The Arctic is thawing. In summer, cruise ships sail through the once ice-clogged Northwest Passage, lakes form on top of the Greenland Ice Sheet, and polar bears swim farther and farther in search of ...waning ice floes. At the opposite end of the world, floating Antarctic ice shelves are shrinking. Mountain glaciers are in retreat worldwide, unleashing flash floods and avalanches. We are on thin ice-and with melting permafrost's potential to let loose still more greenhouse gases, these changes may be just the beginning.Vanishing Iceis a powerful depiction of the dramatic transformation of the cryosphere-the world of ice and snow-and its consequences for the human world. Delving into the major components of the cryosphere, including ice sheets, valley glaciers, permafrost, and floating ice, Vivien Gornitz gives an up-to-date explanation of key current trends in the decline of ice mass. Drawing on a long-term perspective gained by examining changes in the cryosphere and corresponding variations in sea level over millions of years, she demonstrates the link between thawing ice and sea-level rise to point to the social and economic challenges on the horizon. Gornitz highlights the widespread repercussions of ice loss, which will affect countless people far removed from frozen regions, to explain why the big meltdown matters to us all. Written for all readers and students interested in the science of our changing climate,Vanishing Iceis an accessible and lucid warning of the coming thaw.
This book details the effects of climate variability on small pelagic fish and their ecosystems and fisheries. Particularly abundant in coastal upwelling regions off the west coasts of the Americas ...and Africa, off Japan, and in the NE Atlantic, the stocks of these fish fluctuate greatly over the timescale of decades, with large ecological and economic effects. This book describes the nature and cause of these fluctuations, and their consequences. It outlines results from paleo-oceanographic studies, showing that similar fluctuations have also occurred over the past two millennia. The potential effects of future climate change, both natural and anthropogenic, on stocks and fisheries, are considered. The book concludes by recommending the continued international study and assessment of small pelagic fish in order to best inform management and policy under a changing climate. It is written for research scientists, academics, and policy makers in fisheries, oceanography, and climate change.
Food Security and Climate Change Shyam Singh Yadav, Robert J. Redden, Jerry L. Hatfield, Andreas W. Ebert, Danny Hunter
2018, 2019, 2018-12-14
eBook
This book looks at the current state of food security and climate change, discusses the issues that are affecting them, and the actions required to ensure there will be enough food for the future. By ...casting a much wider net than most previously published books—to include select novel approaches, techniques, genes from crop diverse genetic resources or relatives—it shows how agriculture may still be able to triumph over the very real threat of climate change. Food Security and Climate Change integrates various challenges posed by changing climate, increasing population, sustainability in crop productivity, demand for food grains to sustain food security, and the anticipated future need for nutritious quality foods. It looks at individual factors resulting from climate change, including rising carbon emission levels, increasing temperature, disruptions in rainfall patterns, drought, and their combined impact on planting environments, crop adaptation, production, and management. The role of plant genetic resources, breeding technologies of crops, biotechnologies, and integrated farm management and agronomic good practices are included, and demonstrate the significance of food grain production in achieving food security during climate change. Food Security and Climate Change is an excellent book for researchers, scientists, students, and policy makers involved in agricultural science and technology, as well as those concerned with the effects of climate change on our environment and the food industry.
•Climatic factors show time-lag and accumulation effects on global vegetation.•The effects show variations across climatic factors, vegetation types, and regions.•Climatic factors control 70 % of ...areas with the significant NDVI variation.
Climate dominantly controls vegetation over most regions at most times, and vegetation responses to climate change are often asymmetric with temporal effects. However, systematic analysis of the time-lag and time-accumulation effects of climate on vegetation growth, has rarely been conducted, in particular for different vegetation growing phases. Thus, this study aimed to leverage normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) to determine the spatiotemporal patterns of climatic effects on global vegetation growth considering various scenarios of time-lag and/or accumulation effects. The results showed that (i) climatic factors have time-lag and -accumulation effects as well as their combined effects on global vegetation growth for the whole growing season and its subphases (i.e., the growing and senescent phases). However, these effects vary with climatic factors, vegetation types, and regions. Compared with those of temperature, both precipitation and solar radiation display more significant time-accumulation effects in the whole growing season worldwide, but behave differently in the growing and senescent phases in the middle-high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere; (ii) compared to the scenario without time effects, considering time-lag and -accumulation effects as well as their combined effects increased by 17 %, 15 %, and 19 % the overall explanatory power of vegetation growth by climate change for the whole growing season, the growing phase, and senescent phase, respectively; (iii) considering the time-lag and -accumulation effects as well as their combined effects, climate change controls 70 % of areas with a significant NDVI variation from 1982 to 2015, and the primary driving factor was temperature, followed by solar radiation and precipitation. This study highlights the significant time-lag and -accumulation effects of climatic factors on global vegetation growth. We suggest that these effects need to be incorporated into dynamic vegetation models to better understand vegetation growth under accelerating climate change.
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Winged Sentinels Wormworth, Janice; Sekercioglu, Cagan H.
