Projecting Wildfire Emissions and Their Air Quality Impacts in the Southeastern U.S. from 2010 to Mid-century

Wildfires can severely impair the health of ecosystems, life forms and regional economies. In the rapidly changing U. S. Southeast, both climate and socioeconomic factors (e.g., population and income) drive wildfires, and need to be represented in wildfire inventories to assess the air quality (AQ) impacts and health risks of wildfires long-term. This motivated the development of a wildfire emissions projection methodology leveraging published models of annual areas burned (AAB) based on county-level socioeconomic and climate projections for 2011-2060. It is applied to project two sets of AAB with different climate downscaling approaches, to estimate wildfire emissions for 2010 and four mid-century years. These are compared with emissions estimated using 18-year historical mean AAB without changes in climate and socioeconomics. Competing climate and socioeconomic factors result in 7% - 32% lower projected AAB than historical values, and 13% - 62% lower fine particulate matter (PM2.5) emissions than estimated from historical AAB in the selected years, with climate driving their temporal variability. Evaluation of the emissions projection methods in air quality (AQ) simulations against those using the National Emissions Inventory (NEI), and network observations for 2010 show little difference among the methods in ozone (0.08% - 0.93%) and PM2.5 (1% - 8%). Larger, comparable biases relative to observations in all three methods for secondary species, especially in winter, are attributable to non-wildfire emissions or secondary chemical production. The projection methods predict primary wildfire PM better than the NEI, providing confidence that they can assess current wildfire AQ impacts, while enabling longer-term AQ assessments unachievable with static inventories. AQ simulations using the projected wildfire emissions, and projected emission reductions in SOx and NOx from energy and transportation (by ~80% at mid-century) show peak periods and locations of wildfire impacts on ozone and PM shifting from autumn in Midwestern locations in 2010, to warmer and drier summers east and south by mid-century, following the AAB spatiotemporal patterns. Although considerably lower than 2010 levels, summertime PM2.5 increases by 4%-5% in 2040-2060 in this emission scenario, driven by increases in OC and unspeciated other PM.Doctor of Philosoph

Regional climate projections over Spain: atmosphere. Future climate projections

Special Issue on climate over the Iberian Peninsula: an overview of CLIVAR-Spain coordinated science

Projections of rapidly rising surface temperatures over Africa under low mitigation.

An analysis of observed trends in African annual-average near-surface temperatures over the last five decades reveals drastic increases, particularly over parts of the subtropics and central tropical Africa. Over these regions, temperatures have been rising at more than twice the global rate of temperature increase. An ensemble of high-resolution downscalings, obtained using a single regional climate model forced with the sea-surface temperatures and sea-ice fields of an ensemble of global circulation model (GCM) simulations, is shown to realistically represent the relatively strong temperature increases observed in subtropical southern and northern Africa. The amplitudes of warming are generally underestimated, however. Further warming is projected to occur during the 21st century, with plausible increases of 4-6 °C over the subtropics and 3-5 °C over the tropics by the end of the century relative to present-day climate under the A2 (a low mitigation) scenario of the Special Report on Emission Scenarios. High impact climate events such as heat-wave days and high fire-danger days are consistently projected to increase drastically in their frequency of occurrence. General decreases in soil-moisture availability are projected, even for regions where increases in rainfall are plausible, due to enhanced levels of evaporation. The regional dowscalings presented here, and recent GCM projections obtained for Africa, indicate that African annual-averaged temperatures may plausibly rise at about 1.5 times the global rate of temperature increase in the subtropics, and at a somewhat lower rate in the tropics. These projected increases although drastic, may be conservative given the model underestimations of observed temperature trends. The relatively strong rate of warming over Africa, in combination with the associated increases in extreme temperature events, may be key factors to consider when interpreting the suitability of global mitigation targets in terms of African climate change and climate change adaptation in Africa.SP2016http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/8/08500

