Impact Of Rapid Climate Change Research Articles

Процессы трансформации международного Арктического региона: новые геополитические контуры

The article attempts to analyse the international Arctic region during the period from the end of the Cold War to the present. In this timespan, the author identifies two main stages, which differ in the logic of building relations between the regional powers. Special attention is paid to the transformation of the theoretical approaches to the concept of region, characterized by a shift in emphasis from the territorial principle, which defines a region as a specific territory, to the spatial principle, based on functional features. This allows us to explain the processes that took place in the Arctic after the end of the Cold War, when a global region started to form on this territory. In addition, the article highlights the uniqueness of the Arctic due to the impact of rapid climate change on the region’s geopolitical position. The paper analyses the reasons for the change in the logic of the development of international processes in the Arctic from the idea of a global region with intensive international cooperation to confrontation. The author inclines to interpret the main reason for it through the prism of a systematic approach: as a result of the rearrangement of elements in the system of international relations due to the emergence of new poles of power, disagreements with the world hegemon arise, which leads to a redistribution of power. Another specific feature of the international relations in the Arctic is the configuration of regional players, when seven countries create a counterbalance to one Arctic power. This is clearly demonstrated through NATO’s activities in the region and the blocking of Russia’s participation in all forms of regional cooperation. The Arctic countries’ continued reluctance to collaboratе with Russia in the same way as before can also be explained by their growing state egoism.

NORA3. Part II: Precipitation and Temperature Statistics in Complex Terrain Modeled with a Nonhydrostatic Model

Abstract The 3-km Norwegian Reanalysis (NORA3) is a convection-permitting, nonhydrostatic hindcast for the North Sea, the Norwegian Sea, and the Barents Sea as well as the Scandinavian Peninsula. It has a horizontal resolution of 3 km and provides a full three-dimensional atmospheric state for the period 1995–2020 with a surface analysis and boundary conditions from ERA5, a global reanalysis. In complex terrain it is found to outperform both the host reanalysis ERA5 and also the earlier hydrostatic 10-km Norwegian Hindcast Archive (NORA10), in terms of 2-m temperature and daily precipitation. Of particular interest is the representation of extreme rainfall. It is found that the upper percentiles are much better represented than in ERA5, with very little bias up to 99.9%, suggesting that the new hindcast archive is well suited for hydrological mapping and extreme-value analysis of rainfall in complex terrain. Significance Statement High-resolution hindcasts that permit realistic convection allow very detailed modeling of the surface temperature, precipitation, and wind field in complex terrain. There is a need for detailed mapping of rainfall and temperature extremes (upper percentiles) to assess the impact of rapid climate change. We present an assessment of the performance of the model from Part I for near-surface temperature and precipitation, which are found to be much improved in comparison with ERA5 and with earlier NORA10. The focus is on the Norwegian mainland and the Svalbard Archipelago, because the complex terrain found in these regions is challenging to represent in weather prediction models. The improvement in precipitation statistics is particularly pronounced, with nearly unbiased results up to the 99.9th percentile.

Effect of future climate change on the water footprint of major crops in southern Tajikistan

Danghara, a major food production area in southern Tajikistan, is currently suffering from the impact of rapid climate change and intensive human activities. Assessing the future impact of climate change on crop water requirements (CWRs) for the current growing period and defining the optimal sowing date to reduce future crop water demand are essential for local/regional water and food planning. Therefore, this study attempted to analyze possible future climate change effects on the water requirements of major crops using the statistical downscaling method in the Danghara District to simulate the future temperature and precipitation for two future periods (2021–2050 and 2051–2080), under three representative concentration pathways (RCP2.6, RCP4.5, and RCP8.5) according to the CanESM2 global climate model. The water footprint (WFP) of major crops was calculated as a measure of their CWRs. The increased projection of precipitation and temperature probably caused an increase in the main crop’s WFP for the current growing period, which was mainly due to the green water (GW) component in the long term and a decrease in the blue water (BW) component during the second future period, except for cotton, where all components were predicted to remain stable. Under three scenarios for the two future periods, a 10 ​d early sowing time was defined as an optimal sowing date, in which the WFPs of potato and winter wheat decreased from 5.7% to 4.8% and 3.4% to 2.2%, respectively. Although the WFP of cotton demonstrated a stable increase, according to the optimal sowing date, a decrease in irrigation demand or BW was expected. The results of our study might be useful for developing a new strategy related to irrigation systems and could help to find a balance between water and food for environmental water demands and human use.

Application of archival aerial photogrammetry to quantify climate forcing of alpine landscapes

AbstractRecent and future climate change may lead to landscape changes in geomorphic processes and process rates. Such modifications are likely to be widely distributed, making their direct measurement difficult and there are almost no such measurements at decadal intervals. Aerial imagery has been acquired by many national agencies since the 1950s and significant archives remain. Unlocking the information from these data sources is important because their timescale may inform significant unresolved hypotheses regarding the impact of rapid climate change on Alpine environments. However, such photogrammetric applications are challenging because of topographic complexity (including occlusions and large elevation ranges) and variations in image texture. A complete workflow is described from raw data to the treatment and interpretation of results. This is applied to imagery of Val d'Héréns, Switzerland, a landscape containing an assemblage of glacial, periglacial, hillslope and fluvial landforms across a height range of 1800 to 3600 m from the 1960s to the present. These changes reveal important characteristics of landscape scale erosion and deposition at the decadal scale.

