Adaptive management of the climate change problem: bridging the gap between research and public policy

There are important differences between adaptation to normal climate and adaptation to climate change. One scientific community is organized to address extreme probabilities in current distributions, and their disaster potential. Another scientific community addresses the longer-term changes in the climate system. There are important differences between natural hazard (extreme and unpredictable events) and disaster as natural hazard with disastrous economic and social consequences as a matter of enormous concern. Finally, disaster management means a forecast for the real disaster events and after these disasters occurred, a post disaster attitude is necessary to ameliorate the situation and to take measures for rapid recovery. In this paper the author tries to address the description, understanding and prediction of extreme events in the weather system and their impact across a range of natural and socio-economic phenomena. Other goals of the paper are to present the weather and climate characteristics, the statistics of extreme events and to evaluate their impact on economy. Thus one major task of the work is to address the management of natural disasters caused by weather: the management of event forecast, risk assessment for various regions, and disaster management after the event occur. At the intersection between Economics, Management and Science of Weather Processes, this interdisciplinary study will provide the reader with insight and tools to address contemporary climate and weather hazard management problems.weather disasters, natural hazard, human vulnerability, extreme events, statistics and impact, management of event forecast, regional risk assessment, post disaster management

The critical decade: extreme weather

When extreme weather events occur the Climate Commission is consistently asked questions about the link to climate change. This report unpacks our current knowledge about different types of extreme weather events: extreme temperatures, rainfall, drought, bushfires, storm surges, cyclones and storms.   Download key facts from the report. Download summary table of the report. Download quick facts for each state: New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, Australian Captial Territiory, Northern Territiory.   1. Climate change is already increasing the intensity and frequency of many extreme weather events, adversely affecting Australians. Extreme events occur naturally and weather records are broken from time to time. However, climate change is influencing these events and record-breaking weather is becoming more common around the world. Some Australian examples include: Heat: Extreme heat is increasing across Australia. There will still be record cold events, but hot records are now happening three times more often than cold records. Bushfire weather: Extreme fire weather has increased in many parts of Australia, including southern NSW, Victoria, Tasmania and parts of South Australia, over the last 30 years. Rainfall: Heavy rainfall has increased globally. Over the last three years Australia’s east coast has experienced several very heavy rainfall events, fuelled by record-high surface water temperatures in the adjacent seas. Drought: A long-term drying trend is affecting the southwest corner of Western Australia, which has experienced a 15% drop in rainfall since the mid-1970s. Sea-level rise: Sea level has already risen 20 cm. This means that storm surges ride on sea levels that are higher than they were a century ago, increasing the risk of flooding along Australia’s socially, economically and environmentally important coastlines. 2. Climate change is making many extreme events worse in terms of their impacts on people, property, communities and the environment. This highlights the need to take rapid, effective action on climate change.  It is crucial that communities, emergency services, health and medical services and other authorities prepare for the increases that are already occurring in the severity and frequency of many types of extreme weather. The southeast of Australia, including many of our largest population centres, stands out as being at increased risk from many extreme weather events – heatwaves, bushfires, heavy rainfall and sea-level rise. Key food-growing regions across the southeast and the southwest are likely to experience more drought in the future. Some of Australia’s iconic ecosystems are threatened by climate change. Over the past three decades the Great Barrier Reef has suffered repeated bleaching events from underwater heatwaves. The freshwater wetlands of Kakadu National Park are at risk from saltwater intrusion due to rising sea level. 3. The climate system has shifted, and is continuing to shift, changing the conditions for all weather, including extreme weather events.  Levels of greenhouse gases from the combustion of fossil fuels have increased by around 40% since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, causing the Earth’s surface to warm significantly. All weather events are now occurring in global climate system that is warmer and moister than it was 50 years ago. This has loaded the dice towards more frequent and more severe extreme weather events. 4. There is a high risk that extreme weather events like heatwaves, heavy rainfall, bushfires and cyclones will become even more intense in Australia over the coming decades.  There is little doubt that over the next few decades changes in these extreme events will increase the risks of adverse consequences to human health, agriculture, infrastructure and the environment. Stabilising the climate is like turning around a battleship – it cannot be done immediately given its momentum. When danger is ahead you must start turning the wheel now. Any delay means that it is more and more difficult to avert the future danger. The climate system has strong momentum for further warming over the next few decades because of the greenhouse gases that have already been emitted, and those that will be emitted in future. This means that it is highly likely that extreme weather events will become even more severe in Australia over that period. 5. Only strong preventive action now and in the coming years can stabilise the climate and halt the trend of increasing extreme weather for our children and grandchildren.  Averting danger requires strong preventative action. How quickly and deeply we reduce greenhouse gas emissions will greatly influence the severity of extreme events in the future. The world is already moving to tackle climate change.  Ninety countries, representing 90% of global emissions, are committed to reducing their emissions and have programs in place to achieve this. As the 15th largest emitter in the world, Australia has an important role to play. Much more substantial action will be required if we are to stabilise the climate by the second half of the century. Globally emissions must be cut rapidly and deeply to nearly zero by 2050, with Australia playing its part. The decisions we make this decade will largely determine the severity of climate change and its influence on extreme events that our grandchildren will experience. This is the critical decade to get on with the job

Scoping report: current status of index-based insurance in Bangladesh

With current and anticipated increases in magnitude of extreme weather events and a declining consistency in weather patterns, particularly challenging for agriculture, there has been a growing interest in weather index-based insurance (IBI) schemes in Bangladesh. A number of weather index-based insurance products have already been tested and applied across Asia and Africa, with varying degrees of success, as a mechanism to improve livelihood security by enabling vulnerable populations to transfer risk associated with climate change, extreme weather events and other hazards. In the process, these efforts have generated important new knowledge on how these schemes can be designed and implemented for optimal results. However, the practice of index-based insurance is still limited in Bangladesh, and the experience and knowledge generated by the different stakeholders involved needs to be better communicated