Climate change and impacts in the urban systems

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor in Information Management, specialization in Geographic Information SystemsUrban systems are not only major drivers of climate change, but also impact hotspots. The processes of global warming and urban population growth make our urban agglomerations vulnerable to chain reactions triggered by climate related hazards. Hence, the reliable and cost-effective assessment of future climate impact is of high importance. Two major approaches emerge from the literature: i) detailed spatially explicit assessments, and ii) more holistic approaches consistently assessing multiple cities. In this multidisciplinary thesis both approaches were addressed. Firstly, we discuss the underlying reasons and main challenges of the applicability of downscaling procedures of climate projections in the process of urban planning. While the climate community has invested significant effort to provide downscaling techniques yielding localised information on future climate extreme events, these methods are not widely exploited in the process of urban planning. The first part of this research attempts to help bridge the gap between the communities of urban planners and climatologists. First, we summarize the rationale for such cooperation, supporting the argument that the spatial scale represents an important linkage between urban and climate science in the process of designing an urban space. Secondly, we introduce the main families of downscaling techniques and their application on climate projections, also providing the references to profound studies in the field. Thirdly, special attention is given to previous works focused on the utilization of downscaled ensembles of climate simulations in urban agglomerations. Finally, we identify three major challenges of the wider utilization of climate projections and downscaling techniques, namely: (i) the scale mismatch between data needs and data availability, (ii) the terminology, and (iii) the IT bottleneck. The practical implications of these issues are discussed in the context of urban studies. The second part of this work is devoted to the assessment of impacts of extreme temperatures across the European capital cities. In warming Europe, we are witnessing a growth in urban population with aging trend, which will make the society more vulnerable to extreme heat waves. In the period 1950-2015 the occurrence of extreme heat waves increased across European capitals. As an example, Moscow was hit by the strongest heat wave of the present era, killing more than ten thousand people. Here we focus on larger metropolitan areas of European capitals. By using an ensemble of eight EURO-CORDEX models under the RCP8.5 scenario, we calculate a suite of temperature based climate indices. We introduce a ranking procedure based on ensemble predictions using the mean of metropolitan grid cells for each capital, and socio-economic variables as a proxy to quantify the future impact. Results show that all the investigated European metropolitan areas will be more vulnerable to extreme heat in the coming decades. Based on the impact ranking, the results reveal that in near, but mainly in distant future, the extreme heat events in European capitals will be not exclusive to traditionally exposed areas such as the Mediterranean and the Iberian Peninsula. Cold waves will represent some threat in mid of the century, but they are projected to completely vanish by the end of this century. The ranking of European capitals based on their vulnerability to the extreme heat could be of paramount importance to the decision makers in order to mitigate the heat related mortality. Such a simplistic but descriptive multi-risk urban indicator has two major uses. Firstly, it communicates the risk associated with climate change locally and in a simple way. By allowing to illustratively relate to situations of other capitals, it may help to engage not only scientists, but also the decision makers and general public, in efforts to combat climate change. Secondly, such an indicator can serve as a basis to decision making on European level, assisting with prioritizing the investments and other efforts in the adaptation strategy. Finally, this study transparently communicates the magnitude of future heat, and as such contributes to raise awareness about heat waves, since they are still often not perceived as a serious risk. Another contribution of this work to communication of consequences of changing climate is represented by the MetroHeat web tool, which provides an open data climate service for visualising and interacting with extreme temperature indices and heat wave indicators for European capitals. The target audience comprises climate impact researchers, intermediate organisations, societal-end users, and the general public

A comparative analysis of different future weather data for building energy performance simulation

