Extreme Hydroclimatic Events and Multivariate Hazards in a Changing Environment

Extreme Hydroclimatic Events and Multivariate Hazards in a Changing Environment: A Remote Sensing Approach reviews multivariate hazards in a non-stationary environment, covering both short and long-term predictions from earth observations, along with long-term climate dynamics and models. The book provides a detailed overview of remotely sensed observations, current and future satellite missions useful for hydrologic studies and water resources engineering, and a review of hydroclimatic hazards. Given these tools, readers can improve their abilities to monitor, model and predict these extremes with remote sensing. In addition, the book covers multivariate hazards, like landslides, in case studies that analyze the combination of natural hazards and their impact on the natural and built environment. Finally, it ties hydroclimatic hazards into the Sendai Framework, providing another set of tools for reducing disaster impacts. Emphasizes recent and future satellite missions to study, monitor and forecast hydroclimatic hazards Provides a complete overview and differentiation of remotely sensed products that are useful for monitoring extreme hydroclimatic and related events Covers real-life examples and applications of integrating remote sensing products to study complex multi-hydroclimatic hazards

Due to such factors as poor economic conditions, climate change, and conflict, food security remains an issue around the world and especially in developing nations. Rapid changes in technology over the last decade has brought a renewed focus on how information and communication technologies (ICTs) and application systems are deployed to improve rural competitiveness. Unfortunately, agricultural stakeholders in developing countries, particularly in Africa, have not been able to reap comparable benefits from adopting agricultural information systems as compared to their counterparts in the developed economies. Understanding the challenges that hinder the effective adoption of agricultural information systems and identifying opportunities or innovations is imperative to improve the agricultural sectors and overcome the problems in these developing economies. Opportunities and Strategic Use of Agribusiness Information Systems is an essential reference book that examines the key challenges that hinder the effective adoption of agricultural information systems. Moreover, it identifies and evaluates opportunities for the strategic deployment of ICTs and information systems to drive agricultural development for the benefit of agricultural sector stakeholders in emerging countries. While highlighting such topics as agricultural entrepreneurship, food value chain, and innovation systems, it is intended to provide sound and relevant frameworks and tools that will aid agricultural industry practitioners, smallholder farmers, and managers of agricultural extension systems looking to make more effective and responsible decisions when selecting, planning, deploying, and managing agribusiness information systems. It is additionally targeted for agricultural funding organizations, government policymakers, academicians, researchers, and students concerned with exploiting the potential of a variety of ICTs and information systems in the quest to achieve food security and poverty reduction in emerging economies.

Climate Change and Extreme Events uses a multidisciplinary approach to discuss the relationship between climate change-related weather extremes and their impact on human lives. Topics discussed are grouped into four major sections: weather parameters, hydrological responses, mitigation and adaptation, and governance and policies, with each addressed with regard to past, present and future perspectives. Sections give an overview of weather parameters and hydrological responses, presenting current knowledge and a future outlook on air and stream temperatures, precipitation, storms and hurricanes, flooding, and ecosystem responses to these extremes. Other sections cover extreme weather events and discuss the role of the state in policymaking. This book provides a valuable interdisciplinary resource to climate scientists and meteorologists, environmental researchers, and social scientists interested in extreme weather. Provides an integrated interdisciplinary approach to how climate change impacts the hydrological system Addresses significant knowledge gaps in our understanding of climate change and extreme events Discusses the societal impacts of climate change-related weather extremes, including multilevel governance and adaptation policy

This Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report (IPCC-SREX) explores the challenge of understanding and managing the risks of climate extremes to advance climate change adaptation. Extreme weather and climate events, interacting with exposed and vulnerable human and natural systems, can lead to disasters. Changes in the frequency and severity of the physical events affect disaster risk, but so do the spatially diverse and temporally dynamic patterns of exposure and vulnerability. Some types of extreme weather and climate events have increased in frequency or magnitude, but populations and assets at risk have also increased, with consequences for disaster risk. Opportunities for managing risks of weather- and climate-related disasters exist or can be developed at any scale, local to international. Prepared following strict IPCC procedures, SREX is an invaluable assessment for anyone interested in climate extremes, environmental disasters and adaptation to climate change, including policymakers, the private sector and academic researchers.