Extreme Weather Events, Mortality and Migration

We estimate the effect of extreme weather on life expectancy in the US. Using high frequency mortality data, we find that both extreme heat and extreme cold result in immediate increases in mortality. However, the increase in mortality following extreme heat appears entirely driven by temporal displacement, while the increase in mortality following extreme cold is long lasting. The aggregate effect of cold on mortality is quantitatively large. We estimate that the number of annual deaths attributable to cold temperature is 27,940 or 1.3% of total deaths in the US. This effect is even larger in low income areas. Because the U.S. population has been moving from cold Northeastern states to the warmer Southwestern states, our findings have implications for understanding the causes of long-term increases in life expectancy. We calculate that every year, 5,400 deaths are delayed by changes in exposure to cold temperature induced by mobility. These longevity gains associated with long term trends in geographical mobility account for 8%-15% of the total gains in life expectancy experienced by the US population over the past 30 years. Thus mobility is an important but previously overlooked determinant of increased longevity in the United States. We also find that the probability of moving to a state that has fewer days of extreme cold is higher for the age groups that are predicted to benefit more in terms of lower mortality compared to the age groups that are predicted to benefit less.

Adaptation to climate extremes in developing countries : the role of education

Global climate models predict a rise in extreme weather in the next century. To better understand future interactions among adaptation costs, socioeconomic development, and climate change in developing countries, observed losses of life from floods and droughts during 1960-2003 are modeled using three determinants: weather events, income per capita, and female education. The analysis reveals countries with high female education weathered extreme weather events better than countries with equivalent income and weather conditions. In that case, one would expect resilience to increase with economic growth and improvements in education. The relationship between resilience in the face of extreme weather events and increases in female education expenditure holds when socioeconomic development continues but the climate does not change, and socioeconomic development continues with weather paths driven by"wet"and"dry"Global Climate Models. Educating young women may be one of the best climate change disaster prevention investments in addition to high social rates of return in overall sustainable development goals.Hazard Risk Management,Population Policies,Climate Change Economics,Climate Change Mitigation and Green House Gases,Climate Change Impacts

Geoarchaeological evidence of the AD 1642 Yellow River flood that destroyed Kaifeng, a former capital of dynastic China

Rising global temperatures will increase the number of extreme weather events, creating new challenges for cities around the world. Archaeological research on the destruction and subsequent reoccupation of ancient cities has the potential to reveal geological and social dynamics that have historically contributed to making urban settings resilient to these extreme weather events. Using a combination of archaeological and geological methods, we examine how extreme flood events at Kaifeng, a former capital of dynastic China, have shaped the city’s urban resilience. Specifically, we focus on an extreme Yellow River flood event in AD 1642 that historical records suggest killed around 300,000 people living in Kaifeng. Our recent archaeological excavations have discovered compelling geological and archaeological evidence that corroborates these documents, revealing that the AD 1642 Yellow River flood destroyed Kaifeng’s inner city, entombing the city and its inhabitants within meters of silt and clay. We argue that the AD 1642 flood was extraordinarily catastrophic because Kaifeng’s city walls only partly collapsed, entrapping most of the flood waters within the city. Both the geology of the Yellow River floods as well as the socio-political context of Kaifeng shaped the city’s resilience to extreme flood events

Vulnerability of horticultural crop production to extreme weather events

The potential impact of future extreme weather events on horticultural crops was evaluated. A review was carried out of the sensitivities of a representative set of crops to environmental challenges. It confirmed that a range of environmental factors are capable of causing a significant impact on production, either as yield or quality loss. The most important of these were un-seasonal temperature, water shortage or excess,and storms. Future scenarios were produced by the LARS-WG1, a stochastic weather generator linked with UKCIP02 projections of future climate. For the analyses, 150 years of synthetic weather data were generated for baseline, 2020HI and 2050HI scenarios at defined locations. The output from the weather generator was used in case studies, either to estimate the frequency of a defined set of circumstances known to have impact on cropping, or as inputs to models of crop scheduling or pest phenology or survival. The analyses indicated that episodes of summer drought severe enough to interrupt the continuity of supply of salads and other vegetables will increase while the frequency of autumns with sufficient rainfall to restrict potato lifting will decrease. They also indicated that the scheduling of winter cauliflowers for continuity of supply will require the deployment of varieties with different temperature sensitivities from those in use currently. In the pest insect studies, the number of batches of Agrotis segetum (cutworm) larvae surviving to third instar increased with time, as did the potential number of generations of Plutella xylostella (diamond-back moth) in the growing season, across a range of locations. The study demonstrated the utility of high resolution scenarios in predicting the likelihood of specific weather patterns and their potential effect on horticultural production. Several limitations of the current scenarios and biological models were also identified

Climate Change and Damage from Extreme Weather Events

The risks of extreme weather events are typically being estimated, by federal agencies and others, with historical frequency data assumed to reflect future probabilities. These estimates may not yet have adequately factored in the effects of past and future climate change, despite strong evidence of a changing climate. They have relied on historical data stretching back as far as fifty or a hundred years that may be increasingly unrepresentative of future conditions. Government and private organizations that use these risk assessments in designing programs and projects with long expected lifetimes may therefore be investing too little to make existing and newly constructed infrastructure resistant to the effects of changing climate. New investments designed to these historical risk standards may suffer excess damages and poor returns. This paper illustrates the issue with an economic analysis of the risks of relatively intense hurricanes striking the New York City region.climate; global warming; natural disasters; risk; adaptation