global climate system modelling over high-resolution hydrological modelling to impact assessments is needed. We have therefore taken a novel "Tales of future weather" approach (Hazeleger et al. 2015), which suggests that scenarios tailored to a specific region and stakeholder context in combination with numerical weather prediction models will offer a more realistic picture of what future weather might look like, hence facilitating adaptation planning and implementation.</p><p>The film we produced particularly focuses on the extreme flood event in October 2005 that affected people (including fatalities) in Bergen municipality, how the event can be seen in context of historic floods and its atmospheric drivers. It tells the story of people having experienced this event and how Bergen municipality was responding to that event.  One key objective of the film is to drive interest and attention to the event-based storyline approach (Sillmann et al. 2020) to facilitate uptake of climate information and to empower decision makers with new knowledge and tools to assist them in their decision making.</p><p> </p><p><strong>References</strong></p><p>Hazeleger, W., B. Van den Hurk, E. Min, G-J. Van Oldenborgh, A. Petersen, D. Stainforth, D., E. Vasileiadou, and L. Smith, 2015: Tales of future weather. Nature Climate Change, 5, 107-113, doi: 10.1038/nclimate2450.</p><p>Hegdahl, T.J., K. Engeland, M. Müller and J. Sillmann, 2020: Atmospheric River induced floods in western Norway – under present and future climate, J. Hydrometeorology, doi: 10.1175/JHM-D-19-0071.1.</p><p>Schaller, N., J. Sillmann, M. Mueller, R. Haarsma, W. Hazeleger, T. Jahr Hegdahl, T. Kelder, G. van den Oord, A. Weerts, and K. Whan, 2020: The role of spatial and temporal model resolution in a flood event storyline approach in Western Norway, Weather and Climate Extremes, 29, doi: 10.1016/j.wace.2020.100259.</p><p>Sillmann, J., T. G. Shepherd, B. van den Hurk, W. Hazeleger, O. Martius, J. Zscheischler, 2020: Event-based storylines to address climate risk, Earth’s Future, doi: 10.1029/2020EF001783.</p>

Understanding the Climate-Sensitive Decisions and Information Needs of Freshwater Resource Managers in Hawaii

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 293-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa L. Finucane ◽  
Rachel Miller ◽  
L. Kati Corlew ◽  
Victoria W. Keener ◽  
Maxine Burkett ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Information Needs ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Uncertain Information ◽  
Climate Information ◽  
Freshwater Resources ◽  
Freshwater Resource ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Climate Literacy

Abstract Understanding how climate science can be useful in decisions about the management of freshwater resources requires knowledge of decision makers, their climate-sensitive decisions, and the context in which the decisions are being made. A mixed-methods study found that people managing freshwater resources in Hawaii are highly educated and experienced in diverse professions, they perceive climate change as posing a worrisome risk, and they would like to be better informed about how to adapt to climate change. Decision makers with higher climate literacy seem to be more comfortable dealing with uncertain information. Those with lower climate literacy seem to be more trusting of climate information from familiar sources. Freshwater managers in Hawaii make a wide range of climate-sensitive decisions. These decisions can be characterized on several key dimensions including purpose (optimization and evaluation), time horizon (short term and long term), level of information uncertainty (known, uncertain, deeply uncertain, and completely unknown), and information type (quantitative and qualitative). The climate information most relevant to decision makers includes vulnerability assessments incorporating long-term projections about temperature, rainfall distribution, storms, sea level rise, and streamflow changes at an island or statewide scale. The main barriers to using available climate information include insufficient staff time to locate the information and the lack of a clear legal mandate to use the information. Overall, the results suggest that an integrated and systematic approach is needed to determine where and when uncertain climate information is useful and how a larger set of organizational and individual variables affect decision making.

Behind the scenes of an interdisciplinary effort: conception, design and production of a flyer on climate change for the citizens of Hamburg

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 9-17
Author(s):  
Bettina Steuri ◽  
Tanja Blome ◽  
Katharina Bülow ◽  
Juliane El Zohbi ◽  
Peter Hoffmann ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Interdisciplinary Team ◽  
Metropolitan Region ◽  
Climate Indices ◽  
Service Center ◽  
Climate Information ◽  
Special Report ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Climate Service ◽  
Interdisciplinary Effort

Abstract. The goal of an interdisciplinary team of scientists at the Climate Service Center Germany (GERICS) was to make the findings of the special report IPCC SR1.5 more accessible to the citizens of Hamburg. Therefore, a flyer was created that is understandable to non-climate scientists, visually attractive and generates interest. It contains up-to-date climate information, readily understandable texts and several graphical visualisations. The team has been working intensively on analysing and processing further the consequences of a 1.5 ∘C global warming for the Hamburg metropolitan region. While the team's natural scientists elaborated the impacts on specific climate indices, other team members focused on the visualisation and communication of the results.

The role of climate information for the urban transition towards sustainability

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gaby Langendijk ◽  
Diana Rechid ◽  
Daniela Jacob
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Urban Heat Island ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Regional Climate Models ◽  
Urban Systems ◽  
Heat Island ◽  
Climate Information ◽  
Urban Transition ◽  
Urban Heat

<p>Urban areas are prone to climate change impacts. A transition towards sustainable urban systems is relying heavily on useful, evidence-based climate information on urban scales. </p><p>However, many of the urban climate models and regional climate models are currently 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 information on urban scales for 11km and 3km grid size. The city of Berlin is taken as a case-study. The results show that the regional climate models simulate a difference between Berlin and its surroundings for temperature and humidity related variables. There is an increasing urban dry island in Berlin towards the end of the century, as well as an increasing urban heat island. The study shows the potential of regional climate models to provide climate change information on urban scales.</p><p>For climate information to underpin the urban transition this information will need to be put in a decision-making context. As an example, the research aims to understand connections to the health sector on how to integrate the information in order to manage e.g. the dispersion of pollen in cities, assisting in mitigating pollen allergies. The research showcases an interdisciplinary way forward to firstly produce climate information on urban scales and secondly how to connect it to city sectors in a suitable manner to underpin the transition to sustainable urban systems. </p><p> </p>

Importance of oceanic heat uptake in transient climate change

2006 ◽  
Vol 33 (17) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald J. Stouffer ◽  
Joellen Russell ◽  
Michael J. Spelman
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Heat Uptake ◽  
Transient Climate Change

Ocean Heat Uptake in Transient Climate Change: Mechanisms and Uncertainty due to Subgrid-Scale Eddy Mixing

2003 ◽  
Vol 16 (20) ◽  
pp. 3344-3356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Boyin Huang ◽  
Peter H. Stone ◽  
Andrei P. Sokolov ◽  
Igor V. Kamenkovich
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Subgrid Scale ◽  
Ocean Heat Uptake ◽  
Heat Uptake ◽  
Transient Climate Change ◽  
Change Mechanisms
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