Impact of climate change on natural snow reliability, snowmaking capacities, and wind conditions of ski Resorts in Northeast Turkey: a dynamical downscaling approach

Many ski resorts worldwide are going through deteriorating snow cover conditions due to anthropogenic warming trends. As the natural and the artificially supported, i.e., technical, snow reliability of ski resorts diminish, the industry approaches a deadlock. For this reason, impact assessment studies have become vital for understanding vulnerability of ski tourism. This study considers three resorts at one of the rapidly emerging ski destinations, Northeast Turkey, for snow reliability analyses. Initially one global circulation model is dynamically downscaled by using the regional climate model RegCM4.4 for 1971-2000 and 2021-2050 periods along the RCP4.5 greenhouse gas concentration pathway. Next, the projected climate outputs are converted into indicators of natural snow reliability, snowmaking capacity, and wind conditions. The results show an overall decline in the frequencies of naturally snow reliable days and snowmaking capacities between the two periods. Despite the decrease, only the lower altitudes of one ski resort would face the risk of losing natural snow reliability and snowmaking could still compensate for forming the base layer before the critical New Year's week. On the other hand, adverse high wind conditions improve as to reduce the number of lift closure days at all resorts. Overall, this particular region seems to be relatively resilient against climate change.Publisher's Versio

What about reservoirs? Questioning anthropogenic and climatic interferences on water availability

Water resources in semi-arid regions like the Mediterranean Basin are highly vulnerable because of the high variability of weather systems. Additionally, climate change is altering the timing and pattern of water availability in a region where growing populations are placing extra demands on water supplies. Importantly, how reservoirs and dams have an influence on the amount of water resources available is poorly quantified. Therefore, we examine the impact of reservoirs on water resources together with the impact of climate change in a semi-arid Mediterranean catchment. We simulated the Susurluk basin (23.779-km(2)) using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model. We generate results for with (RSV) and without reservoirs (WRSV) scenarios. We run simulations for current and future conditions using dynamically downscaled outputs of the MPI-ESM-MR general circulation model under two greenhouse gas relative concentration pathways (RCPs) in order to reveal the coupled effect of reservoir and climate impacts. Water resources were then converted to their usages - blue water (water in aquifers and rivers), green water storage (water in the soil) and green water flow (water losses by evaporation and transpiration). The results demonstrate that all water resources except green water flow are projected to decrease under all RCPs compared to the reference period, both long-term and at seasonal scales. However, while water scarcity is expected in the future, reservoir storage is shown to be adequate to overcome this problem. Nevertheless, reservoirs reduce the availability of water, particularly in soil moisture stores, which increases the potential for drought by reducing streamflow. Furthermore, reservoirs cause water losses through evaporation from their open surfaces. We conclude that pressures to protect society from economic damage by building reservoirs have a strong impact on the fluxes of watersheds. This is additional to the effect of climate change on water resources.İstanbul Üniversitesi Bilimsel Araştırma Projeleri Birimi (57515, 39111, 38985

Projected changes in temperature and precipitation climatology of Central Asia CORDEX Region 8 by using RegCM4.3.5

This work investigated projected future changes in seasonal mean air temperature (°C) and precipitation (mm/day) climatology for the three periods of 2011–2040, 2041–2070, and 2071–2100, with respect to the control period of 1971–2000 for the Central Asia domain via regional climate model simulations. In order to investigate the projected changes in near future climate conditions, the Regional Climate Model, RegCM4.3.5 of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) was driven by two different CMIP5 global climate models. The HadGEM2-ES global climate model of the Met Office Hadley Centre and the MPI-ESM-MR global climate model of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology were downscaled to 50 km for the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) Region 8. We investigated the seasonal time-scale performance of RegCM4.3.5 in reproducing observed climatology over the domain of the Central Asia by using two different global climate model outputs. For the future climatology of the domain, the regional model projects relatively high warming in the warm season with a decrease in precipitation in almost all parts of the domain. A warming trend is notable, especially for the northern part of the domain during the cold season. The results of our study show that surface air temperatures in the region will increase between 3 °C and about 7 °C on average, according to the emission scenarios for the period of 2071–2100 with respect to past period of 1971–2000. Therefore, the projected warming and decrease in precipitation might adversely affect the ecological and socio-economic systems of this region, which is already a mostly arid and semi-arid environment.Publisher's Versio