The building energy performance pattern is predicted to be shifted in the future due to climate change. To analyze this phenomenon, there is an urgent need for reliable and robust future weather datasets. Several ways for estimating future climate projection and creating weather files exist. This paper attempts to comparatively analyze three tools for generating future weather datasets based on statistical downscaling (WeatherShift, Meteonorm, and CCWorldWeatherGen) with one based on dynamical downscaling (a future-typical meteorological year, created using a high-quality reginal climate model). Four weather datasets for the city of Rome are generated and applied to the energy simulation of a mono family house and an apartment block as representative building types of Italian residential building stock. The results show that morphed weather files have a relatively similar operation in predicting the future comfort and energy performance of the buildings. In addition, discrepancy between them and the dynamical downscaled weather file is revealed. The analysis shows that this comes not only from using different approaches for creating future weather datasets but also by the building type. Therefore, for finding climate resilient solutions for buildings, care should be taken in using different methods for developing future weather datasets, and regional and localized analysis becomes vital

Climate change and the Delta, San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science

Anthropogenic climate change amounts to a rapidly approaching, “new” stressor in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta system. In response to California’s extreme natural hydroclimatic variability, complex water-management systems have been developed, even as the Delta’s natural ecosystems have been largely devastated. Climate change is projected to challenge these management and ecological systems in different ways that are characterized by different levels of uncertainty. For example, there is high certainty that climate will warm by about 2°C more (than late-20th-century averages) by mid-century and about 4°C by end of century, if greenhouse-gas emissions continue their current rates of acceleration. Future precipitation changes are much less certain, with as many climate models projecting wetter conditions as drier. However, the same projections agree that precipitation will be more intense when storms do arrive, even as more dry days will separate storms. Warmer temperatures will likely enhance evaporative demands and raise water temperatures. Consequently, climate change is projected to yield both more extreme flood risks and greater drought risks. Sea level rise (SLR) during the 20th century was about 22cm, and is projected to increase by at least 3-fold this century. SLR together with land subsidence threatens the Delta with greater vulnerabilities to inundation and salinity intrusion. Effects on the Delta ecosystem that are traceable to warming include SLR, reduced snowpack, earlier snowmelt and larger storm-driven streamflows, warmer and longer summers, warmer summer water temperatures, and water-quality changes. These changes and their uncertainties will challenge the operations of water projects and uses throughout the Delta’s watershed and delivery areas. Although the effects of climate change on Delta ecosystems may be profound, the end results are difficult to predict, except that native species will fare worse than invaders. Successful preparation for the coming changes will require greater integration of monitoring, modeling, and decision making across time, variables, and space than has been historically normal

Making Climate Data Relevant to Decision Making: The important details of Spatial and Temporal Downscaling

This paper examines potential regional-scale impacts of climate change on sustainability of irrigated agriculture, focusing on the western San Joaquin Valley in California. We consider potential changes in irrigation water demand and supply, and quantify impacts on the hydrologic system, soil and groundwater salinity with associated crop yield reductions. Our analysis is based on archived output from General Circulation Model (GCM) climate projections through 2100, which were downscaled to the 1,400 km2 study area. We account for uncertainty in GCM climate projections by considering two different GCM\u27s, each using three greenhouse gas emission scenarios. Significant uncertainty in projected precipitation creates large uncertainty in surface water supply, ranging from a decrease of 26% to an increase of 14% in 2080-2099. Changes in projected irrigation water demand ranged from a decrease of 13% to an increase of 3% at the end of the 21st century. Greatest demand reductions were computed for the dry and warm scenarios, because of increased land fallowing with corresponding decreased total crop water requirements. A decrease in seasonal crop ET by climate warming, despite an increase in evaporative demand, was attributed to faster crop development with increasing temperatures. Simulations of hydrologic response to climate-induced changes suggest that the salt-affected area will be slightly expanded. However, irrespective of climate change, salinity is expected to increase in downslope areas, thereby limiting crop production to mostly upslope areas of the simulation domain. Results show that increasing irrigation efficiency may be effective in controlling salinization, by reducing groundwater recharge and improving soil drainage, and in mitigating climate warming effects, by reducing the need for groundwater pumping to satisfy crop water requirements