Extreme Hydrology and Climate Variability: Monitoring, Modelling, Adaptation and Mitigation is a compilation of contributions by experts from around the world who discuss extreme hydrology topics, from monitoring, to modeling and management. With extreme climatic and hydrologic events becoming so frequent, this book is a critical source, adding knowledge to the science of extreme hydrology. Topics covered include hydrometeorology monitoring, climate variability and trends, hydrological variability and trends, landscape dynamics, droughts, flood processes, and extreme events management, adaptation and mitigation. Each of the book's chapters provide background and theoretical foundations followed by approaches used and results of the applied studies. This book will be highly used by water resource managers and extreme event researchers who are interested in understanding the processes and teleconnectivity of large-scale climate dynamics and extreme events, predictability, simulation and intervention measures. Presents datasets used and methods followed to support the findings included, allowing readers to follow these steps in their own research Provides variable methodological approaches, thus giving the reader multiple hydrological modeling information to use in their work Includes a variety of case studies, thus making the context of the book relatable to everyday working situations for those studying extreme hydrology Discusses extreme event management, including adaption and mitigation

The book provides a comprehensive overview of the hydrology of the Nile River, especially the ecohydrological degradation and challenges the basin is facing, the impact of climate change on water availability and the transboundary water management issues. The book includes analysis and approaches that will help provide different insights into the hydrology of this complex basin, which covers 11 countries and is home to over 300 million people. The need for water-sharing agreements that reflect the current situations of riparian countries and are based on equitable water- sharing principles is stressed in many chapters. This book explores water resource availability and quality and their trends in the basin, soil erosion and watershed degradation at different scales, water and health, land use and climate change impact, transboundary issues and water management, dams, reservoirs and lakes. The link between watershed and river water quantity and quality is discussed pointing out the importance of watershed protection for better water resource management, water accessibility, institutional set-up and policy, water demand and management. The book also presents the water sharing sticking points in relation to historical treaties and the emerging water demands of the upstream riparian countries. The need for collaboration and identification of common ground to resolve the transboundary water management issues and secure a win-win is also indicated.

Policymakers around the world are increasingly concerned about the likely impact of climate change and environmental degradation on the movement of people. This book takes a hard look at the existing evidence available to policymakers in different regions of the world. How much do we really know about the impact of environmental change on migration? How will different regions of the world be affected in the future? Is there evidence to show that migration can help countries adapt to environmental change ? What types of research have been conducted, how reliable is the evidence? These are some of the questions considered in this book, which presents, for the first time, a synthesis of relevant research findings for each major region of the world. Written by regional experts, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the key findings of existing studies on the linkages between environmental change and the movement of people. More and more reports on migration and the environment are being published, but the information is often scattered between countries and within regions, and it is not always clear how much of this information is based on solid research. This book brings this evidence together for the first time, highlighting innovative studies and research gaps. In doing this, the book seeks to help decision-makers draw lessons from existing studies and to identify priorities for further research.

Hydrological extremes have become a major concern because of their devastating consequences and their increased risk as a result of climate change and the growing concentration of people and infrastructure in high-risk zones. The analysis of hydrological extremes is challenging due to their rarity and small sample size, and the interconnections between different types of extremes and becomes further complicated by the untrustworthy representation of meso-scale processes involved in extreme events by coarse spatial and temporal scale models as well as biased or missing observations due to technical difficulties during extreme conditions. The complexity of analyzing hydrological extremes calls for robust statistical methods for the treatment of such events. This Special Issue is motivated by the need to apply and develop innovative stochastic and statistical approaches to analyze hydrological extremes under current and future climate conditions. The papers of this Special Issue focus on six topics associated with hydrological extremes: Historical changes in hydrological extremes; Projected changes in hydrological extremes; Downscaling of hydrological extremes; Early warning and forecasting systems for drought and flood; Interconnections of hydrological extremes; Applicability of satellite data for hydrological studies.

Ending poverty and stabilizing climate change will be two unprecedented global achievements and two major steps toward sustainable development. But the two objectives cannot be considered in isolation: they need to be jointly tackled through an integrated strategy. This report brings together those two objectives and explores how they can more easily be achieved if considered together. It examines the potential impact of climate change and climate policies on poverty reduction. It also provides guidance on how to create a “win-win†? situation so that climate change policies contribute to poverty reduction and poverty-reduction policies contribute to climate change mitigation and resilience building. The key finding of the report is that climate change represents a significant obstacle to the sustained eradication of poverty, but future impacts on poverty are determined by policy choices: rapid, inclusive, and climate-informed development can prevent most short-term impacts whereas immediate pro-poor, emissions-reduction policies can drastically limit long-term ones.

