Regionalizing Global Climate Variations

Regionalizing Global Climate Variations: A Study of the Southeastern US Regional Climate provides a framework for understanding regional climate in light of the many assessment reports being released regularly by international organizations. The book emphasizes global climate variations to explore the concept of the regionalization of those variations. Focusing on the climate of the Southeastern United States as a lens, it provides a template for targeting regional climate change in the context of global variability. It includes coverage of weather extremes, such as tornadoes, cyclones, and drought, and approaches the subject from a holistic perspective, including atmospheric, oceanic, and land components. The Southeastern United States is a particularly relevant case study, given the fact that it is the largest quarter of the United States and has the most coastlines, often resulting in a higher number of extreme weather events. This practical approach to understanding climate at the regional/local scale makes the book a valuable resource for students and researchers in Meteorology, Climate Science, Oceanography, Environmental Science, and other applied sectors. Includes descriptions of the morphology of weather extremes such as tropical cyclones and tornadoes Discusses the influence of climate change on weather extremes Presents a holistic or interdisciplinary approach to understanding regional climate that includes features of atmospheric science, meteorology, oceanography, and hydrology

In regard to global change, emphasis is generally placed on the increase in global temperature, but large changes in the distribution of precipitation are also likely to occur. Such changes have been redorded in the past by paleoclimatological studies or in the field of climatology. Different approaches to monitoring and forecasting the evolution of climate-scale precipitation are reviewed by paleoclimatologists, hydrologists, satellite meteorologists, and climate modellers.

Clustering techniques are used to identify groups of watersheds which have similar flood characteristics. This book, the first of its kind, is a comprehensive reference on how to use these techniques for regional flood frequency analysis. It provides a detailed account of several recently developed clustering techniques, including those based on fuzzy set theory. It also brings together formerly scattered research findings on the application of clustering techniques to RFFA.

The focus of this book is future global climate change and its implications for agricultural systems which are the main sources of agricultural goods and services provided to society. These systems are either based on crop or livestock production, or on combinations of the two, with characteristics that differ between regions and between levels of management intensity. In turn, they also differ in their sensitivity to projected future changes in climate, and improvements to increase climate-resilience need to be tailored to the specific needs of each system. The book will bring together a series of chapters that provide scientific insights to possible implications of projected climate changes for different important types of crop and livestock systems, and a discussion of options for adaptive and mitigative management.

Many challenges, including climate change, face the Nation¿s water managers. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has provided estimates of how climate may change, but more understanding of the processes driving the changes, the sequences of the changes, and the manifestation of these global changes at different scales could be beneficial. Since the changes will likely affect fundamental drivers of the hydrological cycle, climate change may have a large impact on water resources and water resources managers. The purpose of this interagency report is to explore strategies to improve water management by tracking, anticipating, and responding to climate change. Charts and tables.

This book describes thoroughly the North American Climate of the past 65 million years, with special emphasis on the last 21,000 years, as revealed by paleoclimatic observations and climate models. It analyzes weather observations over the past century and satellite measurements of the last few decades to develop a picture of more recent climatic trends. It explains how global climate models are used to simulate and project climate, and presents the application of these models to reproduce recent climate variations and predict future North American climate. It answers the critical question of whether observed climate change is due to natural variations or human activity.

Global climate governance has presented problems that have led to failures, yet it has also opened the door to new transregional governance schemes, especially in North America. This book introduces an environmental dimension into the concept of governance. Almost fifteen years after the climate global governance concept emerged, results worldwide have not been as favorable as expected. This book details previous discussions about the concept of global climate governance and its limits. It highlights how the Kyoto Protocol has a limited design taking into account a national approach to global, regional, and transnational problems, had no obligatory mechanisms for implementation and explains the emergence of new polluters not committed under it such as China and India. Furthermore this book explores other levels of authority such as regional institutions - the North American agreement on trade (NAFTA) and on environment (NAAEC), as well as the regional energy working group (NAEWG). The author puts forward a theoretical proposal for re-territorialization and coordination of policies for climate change into new forms of articulating interests in what she terms transnational green economic regions (TGERs) and tests this on two case studies - the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and the Western Climate Initiative (WCI). This study presents the challenges and opportunities of a transregional approach in North America.

