scholarly journals Extreme Weather Events and their Consequences

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zbigniew W. Kundzewicz
Keyword(s):  
Forest Fires ◽  
Flood Risk ◽  
Heat Waves ◽  
Extreme Weather ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
Climate Projections ◽  
Ageing Population ◽  
Weather Extremes ◽  
Weather Events ◽  
Increased Risk

Abstract The damage (in real terms after adjusting for inflation) caused by extreme weather events globally has increased dramatically over the past few decades. This is a result of an increase in the amplitude and frequency of weather extremes, as well as of human factors causing a widespread increase in levels of exposure and vulnerability. There are a number of reasons to consider that, in many regions of the globe, weather extremes (e.g. heat waves, droughts, forest fires, intense rainfall, floods and landslides) are becoming both yet more extreme and more frequent. Projections for the future based on climate and impact models point to a further strengthening of this trend. There has already been an increase in rainfall intensity in conditions of a warmer climate, and a continuation of this trend is expected, with adverse consequences for flood risk. However, the development of flood-prone areas and increase in damage potential are often the dominant factors underpinning growing flood damage and flood risk. In warmer climates, an increased risk of river and flash flooding caused by heavy rainfall, as well as an increasing risk of coastal flooding associated with sea level rise can be expected over large areas. By the same token, a reduction in the risk of snowmelt flooding events is projected in the warmer climate. Projections also indicate an increased risk of drought in many areas. The projections for climate change in Poland point to several risks associated with an increase in the frequency, intensity and severity of weather extremes (heat waves, intensive rainfall, flooding and landslides, coastal surges, drought during the growing season and winter, strong winds and pathogens associated with warming). Heat waves will become more frequent, more intense and more troublesome for the ageing population of Poland.

scholarly journals Weather extremes : A spatio-temporal perspectives

MAUSAM ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-52
Author(s):  
L. S. RATHORE ◽  
D. R. PATTANAIK ◽  
S. C. BHAN
Keyword(s):  
Heavy Rainfall ◽  
Heat Waves ◽  
Extreme Weather ◽  
Dust Storms ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
Weather Extremes ◽  
Cold Waves ◽  
Severe Thunderstorms ◽  
Weather Events ◽  
Spatio Temporal

Being mainly an agricultural country the economy of India and its growth mainly depends on the vagaries of the weather and in particular the extreme weather events. India with a land of unique climatic regime due to several characteristic features, including (i) two monsoon seasons (south-west and north-east) leading to drought & flood condition, active and break cycle of monsoon and also heavy rainfall leading to flash flood and landslides, (ii) two cyclone seasons (pre and post-monsoon cyclone seasons), (iii) hot weather season characterized by severe thunderstorms, dust storms and heat waves, (iv) cold weather season characterized by violent snow storms in the Himalayan regions, cold waves and fog. The socio-economic impacts of the extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, heavy rainfall, cyclones, hail storm, thunderstorm, heat and cold waves have been increasing due to large growth of population and urbanizations, which has led to greater vulnerability. A spatio-temporal analysis of these weather extremes over India will be very helpful to understand the vulnerability potential and to improve the forecast skill and use these forecasts in minimizing the adverse impacts of such weather extremes. 

scholarly journals Impacts of compound extreme weather events on ozone in the present and future

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Junxi Zhang ◽  
Yang Gao ◽  
Kun Luo ◽  
L. Ruby Leung ◽  
Yang Zhang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Extreme Events ◽  
Heat Waves ◽  
Extreme Weather ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
Low Wind Speed ◽  
Weather Events ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Future ◽  
Compound Events ◽  
Ozone Episodes