This book addresses the issue of climate change risks and hazards holistically. Climate change adaptation aims at managing climate risks and hazards to an acceptable level, taking advantage of any positive opportunities that may arise. At the same time, developing suitable responses to hazards for communities and users of climate services is important in ensuring the success of adaptation measures. But despite this, knowledge about adaptation options, including possible actions that can be implemented to improve adaptation and reduce the impacts of climate change hazards, is still limited. Addressing this need, the book presents studies and research findings and offers a catalogue of potential adaptation options that can be explored. It also includes case studies providing illustrative and inspiring examples of how we can adapt to a changing climate.

This book offers a complete overview of the measurement of precipitation from space, which has made considerable advancements during the last two decades. This is mainly due to the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, CloudSat and a carefully maintained constellation of satellites hosting passive microwave sensors. The book revisits a previous book, Measuring Precipitation from Space, edited by V. Levizzani, P. Bauer and F. J. Turk, published with Springer in 2007. The current content has been completely renewed to incorporate the advancements of science and technology in the field since then. This book provides unique contributions from field experts and from the International Precipitation Working Group (IPWG). The book will be of interest to meteorologists, hydrologists, climatologists, water management authorities, students at various levels and many other parties interested in making use of satellite precipitation data sets.

This open access book discusses the impact of human-induced global climate change on the regional climate and monsoons of the Indian subcontinent, adjoining Indian Ocean and the Himalayas. It documents the regional climate change projections based on the climate models used in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) and climate change modeling studies using the IITM Earth System Model (ESM) and CORDEX South Asia datasets. The IPCC assessment reports, published every 6–7 years, constitute important reference materials for major policy decisions on climate change, adaptation, and mitigation. While the IPCC assessment reports largely provide a global perspective on climate change, the focus on regional climate change aspects is considerably limited. The effects of climate change over the Indian subcontinent involve complex physical processes on different space and time scales, especially given that the mean climate of this region is generally shaped by the Indian monsoon and the unique high-elevation geographical features such as the Himalayas, the Western Ghats, the Tibetan Plateau and the adjoining Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea, and Bay of Bengal. This book also presents policy relevant information based on robust scientific analysis and assessments of the observed and projected future climate change over the Indian region.

This open access book not only describes the challenges of climate disruption, but also presents solutions. The challenges described include air pollution, climate change, extreme weather, and related health impacts that range from heat stress, vector-borne diseases, food and water insecurity and chronic diseases to malnutrition and mental well-being. The influence of humans on climate change has been established through extensive published evidence and reports. However, the connections between climate change, the health of the planet and the impact on human health have not received the same level of attention. Therefore, the global focus on the public health impacts of climate change is a relatively recent area of interest. This focus is timely since scientists have concluded that changes in climate have led to new weather extremes such as floods, storms, heat waves, droughts and fires, in turn leading to more than 600,000 deaths and the displacement of nearly 4 billion people in the last 20 years. Previous work on the health impacts of climate change was limited mostly to epidemiologic approaches and outcomes and focused less on multidisciplinary, multi-faceted collaborations between physical scientists, public health researchers and policy makers. Further, there was little attention paid to faith-based and ethical approaches to the problem. The solutions and actions we explore in this book engage diverse sectors of civil society, faith leadership, and political leadership, all oriented by ethics, advocacy, and policy with a special focus on poor and vulnerable populations. The book highlights areas we think will resonate broadly with the public, faith leaders, researchers and students across disciplines including the humanities, and policy makers.

This synthesis summarizes the findings of the Global Natural Disaster Risk Hotspots project. The Hotspots project generated a global disaster risk assessment and a set of more localized or hazard-specific case studies. The synthesis draws primarily from the results of the global assessment. Full details on the data, methods and results of the global analysis can be found in volume one of Natural Disaster Hotspots: A Global Risk Analysis. The case studies are contained in volume two (forthcoming).

