Journal ArticleDOI
Increasing risk of great floods in a changing climate
TLDR
The recent emergence of a statistically significant positive trend in risk of great floods is consistent with results from the climate model, and the model suggests that the trend will continue.Abstract:
Radiative effects of anthropogenic changes in atmospheric composition are expected to cause climate changes, in particular an intensification of the global water cycle with a consequent increase in flood risk. But the detection of anthropogenically forced changes in flooding is difficult because of the substantial natural variability; the dependence of streamflow trends on flow regime further complicates the issue. Here we investigate the changes in risk of great floods--that is, floods with discharges exceeding 100-year levels from basins larger than 200,000 km(2)--using both streamflow measurements and numerical simulations of the anthropogenic climate change associated with greenhouse gases and direct radiative effects of sulphate aerosols. We find that the frequency of great floods increased substantially during the twentieth century. The recent emergence of a statistically significant positive trend in risk of great floods is consistent with results from the climate model, and the model suggests that the trend will continue.read more
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Planetary boundaries: Exploring the safe operating space for humanity
Johan Rockström,Johan Rockström,Will Steffen,Will Steffen,Kevin J. Noone,Åsa Persson,Åsa Persson,F. Stuart Chapin,Eric F. Lambin,Timothy M. Lenton,Marten Scheffer,Carl Folke,Carl Folke,Hans Joachim Schellnhuber,Hans Joachim Schellnhuber,Björn Nykvist,Björn Nykvist,Cynthia A. de Wit,Terry P. Hughes,Sander van der Leeuw,Henning Rodhe,Sverker Sörlin,Sverker Sörlin,Peter K. Snyder,Robert Costanza,Robert Costanza,Uno Svedin,Malin Falkenmark,Malin Falkenmark,Louise Karlberg,Louise Karlberg,Robert W. Corell,Victoria J. Fabry,James Hansen,Brian Walker,Brian Walker,Diana Liverman,Katherine Richardson,Paul J. Crutzen,Jonathan A. Foley +39 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors proposed a new approach to global sustainability in which they define planetary boundaries within which they expect that humanity can operate safely. But the proposed concept of "planetary boundaries" lays the groundwork for shifting our approach to governance and management, away from the essentially sectoral analyses of limits to growth aimed at minimizing negative externalities, toward the estimation of the safe space for human development.
Journal ArticleDOI
Stationarity Is Dead: Whither Water Management?
Paul C.D. Milly,Julio L. Betancourt,Malin Falkenmark,Robert M. Hirsch,Dennis P. Lettenmaier,Ronald J. Stouffer +5 more
TL;DR: Climate change undermines a basic assumption that historically has facilitated management of water supplies, demands, and risks and threatens to derail efforts to conserve and manage water resources.
Journal ArticleDOI
A review of drought concepts
Ashok K. Mishra,Vijay P. Singh +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors provide a review of fundamental concepts of drought, classification of droughts, drought indices, historical Droughts using paleoclimatic studies, and the relation between DAs and large scale climate indices.
Book
Climate change and water.
TL;DR: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Technical Paper Climate Change and Water draws together and evaluates the information in IPCC Assessment and Special Reports concerning the impacts of climate change on hydrological processes and regimes, and on freshwater resources.
Journal ArticleDOI
Resilience and sustainable development: building adaptive capacity in a world of transformations
TL;DR: The concept of resilience—the capacity to buffer change, learn and develop—is used as a framework for understanding how to sustain and enhance adaptive capacity in a complex world of rapid transformations.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Climate change 2001: the scientific basis
John Theodore Houghton,Y. Ding,David John Griggs,M. Noguer,P. J. van der Linden,X. Dai,K. Maskell,C. A. Johnson +7 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present an overview of the climate system and its dynamics, including observed climate variability and change, the carbon cycle, atmospheric chemistry and greenhouse gases, and their direct and indirect effects.
Book
Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors set the stage for impact, adaptation, and vulnerability assessment of climate change in the context of sustainable development and equity, and developed and applied scenarios in Climate Change Impact, Adaptation, and Vulnerability Assessment.
Journal ArticleDOI
Streamflow trends in the United States
Harry F. Lins,James R. Slack +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors evaluated trends in streamflow for 395 climate-sensitive streamgaging stations in the conterminous United States using the nonparametric Mann-Kendall test.
Journal ArticleDOI
Comparison of radiative and physiological effects of doubled atmospheric CO2 on climate
Piers J. Sellers,Lahouari Bounoua,G. J. Collatz,David A. Randall,D. A. Dazlich,Sietse O. Los,Joseph A. Berry,I. Fung,Compton J. Tucker,Christopher B. Field,Tommy G. Jensen +10 more
TL;DR: In this article, the physiological response of terrestrial vegetation when directly exposed to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) concentration could result in warming over the continents in addition to that due to the conventional CO 2 “greenhouse effect.
Journal ArticleDOI
Simulated impacts of historical land cover changes on global climate in northern winter
Thomas N. Chase,Roger A. Pielke,Timothy G. F. Kittel,Ramakrishna R. Nemani,Steven W. Running +4 more
TL;DR: This ten-year general circulation model experiment compared a simulation where land surface boundary conditions were represented by observed, present day land cover to a simulation with natural, potential land cover conditions as mentioned in this paper.