Abstract. The Weather Research and Forecasting model with Chemistry (WRF/Chem) was used to study the effect of extreme weather events on ozone in US for historical (2001–2010) and future (2046–2055) periods under RCP8.5 scenario. During extreme weather events, including heat waves, atmospheric stagnation, and their compound events, ozone concentration is much higher compared to non-extreme events period. A striking enhancement of effect during compound events is revealed when heat wave and stagnation occur simultaneously and both high temperature and low wind speed promote the production of high ozone concentrations. In regions with high emissions, compound extreme events can shift the high-end tails of the probability density functions (PDFs) of ozone to even higher values to generate extreme ozone episodes. In regions with low emissions, extreme events can still increase high ozone frequency but the high-end tails of the PDFs are constrained by the low emissions. Despite large anthropogenic emission reduction projected for the future, compound events increase ozone more than the single events by 10 % to 13 %, comparable to the present, and high ozone episodes are not eliminated. Using the CMIP5 multi-model ensemble, the frequency of compound events is found to increase more dominantly compared to the increased frequency of single events in the future over the US, Europe, and China. High ozone episodes will likely continue in the future due to increases in both frequency and intensity of extreme events, despite reductions in anthropogenic emissions of its precursors. However, the latter could reduce or eliminate extreme ozone episodes, so improving projections of compound events and their impacts on extreme ozone may better constrain future projections of extreme ozone episodes that have detrimental effects on human health.

scholarly journals Extreme Weather Impacts on Inland Waterways Transport of Yangtze River

Atmosphere ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lijun Liu ◽  
Yuanqiao Wen ◽  
Youjia Liang ◽  
Fan Zhang ◽  
Tiantian Yang
Keyword(s):  
Heat Wave ◽  
Yangtze River ◽  
Heat Waves ◽  
Extreme Weather ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
The Yangtze River ◽  
Climate Zone ◽  
Inland Waterways ◽  
Weather Events ◽  
The Impact

The impact of extreme weather events on the navigation environment in the inland waterways of the Yangtze River is an interdisciplinary hotspot in subjects of maritime traffic safety and maritime meteorology, and it is also a difficult point for the implementation of decision-making and management by maritime and meteorological departments in China. The objective of this study is to review the variation trends and distribution patterns in the periods of adverse and extreme weather events that are expected to impact on inland waterways transport (IWT) on the Yangtze River. The frequency of severe weather events, together with the changes in their spatial extension and intensity, is analyzed based on the ERA-Interim datasets (1979–2017) and the GHCNDEX dataset (1979–2017), as well as the research progresses and important events (2004–2016) affecting the navigation environment. The impacts of extreme weather events on IWT accidents and phenomena of extreme weather (e.g., thunderstorms, lightning, hail, and tornadoes) that affect the navigation environment are also analyzed and discussed. The results show that: (1) the sections located in the plain climate zone is affected by extreme weather in every season, especially strong winds and heat waves; (2) the sections located in the hilly mountain climate zone is affected particularly by spring extreme phenomena, especially heat waves; (3) the sections located in the Sichuan Basin climate zone is dominated by the extreme weather phenomena in autumn, except cold waves; (4) the occurrence frequency of potential flood risk events is relatively high under rainstorm conditions and wind gusts almost affect the navigation environment of the Jiangsu and Shanghai sections in every year; (5) the heat wave indices (TXx, TR, and WSDI) tend to increase and the temperature of the coldest day of the year gradually increases; (6) the high occurrences of IWT accidents need to be emphasized by relevant departments, caused by extreme weather during the dry season; and (7) the trends and the degree of attention of extreme weather events affecting IWT are ranked as: heat wave > heavy rainfall > wind gust > cold spell > storm. Understanding the seasonal and annual frequency of occurrence of extreme weather events has reference significance for regional management of the Yangtze River.

scholarly journals The impact of two extreme weather events and other causes of death on Carnaby’s Black Cockatoo: a promise of things to come for a threatened species?

2011 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denis A Saunders ◽  
Peter Mawson ◽  
Rick Dawson
Keyword(s):  
Causes Of Death ◽  
Heat Waves ◽  
Extreme Weather ◽  
Motor Vehicles ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
Weather Events ◽  
Dramatic Decline ◽  
To Come ◽  
Stochastic Events ◽  
The Impact

Carnaby’s Black Cockatoo is an endangered species which has undergone a dramatic decline in range and abundance in southwestern Australia. Between October 2009 and March 2010 the species was subjected to a possible outbreak of disease in one of its major breeding areas and exposed to an extremely hot day and a severe localized hail storm. In addition, collisions with motor vehicles are becoming an increasing threat to the species. All of these stochastic events resulted in many fatalities. Species such as Carnaby’s Black Cockatoo which form large flocks are particularly susceptible to localized events such as hail storms, contagious disease and collisions with motor vehicles. Extreme temperatures may have major impacts on both flocking and non-flocking species. Predictions of climate change in the southwest of Western Australia are that there will be an increased frequency of extreme weather events such as heat waves and severe hail storms. The implications of more events of this nature on Carnaby’s Black Cockatoo are discussed.

