Agnese and her blog

"The weather is becoming increasingly more extreme. " But how are we sure about it?  And how are we sure this is directly connected to anthropogenic influence on climate change? In the last 40 years, the number of extreme weather events has been constantly increasing with further growth predictions in the next decades. It has always been difficult to classify these events between weather anomalies or actual climate change induced hazards. However, scientist almost unanimously agree that human induced climate change exists and it's happening right now. Based on this assumption, we are able to study and analyse the boundary conditions of different climates in order to predict the likelihood of extreme weather events as well as identifying which human activities influence it the most. On this matter, attribution science has become very popular in the recent years: by being able to correctly identify and classify a weather event and its root causes, we will be able as well t...

The link between climate change and extreme environmental hazards is still a debated topic. Models have increasingly improved in the last few years and they were able to confirm a connection between the intensity and frequency of such weather events, however there is still no strong enough scientific proof of the independent causality link between the two. This to say, that what science has been able to prove so far is that extreme weather events are naturally occurring on Earth, however climate change is exacerbating their effects, which result in social, economical and ecological implications. With such models based on real life data, it is now possible at least to create a pattern in their occurrence which helps to predict when and where they will manifest as well as their destructive intensity. This research has turned into recent years as well into a science: extreme event attribution. Environmental hazards have also been seen to be implicated into regional politics, such as in th...

19th November 2022 Xander Steijlen, 28 years old, from the Netherlands   What do you remember about past extreme weather events or changing weather patterns that have affected our community?   Personally, not much as I've grown up in the NL which is not such an affected region by extreme events oppositely to how could be for example the tropics. I remember my parents talking about the 1954 water disaster in the province of Zeeland, where the sea came in through the tides and destroyed public and private infrastructure. After this event, the country adapted its governmental policies to create regulations on sea level rise, investing a lot of tax moneys into improving dams, reinforcing dikes and dunes,  flattening river bottoms. Overall, the country took a mindshift change towards a higher climate change sensitivity. Nowadays, the effect of climate change on SLR has not affected the NL yet harshly, however, if it's not seen it does not mean the government is ...

Given the rapidly evolving effects of climate change and its consequences on the rising sea level, it is imperative that researchers and governments start to put a focus on adaptation policies for coastal infrastructure. This because of the heavy risks on the environment caused mostly by flooding and erosion which could lead for example to oil, LNG spills or damages to nuclear powers. Considering as well that energy infrastructure has long life designs, policy makers must be able to predict the short-medium-long term effects of any environmental change affecting it. To this regard, the UK is registered to have three times more coastal energy facilities than any other country. This might as well be the reason for the detailed research led by the university of Liverpool, which developed an interactive map portraying the coastal flood risks in the country drawing diversified data from different case studies. The viewer includes as well future scenarios topologically portrayed according to...

The IPPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate Summary for Policy Makers is divided into three sections to simplify the scientific research on the matter and allow a straightforward and factual understanding for policy makers' adaptation and mitigation strategies. The paper is divided into three categories: Observed changes and Impacts, Projected Changes and Risks and Implementing responses to ocean and cryosphere change, with a specific focus on physical changes themselves, the impacts on ecosystems and finally the impacts on people and its services.   Researchers have high confidence in the impact of climate change on the cryosphere and the ocean: glaciers melting and reduction of Arctic sea ice, increase in the permafrost temperature as well as in the global mean sea level (GMSL) and in the sea surface temperature, all registered with an increasing frequency in the last 50 years. The consequences of these events include ocean acidification, increase i...

Global warming will be the major cause of increasing sea level and hurricanes frequency in the next decades. In order to predict the consequences of these extreme events in the next century and as well to analyse the anthropogenic variable in today's events, researchers are analysing the subject scenarios, if either today or in the future, as if occurring in 1900 under the climate conditions of the time.  In such simulation, the SLR (sea level rise) including wetland loss is found to be the main cause of enhanced destruction from a hurricane, resulting in more intensified floods, surges, inland waves and possibly hydrodynamic loading on the levees which increase the vulnerability index of the area (Irish 2014). When reading an article written by the  Parliamentary Office of Science & Technology specifically directed at the policy makers, the implications predicted are in line with the previous study: " Local sea levels are highest during extreme events,...

