Journal of Climate Change

One of the main challenges in the world is adaptation to the impacts of climate change, and it is important to understand which impacts will take place in each region. Thailand endures substantial damage from floods every year and needs accurate measurement to mitigate flood disaster predicted under the looming scenario of climate change. The predicted impacts of climate change on flood discharge need to consider land use changes in the future, especially in developing countries because of their vulnerabilities to economic growth. The objective of this study was the quantitative predictions of the impacts of climate change and land use changes on flood discharge, using two simulation models at one watershed in the Song Khwae District, Nan Province, Northern Thailand. This study has three steps: (1) predictions of future land uses (14 scenarios having different proportion of forest cover), (2) calculation of 3.3 and 10-year return period rainfall for the period of 2006-2016 and 2040-2050, and (3) comparisons of average daily discharge from 3.3 and 10-year return period rainfall in 14 land use patterns. The results showed that although climate change will decrease the average daily discharge from the 3.3 and 10-year return period rainfall, discharge from future rainfall that has a 10-year return period, where land use patterns limit forest areas to less than 45%, will be greater than present levels. These quantitative predictions can lead to cost-benefits performance analysis and contribute to positive adaptation to climate change.

The study examined the utility of intertidal foraminifera to assess the Holocene sea-level rise using benthic foraminiferal (>63 μm) assemblages both qualitatively and quantitatively from 20 closely spaced (around 1 km) locations. These sampling points were divided into four regions mainly Teknaf, Bordel, Inani and Himchori region. These surficial sediment samples were collected across the supratidal, intertidal (low tide and high tide) and dune environment along the shelf region. A total of 250 species belonging to 50 genera and 40 families were recorded. The Teknaf zone is noticed by Nonion-Elphidium assemblage which shows Intertidal to Marsh zone of environment of deposition. The Bordel area is demarcated as Nonion-Elphidium assemblage which shows also Intertidal to Marshy environment of deposition. The Inanizone is demarcated as Discorbis-Eponides; Epistomina-Operculina; and Cibicides assemblage respectively which shows Supratidal environment of deposition. The Himchori is demarcated by Anomalina-Elphidiella assemblage which shows Intertidal zone of environment of deposition. It interprets that the environment was suitable for benthic forams and a shift of coast line towards land, during the transgression phase. This study confirms that from bottom to middle of the shore a calcareous foraminifera biofacies characterizes Bay or Lagoonal environment with marine influence. An agglutinated biofacies from the middle to top represents brackish lagoon with less marine influence. In the shoreline the period of high-frequency sea-level oscillations can be confirmed by the bottom calcareous biofacies followed by the top agglutinated one.

When analyzing trends and patterns of extreme precipitation, one can easily generalize the shifts caused by external climate forcings and map a single temporal shift of annual precipitation. However, the complexity of a changing environment evidences spatially distributed shifts particularly those of extreme precipitation which are essential in planning and designing enterprises and, ultimately, in managing infrastructure across scales. The goal of this study is to characterize the spatial heterogeneity of shifts in the increasing pace of extreme events over India. The study has a two-part hypothesis: (1) the number of grid cells with significant trends in annual precipitation (P), extreme precipitation (R95) and very extreme precipitation (R99) will reflect the extent of geophysically vulnerable areas subject to increasing or decreasing annual precipitation and (2) the dispersion of cells with significant shifting points (which has occurred at different historical periods) will evidence the heterogeneity of the changes in P, R95 and R99 regimes.

To test this hypothesis, we used the Mann-Kendall and Pettitt’s tests to estimate the significance of the increasing and decreasing trends and shifting points, respectively, in P, R95 and R99 from 1901-2015 for mainland India. Based on a gridded dataset of 0.25° resolution, results showed significant temporal trends for spatially averaged R95 and R99, whereas non-significant inclining temporal trend was found for P. Trend analyses applied to the precipitation gridded product of the Indian Meteorological Department revealed statistically significant trends for almost 38%, 36% and 31% of India’s territory for P, R95 and R99, respectively. Further, the magnitude of these trends proved higher for R95 (i.e., 0.42 mm year^-1) compared with R99 (i.e., 0.31 mm year^-1), supporting the idea of an increasing liability for flash floods. Results also showed that most of the temporal shifts in the time series of P, R95 and R99 occurred between 1941-1980, at 34%, 31% and 22% of the grids, respectively. In addition, the opposite trends before and after the inflection point were found for locations showing significant temporal shifts in R95 and R99.