A New Avenue of Research for Improving the Predictability of Weather Extremes - The Eastern Mediterranen as a Case Study

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Assaf Hochman ◽  
Pinhas Alpert ◽  
Hadas Saaroni ◽  
Tzvi Harpaz ◽  
Joaquim G. Pinto ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Dynamical Systems ◽  
Systems Approach ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Extreme Weather ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
Weather Extremes ◽  
Systems Perspective ◽  
Weather Events ◽  
The Mediterranean

<p>Extreme weather events have long been considered challenging to predict. It is likely that global warming will trigger extreme weather in many regions of the globe and especially over the Mediterranean ´hot spot´. Therefore, extreme weather events have been selected as one of the grand challenges of the World Climate Research Program.</p><p>The intrinsic predictability of a weather system, or any dynamical system, depends on its persistence and its active number of degrees of freedom. Recent developments in dynamical systems theory allow to compute these metrics for atmospheric configurations (1). In most of the mid-latitudes, synoptic scale patterns exert a strong control on regional weather, thus, stimulating a broad interest, especially in weather forecasting. Recently, we have integrated the dynamical systems approach with a synoptic classification algorithm over the Eastern Mediterranean (2).  It was shown that the dynamical systems perspective provides an extremely informative tool for evaluating the predictability of synoptic patterns and especially of weather extremes.</p><p>The novel perspective, which leverages a dynamical systems approach to investigate the predictability of extreme weather events, outlines a new avenue of research that may be fruitfully applied at operational weather and climate forecasting services in the Mediterranean Region and around the globe.</p><p><strong>References</strong></p><ol><li>Faranda D, Messori G, Yiou P. 2017. Dynamical Proxies of North Atlantic Predictability and Extremes. Scientific Reports <strong>7</strong>, 412782017b. DOI: 10.1038/srep4127</li> <li>Hochman A, Alpert P, Harpaz T, Saaroni H, Messori G. 2019. A New Dynamical Systems Perspective on Atmospheric Predictability; Eastern Mediterranean Weather Regimes as a Case Study. Science Advances <strong>5</strong>. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aau0936</li> </ol>

scholarly journals Reliability Framework for Characterizing Heat Wave and Cold Spell Events

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanaz Moghim ◽  
Mohammad Sina Jahangir
Keyword(s):  
Heat Wave ◽  
Heat Waves ◽  
Probability Distributions ◽  
Extreme Temperature ◽  
Extreme Weather ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
Average Intensity ◽  
Cold Spell ◽  
Weather Events ◽  
Two Cities

Abstract Extreme weather events such as heat waves and cold spells affect people’s lives. This study uses a probabilistic framework to evaluate heat waves and cold spells in different regions (Tehran in Iran and Vancouver in Canada). Average daily temperatures of meteorological stations of the two cities from 1995 to 2016 are used to identify four main indicators including intensity, average intensity, duration, and the rate of the occurrence. In addition, average intensities of the events are obtained from the MODIS Land Surface Temperature (LST) in each pixel of the two cities. To include possible uncertainties, the predictive probability distributions of the intensity and duration are derived using a Bayesian scheme and Monte-Carlo Markov Chain (MCMC) method. The probability distributions of the indicators show that the most extreme temperature (lowest temperature) occurs during the cold spell. Results indicate that although Tehran is more probable to experience heat waves than Vancouver, both cities are more likely to be affected by the cold spell than the heat wave. The developed approach can be used to characterize other extreme weather events in any location.