This book provides an overview of the GLOWA-Danube research project from 2001 to 2011, a transdisciplinary initiative which explores the future of water resources in the Upper Danube Basin. It documents the purpose and unique approach, architecture, methodologies, scenarios and results of the project, creating a scientific knowledge base for the dialogue of stakeholders and scientists. The book offers a possible blueprint for successful global change science through integrative and transdisciplinary co-creation of knowledge and orientation for regional adaptation within the context of the Future Earth research program.

This book presents the state of the art in modeling and simulation on supercomputers. Leading German research groups present their results achieved on high-end systems of the High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS) for the year 2003. The reports cover all fields of computational science and engineering ranging from computational fluid dynamics via computational physics and chemistry to computer science. Special emphasis is given to industrially relevant applications. Presenting results for both vector-systems and micro-processor based systems, the book allows the reader to compare performance levels and usability of a variety of supercomputer architectures. In the light of the success of the Japanese Earth-Simulator, this book may serve as a guide book for a US response. The book covers the main methods in high performance computing. Its outstanding results in achieving highest performance for production codes are of particular interest for both the scientist and the engineer. The book comes with a wealth of color illustrations and tables of results.

Global climate governance has presented problems that have led to failures, yet it has also opened the door to new transregional governance schemes, especially in North America. This book introduces an environmental dimension into the concept of governance. Almost fifteen years after the climate global governance concept emerged, results worldwide have not been as favorable as expected. This book details previous discussions about the concept of global climate governance and its limits. It highlights how the Kyoto Protocol has a limited design taking into account a national approach to global, regional, and transnational problems, had no obligatory mechanisms for implementation and explains the emergence of new polluters not committed under it such as China and India. Furthermore this book explores other levels of authority such as regional institutions - the North American agreement on trade (NAFTA) and on environment (NAAEC), as well as the regional energy working group (NAEWG). The author puts forward a theoretical proposal for re-territorialization and coordination of policies for climate change into new forms of articulating interests in what she terms transnational green economic regions (TGERs) and tests this on two case studies - the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and the Western Climate Initiative (WCI). This study presents the challenges and opportunities of a transregional approach in North America.

This publication, prepared jointly by the WHO, the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme, considers the public health challenges arising from global climate change and options for policy responses, with particular focus on the health sector. Aspects discussed include: an overview of historical developments and recent scientific assessments; weather and climate change; population vulnerability and the adaptive capacity of public health systems; the IPCC Third Assessment report; tasks for public health scientists; the health impacts of climate extremes; climate change, infectious diseases and the level of disease burdens; ozone depletion, ultraviolet radiation and health; and methodological issues in monitoring health effects of climate change.

Global Regionalization examines the astonishing political and economic changes that have completely reshaped the political geography of certain regions during the past fifteen years. It deals with the concept of global bloc formation, examining the impacts that changing political-economic conditions and relationships in and between nations have on demographic and economic flows.

The studies focus on the impacts of climate change in the developing countries around the world.

Issues in Global Environment—Climate and Climate Change: 2013 Edition is a ScholarlyEditions™ book that delivers timely, authoritative, and comprehensive information about Climate Research. The editors have built Issues in Global Environment—Climate and Climate Change: 2013 Edition on the vast information databases of ScholarlyNews.™ You can expect the information about Climate Research in this book to be deeper than what you can access anywhere else, as well as consistently reliable, authoritative, informed, and relevant. The content of Issues in Global Environment—Climate and Climate Change: 2013 Edition has been produced by the world’s leading scientists, engineers, analysts, research institutions, and companies. All of the content is from peer-reviewed sources, and all of it is written, assembled, and edited by the editors at ScholarlyEditions™ and available exclusively from us. You now have a source you can cite with authority, confidence, and credibility. More information is available at http://www.ScholarlyEditions.com/.