Rapid urbanization and rise of greenhouse gaseous emission due to anthropogenic influences have increased the pressure on global climate to maintain its equilibrium. Anthropogenic influences have further increased the extreme events, i.e., heat wave, flash flood and cold wave event. Our results indicate that years 2012, 2015 and 2016 encountered with heat wave event while the year 2013 recorded the highest precipitation which is coinciding with the well known flash flood event in northern India (Uttarakhand) where intense precipitation with cloud burst occurred. Correlation and wavelet coherence analysis was performed among temperature (T), relative humidity (RH), wind speed (WS), precipitation (ppt), potential evapotranspiration (PET) and actual evapotranspiration (AET). PET shows strong association with T during the heatwave event while AET exhibits the strong association during the flash flood event. T and RH show the time lag at averaged monthly scale where T attains its peak during the summer time while RH attains its peak during the monsoon time. The highest coefficient of variation (COV) shown by ppt is due to its dependency on Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM) during the monsoon time. We have further analysed the monthly amplitudinal variation of all parameters in order to observe the seasonality. Furthermore, wavelet coherence analysis was also performed to see the dependency among all parameters at high temporal scale.

Modelling forest biomass sensitive to climate change is fulfilled at the levels as forest stands and single-trees, but mostly on a local or regional level, often without regard to the age, morphology of the forest stands and species composition. With this, it does not provide additive component composition, according to which the total of biomass components (stems, branches, needles, and roots), obtained by component equations, would be equal to the value of the biomass obtained by the general equation. The influence of climate change on the biomass of a tree species in the format of additive models for transcontinental hydrothermal gradients has not yet been studied. In the present study, the first attempt is made to model changes in the additive component composition of the stand biomass and NPP of two-needled pines along Trans-Eurasian hydrothermal gradients. In the process of modelling the database of pine stand biomass in a number of 2460 sample plots with the definitions of biomass and 760 plots with the definitions of biomass and annual NPP compiled by the authors, is used.

The physicochemical parameters of the coastal water at eight different locations of Palk Strait were studied and the temperature have been taken as a significant parameter to predict the biomass of the phytoplankton and bacterial community in the summer and the monsoon seasons. The bacterial population was higher with the total dissolved solids (TDS) value in the bottom water of Rameshwaram with availability of Total viable count (TVC) – 5500,000 CFU/mL; Fecal coliforms (FC) – 7500 CFU/mL and Fecal Streptococci (FS) – 1630 CFU/mL. The highest pollution index (PI) observed in the same region at the PI range is 4.60 during summer season. On the contrary, monsoon season shows less bioavailability of phytoplankton than other parameters in the same region. Bacterial population was found higher at the monsoon season as 7200,000 CFU/mL due to mixing of nutrients from the fresh water inputs. The highest availability of nutrients and moderate temperature have considerable effects in this study. The one-way ANOVA analysis of the locationwise study shows the statistical significance with all the parameters with exception of few including dissolved oxygen (DO), temperature, pH, electrical conductivity (EC), FS and FC at the surface water.

Currently cities all over the world are facing a wide range of hazards. These risks are exacerbated by factors such as increasing urban population and climate change. Urbanism and climate change are closely interlinked. Meanwhile, the concept of urban resilience has been introduced, in recent years, to reduce these negative impacts. Resilience is the ability of a system to absorb abnormalities while its basic structure is maintained when at risk. Resilience to climate change focuses on reducing vulnerabilities to these changes. The current research focuses on urban ecological resilience and its subsection of ‘climate resilience’ and also climate change adaptation strategies.

Urban green infrastructure is also effective in reducing the impacts of climate change and enhancing climate resilience in cities. In the face of dangers such as climate change, the resilience approach can be used as a framework for intervention in existing and suggested urban green infrastructures and vice versa.

This research attempts to answer this question: How can intervention in urban green infrastructure (their quality and quantity, maintaining, enhancing and location) lead to developing strategic principles to ensure an urban climate resilient city in times of drought, extreme heat, low annual precipitation and water shortages? The purpose of this research is to develop strategic principles for adaptation to climate change using green infrastructure and their capabilities to enhance urban climate resilience in dry countries. A qualitative method was used here by using aerial photos and producing GIS base and analytical maps of Yousef Abad neighbourhood in Tehran, the capital city of Iran, which lead to producing the above mentioned principles.