07/2011
eBook
'The ability of the birds to show us the consequences of our own actions is among their most important and least appreciated attributes. Despite the free advice of the birds, we do not pay ...attention', said Marjory Stoneman Douglas in 1947. From ice-dependent penguins of Antarctica to songbirds that migrate across the Sahara, birds' responses provide early warning signs of the impact of climate change. Winged Sentinels: Birds and Climate Change uses colourful examples to show how particular groups of birds face heightened threats from climate change and to explore how we can help birds adapt in a warming world. Generously illustrated with colour photographs, the book is a fascinating insight into what climate change means for birds, and the potential consequences of ignoring these warning signs.
Most practitioners within wind energy have only a very basic knowledge about meteorology, leading to a lack of understanding of one of the most fundamental subjects in wind energy. This book will ...therefore provide an easy-to- understand introduction to the subject of meteorology, as seen from the viewpoint of wind energy. Catering for a range of academic backgrounds, the book is mathematically rigorous with accessible explanations for non-mathematically oriented readers. Through exercises in the text and at the end of each chapter the reader will be challenged to think, seek further information and practice the knowledge obtained from reading the book. This practical yet comprehensive reference will enable readers to fully understand the theoretical background of meteorology with wind energy in mind and will include topics such as: measurements; wind profiles; wakes; modelling; turbulence and the fundamentals of atmospheric flow on all scales including the local scale. Key features: • Provides practitioners of wind energy with a solid theoretical grounding in relevant aspects of meteorology enabling them to exercise useful judgment in matters related to resource estimation, wind farm development, planning, turbine design and electrical grids. • Supports a growing area of professional development with the increasing importance of wind energy estimation in all aspects of electrical energy production from wind. • Accompanying website includes data sets for exercises in data analysis, photographs, animations & worked examples, helping to further bridge the gap between theory and practice. Meteorology for Wind Energy: An Introduction is aimed at engineers, developers and project managers in the wind power and electrical utility sectors without the essential theoretical background required to understand the topic. It will also have significant appeal to senior undergraduate and postgraduate students of Wind Energy, Environmental Studies or Renewables Studies.
•Explored permafrost temperature time–frequency traits in four alpine grasslands.•Alpine meadows were more climate-sensitive than the other three alpine grasslands.•Precipitation and wind speed had ...significant effects on permafrost.•The varying impacts of vegetation and a sand layer on permafrost were discussed.
Permafrost temperature is a vital indicator of climate and permafrost changes, benefiting ecosystem development and informing local climate strategies. Alpine grasslands impact moisture and heat exchange between the surface and atmosphere, thereby affecting the thermal state of underlying permafrost. This study analyzed permafrost temperatures (2004–2019) from various alpine grasslands (including alpine meadow, alpine steppe, alpine desert grassland, and barren land) in the Beiluhe region of the Tibetan Plateau and revealed their connections to climate change and controlling factors, using time–frequency analysis. The findings revealed that in the time–frequency domain, permafrost temperatures exhibited multiple time scales characteristics, driven by climate fluctuations. Changes in the active layer closely followed monthly climate variations, while permafrost dynamics responded to annual climate changes. Significant oscillations with periods of 10–11, 8–9, and 14 years were observed in the surface, permafrost table, and deep permafrost layers, respectively. Among the different types of alpine grasslands, alpine meadows proved to be the most sensitive to climate change, with the intensity of periodic fluctuations initially decreasing and then increasing with depth in alpine meadows, while it consistently decreased with depth in the other three alpine grasslands. The impact of air temperature, precipitation, and wind speed on permafrost dynamics exhibited depth-dependent variations in the time–frequency domain, contrasting with the time domain where permafrost temperature changes were predominantly associated with air temperature across all depths.
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Vegetation growth is importantly affected by seasonal weather patterns. The time lag between changes in these patterns and the vegetative response is an important factor in vegetation–climate ...interactions and can vary considerably with the spatial heterogeneity of an ecosystem. In this study of the Loess Plateau, China, highly accurate time lags were determined at the daily scale using linear regression based on a multiyear normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) dataset (1982–2015) and the corresponding reconstructed monthly climate series. We found that lag length varied among catchments, vegetation zones, and land-cover types. The mean time lag between precipitation and the NDVI response varied from 7.9 days to 17.7 days across the catchments; for temperature and NDVI, the lag in response ranged from 6.2 days to 25.3 days. Across the six vegetation zones that range from the southeast to the northwest of the Loess Plateau, both the precipitation–NDVI and temperature–NDVI lag lengths were largest in the central zones and lower in the zones closer to the edges of the plateau. Among the different land-cover types, grassland had the largest lags between precipitation or temperature change and the NDVI response, followed by shrubland, arable land, and then forests. The possible impact of vegetative time lags on sediment yield was also investigated for the first time, and this information has great relevance for soil conservation on the Loess Plateau and sediment reduction in the lower Yellow River.
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•Daily-scale time lags between precipitation/temperature and NDVI were detected.•Vegetative response on the central plateau exhibited the longest lag length.•Grassland had the longest lags between precipitation/temperature and the NDVI.•Reducing vegetative time lags following seasonal weather may suppress sediment yield.
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10.
Hot Cities Steele, Wendy; Handmer, John; McShane, Ian
2023, 2023-08-15
eBook
Open access
Shedding light on the future of urban spaces, this path-breaking book is a significant contribution to contemporary climate change scholarship. It synthesizes interdisciplinary research with ...practical policy, putting an emphasis on positive environmental and socially just outcomes and urban regeneration.
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