The difficulty of achieving and implementing a global climate change agreement has stimulated a wide range of policy proposals designed to favour the participation of a large number of countries in a global cooperative effort to control greenhouse gas emissions. This significant book analyses the viability of controlling climate change through a set of regional or sub-global climate agreements rather than via a global treaty. The authors argue that the principal challenge in devising a truly global architecture is in providing sufficient incentives for all party participation whilst also ensuring compliance, which raises global governance issues. The main purpose of this study is not to trace in detail the process of negotiation and implementation of international regimes, but rather to evaluate whether a series of regional or sub-global agreements is more likely to achieve climate change control than a global agreement attempted from the outset. From a political science perspective, the focus centres on institution building and governance. From an economic perspective it concentrates on incentives used to encourage participation in a global and non-fragmented agreement. Lessons from EU integration and actual global and regional trade agreements are employed in order to analyse the future prospects of climate change negotiations. The focus on climate change and more generally the management of environmental and resource problems will make this book essential reading for participants, observers and analysts of the public policy process as it concerns climate change and more generally the management of environmental and resource problems. In addition the rich combination of international relations theory and economic literature with findings from the policy process will appeal to both general readers and the academic community.

The twentieth century witnessed an era of unprecedented, large-scale, anthropogenic changes to the natural environment. Understanding how environmental factors directly and indirectly affect the emergence and spread of infectious disease has assumed global importance for life on this planet. While the causal links between environmental change and disease emergence are complex, progress in understanding these links, as well as how their impacts may vary across space and time, will require transdisciplinary, transnational, collaborative research. This research may draw upon the expertise, tools, and approaches from a variety of disciplines. Such research may inform improvements in global readiness and capacity for surveillance, detection, and response to emerging microbial threats to plant, animal, and human health. The Influence of Global Environmental Change on Infectious Disease Dynamics is the summary of a workshop hosted by the Institute of Medicine Forum on Microbial Threats in September 2013 to explore the scientific and policy implications of the impacts of global environmental change on infectious disease emergence, establishment, and spread. This report examines the observed and potential influence of environmental factors, acting both individually and in synergy, on infectious disease dynamics. The report considers a range of approaches to improve global readiness and capacity for surveillance, detection, and response to emerging microbial threats to plant, animal, and human health in the face of ongoing global environmental change.

Climate and Water: Transboundary Challenges in the Americas explores some of the ways that climate, hydrology, and water resource management converge at the borders between jurisdictions and countries in the western Hemisphere. This book is unique in focusing on case studies of climate-hydrology-water resource management in diverse contexts in South, Central, and North America. This book is singular in highlighting important problems arising from the very existence of boundaries drawn and defined by society. Addressing such problems takes on increasing urgency as the world becomes ever more inter connected and interdependent. Target groups for this book include water resource managers and decision makers at levels from the international to the local; scientists involved in interdisciplinary studies of basic and applied climatology, hydrology, and environmental studies; and readers specializing in institutional analyses, including transboundary water law, policy analysis, and risk assessment. This book is also a useful text for college classes addressing natural resources management in general, and the transfer of scientific knowledge to society.

In “Climate Change and Environmental Hazards Related to Shipping” the editors offer an overview on the recent discussions regarding legal questions of tackling climate change and the legal instruments related to environmental problems caused by international shipping.

This book provides an evaluation of the science and policy debates on climate change and offers a reframing of the challenges they pose, as understood by key international experts and players in the field. It also gives an important and original perspective on interpreting climate action and provides compelling evidence of the weakness of arguments that frame climate policy as a win-or-lose situation. At the same time, the book goes beyond providing yet another description of climate change trends and policy processes. Its goal is to make available, in a series of in-depth reflections and insights by key international figures representing science, business, finance and civil society, what is really needed to link knowledge to action. Different contributions convincingly show that it is time – and possible – to reframe the climate debate in a completely new light, perhaps as a system transformative attractor for new green growth, sustainable development, and technological innovation. Reframing the Problem of Climate Change reflects a deep belief that dealing with climate change does not have to be a zero sum game, with winners and losers. The contributors argue that our societies can learn to respond to the challenge it presents and avoid both human suffering and large scale destruction of ecosystems; and that this does not necessarily require economic sacrifice. Therefore, it is vital reading for students, academics and policy makers involved in the debate surrounding climate change.