Emergence of projected scaled patterns of extreme weather events over Europe

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tugba Ozturk ◽  
Dominic Matte ◽  
Jens Hesselbjerg Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Hot Spot ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Extreme Weather ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
Maximum Temperature ◽  
Climate Projections ◽  
Global Mean Temperature ◽  
Temperature And Precipitation ◽  
Weather Events ◽  
Simple Scaling

<div><span>In this work, we investigate the scalability of wet and dry persisting conditions over the European domain. For this aim, we have used the EURO-CORDEX ensemble of regional climate projections at 0.11° grid-mesh for daily minimum and maximum temperature and precipitation to analyze future changes in relation with extreme weather events addressing climate warming targets of 1°C, 2°C and 3°C, respectively. A simple scaling with the annual mean global mean temperature change modeled by the driving GCM is applied. We also identify the emergence of the scaled patterns of minimum and maximum temperatures and of wet and dry persisting conditions in relation with certain extreme weather indices. In particular we focus on pattern scaling of extreme temperatures and precipitation over sub-regions over the Mediterranean basin since this region has been identified as a climate change hot spot.</span></div>

scholarly journals Impacts of compound extreme weather events on ozone in the present and future

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (13) ◽  
pp. 9861-9877 ◽  
Author(s):  
Junxi Zhang ◽  
Yang Gao ◽  
Kun Luo ◽  
L. Ruby Leung ◽  
Yang Zhang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Ozone Concentration ◽  
Extreme Events ◽  
Heat Waves ◽  
Extreme Weather ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
Weather Events ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Future ◽  
Compound Events ◽  
Ozone Episodes

Abstract. The Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Chemistry (WRF-Chem) was used to study the effect of extreme weather events on ozone in the US for historical (2001–2010) and future (2046–2055) periods under the RCP8.5 scenario. During extreme weather events, including heat waves, atmospheric stagnation, and their compound events, ozone concentration is much higher compared to the non-extreme events period. A striking enhancement of effect during compound events is revealed when heat wave and stagnation occur simultaneously as both high temperature and low wind speed promote the production of high ozone concentrations. In regions with high emissions, compound extreme events can shift the high-end tails of the probability density functions (PDFs) of ozone to even higher values to generate extreme ozone episodes. In regions with low emissions, extreme events can still increase high-ozone frequency but the high-end tails of the PDFs are constrained by the low emissions. Despite the large anthropogenic emission reduction projected for the future, compound events increase ozone more than the single events by 10 to 13 %, comparable to the present, and high-ozone episodes with a maximum daily 8 h average (MDA8) ozone concentration over 70 ppbv are not eliminated. Using the CMIP5 multi-model ensemble, the frequency of compound events is found to increase more dominantly compared to the increased frequency of single events in the future over the US, Europe, and China. High-ozone episodes will likely continue in the future due to increases in both frequency and intensity of extreme events, despite reductions in anthropogenic emissions of its precursors. However, the latter could reduce or eliminate extreme ozone episodes; thus improving projections of compound events and their impacts on extreme ozone may better constrain future projections of extreme ozone episodes that have detrimental effects on human health.

scholarly journals Klimawandel als Prüfstein für die Waldbewirtschaftung | Climate change as a touchstone for forest management

2008 ◽  
Vol 159 (10) ◽  
pp. 316-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Rigling ◽  
Peter Brang ◽  
Harald Bugmann ◽  
Norbert Kräuchi ◽  
Thomas Wohlgemuth ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Forest Management ◽  
Forest Fires ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Heat Waves ◽  
Early Response ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
Direct Effects ◽  
Adaptation Measures ◽  
Weather Events ◽  
Management Concepts

Climate scenarios predict for Switzerland until 2050 a general warming of 2°C. This warming is likely to feature moister winters, dryer summers and an increase of extreme weather events – hot spells like in summer 2003 could occur every few years. If these pojections become true, Swiss forests will be fundamentally altered by the direct effects of climate such as droughts, heat waves or storms. In addition, they will be affected by indirect effects such as diseases, pests or forest fires that may be even more significant than the direct effects. Large uncertainties still exist with respect to the degree and rate of the expected climatic changes. Nevertheless, forestry should not wait until absolute certainty arises, which will likely never be the case anyway. Forestry must act proactively, butin a cautious and scientifically sound manner. Based on the paradigm of adaptive forest management, we propose a concept for a stepwise alignment of forest management practices with the overall aim to increase the resistance and resilience of Swiss forests and to support ongoing early response processes. The measures proposed can be divided into 1) the analysis of the current state of the forests, 2) short-termed adaptation measures of forest management, and finally 3) the development of adapted management concepts that explicitly take into account climatic change.

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