Rapid climate change did not cause population collapse at the end of the European Bronze Age.

The impact of rapid climate change on contemporary human populations is of global concern. To contextualize our understanding of human responses to rapid climate change it is necessary to examine the archeological record during past climate transitions. One episode of abrupt climate change has been correlated with societal collapse at the end of the northwestern European Bronze Age. We apply new methods to interrogate archeological and paleoclimate data for this transition in Ireland at a higher level of precision than has previously been possible. We analyze archeological (14)C dates to demonstrate dramatic population collapse and present high-precision proxy climate data, analyzed through Bayesian methods, to provide evidence for a rapid climatic transition at ca. 750 calibrated years B.C. Our results demonstrate that this climatic downturn did not initiate population collapse and highlight the nondeterministic nature of human responses to past climate change.

Social and biophysical vulnerability of prehistoric societies to Rapid Climate Change

Previous studies of the impact of Rapid Climate Change (RCC) on prehistoric com- munities have often been restricted in their explanatory power due to the lack of an appropriate analytical tool capable of combining palaeoclimate data with archaeological culture. In this paper, we seek to remedy this shortfall by introducing theoretical-methodological concepts adapted from modern vulnerability and risk studies. Using this approach, our focus shifts from climate proxies to prehistoric cultures themselves.

The Impact of Rapid Climate Change on Prehistoric Societies during the Holocene in the Eastern Mediterranean

In this paper we explore the impact of Rapid Climate Change (RCC) on prehistoric communities in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Early and Middle Holocene. Our focus is on the social implications of the four major climate cold anomalies that have recently been identified as key time-windows for global RCC (Mayewski et al. 2004). These cooling anomalies are well-dated, with Greenland ice-core resolution, due to synchronicity between warm/cold foraminifera ratios in Mediterranean core LC21 as a proxy for surface water temperature, and Greenland GISP2 non sea-salt (nss) [K+] ions as a proxy for the intensification of the Siberian High and for polar air outbreaks in the northeast Mediterranean (Rohling et al. 2002). Building on these synchronisms, the GISP2 agemodel supplies the following precise time-intervals for archaeological RCC research: (i) 8.6–8.0 ka, (ii) 6.0–5.2 ka, (iii) 4.2–4.0 ka and (iv) 3.1–2.9 ka calBP. For each of these RCC time intervals, based on detailed 14C-based chronological studies, we investigate contemporaneous cultural developments. From our studies it follows that RCC-related climatic deterioration is a major factor underlying social change, although always at work within a wide spectrum of social, cultural, economic and religious factors.

A Paleoindian response to Younger Dryas climate change

Late Quaternary changes in North American vegetation and geography reflect the influence of changing climate induced by the retreating ice sheets, orbitally-driven seasonal insolation patterns, increasing carbon dioxide concentrations, and relatively rapid internal variations. At regional scales, these climate changes resulted in ecosystem variability that impacted human access to resources. We use paleoenvironmental and archaeological records from 14,000 to 10,000 cal yr BP for New England and Maritime Canada (NE/M) to propose the impact of rapid climate change on human resource-procurement and technology. Paleoenvironmental reconstructions for the Younger Dryas chronozone (YDC; 12,900–11,600 cal yr BP) show ecologic responses to colder-than-earlier conditions. At roughly the same time (13,000–11,000 cal yr BP), we surmise that fluted points were used to hunt large mammals, including caribou, which inhabited regions with sub-arctic-like vegetation. Environmental changes, associated with rapid regional warming at the end of the YDC, coincided with the abandonment of fluting technology. As conditions warmed, vegetation changes led to shifts in animal populations, which may be reflected in the development of other point styles by Paleoindians and subsequent human groups.

An exploratory model of the impact of rapid climate change on the world food situation

A simple, globally aggregated, stochastic-simulation model was constructed to examine the effects of rapid climatic change on agriculture and the human population. The model calculates population size and the production, consumption and storage of grain under different climate scenarios over a 20-year projection time. In most scenarios, either an optimistic baseline annual increase of agricultural output of 1.7% or a more pessimistic appraisal of 0.9% was used. The rate of natural increase of the human population exclusive of excess hunger-related deaths was set as 1.7% per year and climatic changes with both negative and positive impacts on agriculture were assessed. Analysis of the model suggests that the number of hunger-related deaths could double (with reference to an estimated 200 million deaths in the past two decades) if grain production keeps pace with population growth but climatic conditions are unfavourable. If the rate of increase in grain production is about half that of population growth, the number of hunger-related deaths could increase about fivefold (over past levels); the impact of climatic change is relatively small under this imbalance. Even favourable climatic changes that enhance agricultural production may not prevent a fourfold increase in deaths (over past levels) under scenarios where population growth outpaces production by about 0.8% per annum. These results may foreshadow a fundamental change where, for the first time, absolute global food deficits compound inequities in food production and distribution in causing famine. The model also highlights the effectiveness of reducing population growth rates as a strategy for minimizing the impact of global climate change and maintaining food supplies for everyone.