Future projections of temperature and precipitation climatology for CORDEX-MENA domain using RegCM4.4

In this study, we investigate changes in seasonal temperature and precipitation climatology of CORDEX Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region for three periods of 2010-2040, 2040-2070 and 2070-2100 with respect to the control period of 1970-2000 by using regional climate model simulations. Projections of future climate conditions are modeled by forcing Regional Climate Model, RegCM4.4 of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) with two different CMIP5 global climate models. HadGEM2-ES global climate model of the Met Office Hadley Centre and MPI-ESM-MR global climate model of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology were used to generate 50 km resolution data for the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) Region 13. We test the seasonal time-scale performance of RegCM4.4 in simulating the observed climatology over domain of the MENA by using the output of two different global climate models. The projection results show relatively high increase of average temperatures from 3 degrees C up to 9 degrees C over the domain for far future (2070-2100). A strong decrease in precipitation is projected in almost all parts of the domain according to the output of the regional model forced by scenario outputs of two global models. Therefore, warmer and drier than present climate conditions are projected to occur more intensely over the CORDEX-MENA domain.Publisher's Versio

The Ski Climate Index (SCI) : Fuzzification and a regional climate modeling application for Turkey

Climatology has increasingly become an important discipline for understanding tourism and recreation, especially in the era of contemporary climate change. Climate indices, in this respect, have been useful tools to yield the climatic attractiveness of tourism destinations as well as in understanding their altering suitability to various tourism types along with the changing climates. In this study, a major gap for a comprehensive climate index tailored for ski tourism is aimed to be fulfilled. For this purpose, initially the Ski Climate Index (SCI) is specified, based on fuzzy logic and as informed by literature and through extensive co-creation with the ski tourism industry experts, and applied to an emerging destination, Turkey, based on regional climate modeling projections. The index is designed as a combination of snow reliability and aesthetics and comfort facets, the latter of which includes sunshine, wind, and thermal comfort conditions. Results show that the Eastern Anatolia region is climatically the most suitable area for future development, taking account of the overriding effects of natural and technical snow reliability. Future research suggestions include the incorporation of more components into the index as well as technical recommendations to improve its application and validation

Technical climate change adaptation options of the major ski resorts in Bulgaria

Climate change has been and increasingly will be a major threat to the ski tourism industry, whose survival is highly dependent on the existence of snow cover of sufficient depth and duration. For this matter, it is even now more usual for the ski resorts to adapt to this issue by various measures at the technical, operational, and political levels. Technically speaking, snowmaking has become the method most used throughout the industry to combat the immediate impacts of climate change, while moving the ski areas to higher terrains has been standing out as an another option, wherever available and feasible. In this study, the aim is to project the future climatic changes in snowmaking capacity; in other words, technical snow reliability, and the moving requirements, if any, of the four major ski resorts in Bulgaria for the period of 2016-2030 with respect to the control period of 1991- 2005. For this purpose, the past and the future climatic conditions for the technical snow reliability of the ski resorts and their immediate surroundings are determined by the temperature and the relative humidity values generated and projected through the Regional Climate Model RegCM 4.4 of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) by scaling the global climate model MPI-ESM-MR of Max Planck Institute for Meteorology down to a resolution of 10 km. The model is further processed according to the recent RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 concentration scenarios of the IPCC. The model outputs on air temperature and relative humidity are utilized for determination of wet-bulb temperatures through psychographic conversions that ultimately provide us with thresholds for snowmaking limits. Findings display the temporal changes in the snowmaking hours of the ski resorts at various altitudinal levels calculated according to the environmental lapse rates. Such displays can guide the practitioners in considering investment lives and moving the ski resorts according to optimistic and pessimistic projections.Publisher's Versio