Confronting Climate Uncertainty in Water Resources Planning and Project Design describes an approach to facing two fundamental and unavoidable issues brought about by climate change uncertainty in water resources planning and project design. The first is a risk assessment problem. The second relates to risk management. This book provides background on the risks relevant in water systems planning, the different approaches to scenario definition in water system planning, and an introduction to the decision-scaling methodology upon which the decision tree is based. The decision tree is described as a scientifically defensible, repeatable, direct and clear method for demonstrating the robustness of a project to climate change. While applicable to all water resources projects, it allocates effort to projects in a way that is consistent with their potential sensitivity to climate risk. The process was designed to be hierarchical, with different stages or phases of analysis triggered based on the findings of the previous phase. An application example is provided followed by a descriptions of some of the tools available for decision making under uncertainty and methods available for climate risk management. The tool was designed for the World Bank but can be applicable in other scenarios where similar challenges arise.

Authoritative reviews on the wide-ranging ramifications of climate change, from an international team of eminent researchers.

This book focuses on the application of statistical methods in the field of hydrology and hydroclimatology. Among the latest theories being used in these fields, the book introduces the theory of copulas and its applications in this context. The purpose is to develop an understanding and illustrate the usefulness of the statistical techniques with detailed theory and numerous worked out examples. Apart from this, MATLAB-based codes and solutions of some worked out examples are also provided to assist the readers to handle real life data. This book presents a comprehensive knowledge of statistical techniques combining the basics of probability and the current advances in stochastic hydrology. Besides serving as a textbook for graduate courses on stochastic modeling in hydrology and related disciplines, the book offers valuable resources for researchers and professionals involved in the field of hydrology and climatology.

Uncertainties in Numerical Weather Prediction is a comprehensive work on the most current understandings of uncertainties and predictability in numerical simulations of the atmosphere. It provides general knowledge on all aspects of uncertainties in the weather prediction models in a single, easy to use reference. The book illustrates particular uncertainties in observations and data assimilation, as well as the errors associated with numerical integration methods. Stochastic methods in parameterization of subgrid processes are also assessed, as are uncertainties associated with surface-atmosphere exchange, orographic flows and processes in the atmospheric boundary layer. Through a better understanding of the uncertainties to watch for, readers will be able to produce more precise and accurate forecasts. This is an essential work for anyone who wants to improve the accuracy of weather and climate forecasting and interested parties developing tools to enhance the quality of such forecasts. Provides a comprehensive overview of the state of numerical weather prediction at spatial scales, from hundreds of meters, to thousands of kilometers Focuses on short-term 1-15 day atmospheric predictions, with some coverage appropriate for longer-term forecasts Includes references to climate prediction models to allow applications of these techniques for climate simulations

Provides unique synthesis of various modeling methodologies used to aid planning and operational decision making, for academic researchers and professionals.

The Anthropocene is the human-dominated modern era that has accelerated social, environmental and climate change across the world in the last few decades. This open access book examines the challenges the Anthropocene presents to the sustainable management of deltas, both the many threats as well as the opportunities. In the world's deltas the Anthropocene is manifest in major land use change, the damming of rivers, the engineering of coasts and the growth of some of the world's largest megacities; deltas are home to one in twelve of all people in the world. The book explores bio-physical and social dynamics and makes clear adaptation choices and trade-offs that underpin policy and governance processes, including visionary delta management plans. It details new analysis to illustrate these challenges, based on three significant and contrasting deltas: the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna, Mahanadi and Volta. This multi-disciplinary, policy-orientated volume is strongly aligned to the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals as delta populations often experience extremes of poverty, gender and structural inequality, variable levels of health and well-being, while being vulnerable to extreme and systematic climate change. Robert J Nicholls is Professor of Coastal Engineering within Engineering and Physical Sciences at the University of Southampton, UK. He has contributed to a wide range of influential national and international publications including the IPCC Assessment Reports. W Neil Adger is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Exeter, UK. His research examines demographic, political economy, public health and well-being aspects of the Anthropocene. Craig W Hutton is Professor of Sustainability Science within Geography and Environment at the University of Southampton, UK. His research focuses on spatial analysis of vulnerability and the incorporation of sustainable management, policy and governance into decision-making processes. Susan E Hanson is Research Fellow within Engineering and Physical Sciences at the University of Southampton, UK. She specializes in coastal vulnerability and management, particularly as a consequence of climate change.