The climate, also defined as " the regular pattern of weather conditions of a particular place" (Oxford Dictionary),  has been identified through peer-reviewed and corroborated research to have warmed about 1 degree C since the pre-industrial era as a result of not only natural but as well anthropogenic causes. This change in Earth's average temperature, aka global warming, has been registered to have a significant impact on several aspects of Earth's natural composition, one very important is the Sea.  Organisms in the ocean are highly responsive to temperature as it affects their natural physiological and phenological cycle: each species has a specific range of temperature in which they tend to experience a stronger somatic growth, reproductive conditions and finally simple survival. When global warming is inserted in the picture, these niches of survival are put into question. The only way for organisms to survive this event is for them to develop some sort of ther...

The weather can be defined as the end product of the interaction among atmosphere, ocean, biosphere, land surface and cryosphere exchanging mass, momentum and energy. These interchanges oscillate in a somewhat regular fluctuation, also called climate variability, individually known as mode or oscillation. Research was able to point out several of these phenomenon, for example El Nino (ENSO) which we already analysed in some previous articles. However, many questions still remain under inquiry: to which extent are these events affected by the changing climate? And what are is the predictability, if any, for the future appearances ? The focus of this piece will be on the investigation of the Southern Annular Mode (or Antarctic Oscillation). This mode indicates "the (non-seasonal) north-south movement of the strong westerly winds that blow almost continuously in the mid- to high-latitudes of the southern hemisphere" (Commonwealth of Australia 2019) resulting in storms and rainf...

Ocean circulation has always been thought to be driven by two main factors: the winds moving the sea  surface creating gyres and the deep ocean being moved by thermohaline, thus the icing of cold water in the poles resulting in salification and change in seawater density.  It has now been corroborated instead, that most of the circulation in the ocean is driven by winds and tides which put the cold surface water in motion towards warmer climates where its density makes it sink. During the LGM (Last Glacial Maxim um) deep sea water is known to have been very static as the water has been found very old in relation to the atmosphere since the poorly ventilated deep ocean experienced carbon sequestration from the terrestrial atmosphere. However,  at the same time, the winter winds were blowing much stronger than now because of the thermal difference between atmosphere and hemisphere which is commonly acknowledged in the winter periods. How can deep sea water be so stable wi...

The ocean currents are vital for the environment as they bring to the surface and around the globe nutrients for microorganisms creating the sea food chain. Moreover, the movement of the warm water towards the poles plays a vital role in the regulation of the climate. There is several sources for the movements of the water in the seas: winds on the ocean surface arising from changes in air pressure, tides caused by gravity impacting the beaches, rotation of the earth which affects the global directions of the currents and changes in water density which cause the vertical loop called thermohaline effect. However, two major groups can be identified: the superficial one with the winds blowing impacting the changes of surface currents and tides, and deep ocean currents, mostly affected by the thermohaline (thermo = temperature, haline = salt) effect which moves warmer water towards the surface and colder water to the bottom. Currents are also impacted by the air pressure of the planet, whi...

In the picture, my little hometown Ledro, which has been living since centuries in perfect symbiosis between nature and humans, accepting all the many gifts which mother nature has given us, from animals, cristal water, fruits and vegetables and finally fresh air, always allowing nature to continuously donate Climate change is regarded as the long-term modifications of climate patterns cause both by natural and anthropogenic causes. The natural development of this phenomenon has been increasingly escalated since pre-industrial era particularly by human intervention, which summarizes into the increment of greenhouse gases emissions into the atmosphere as a result of creating energy, farming for food, transportation of goods, building constructions and industry production. As a result of this event, humans had to find a way to adapt into this ever changing environment as well as preventively mitigate the negative effects of such shifts onto the planet. Surprisingly so, there have been se...

A great example of successful resilience to change is indigenous people: most of indigenous populations present nowadays have endured several challenges, from socio-economic-political ones to ecological ones such as climate warming. Those communities which survived and thrives until now demonstrated to have an undeniable and particularly keen sense of adaptation and resilience. From this, we might be able to extract a key learning or two to adopt in the global fight against climate change.  The main concept shared by academics on the topic of resilience by indigenous people is the notion of community: community assigns to each individual present into them a specific role and task, it allows the development of mutual connections and inspiration to strive to a common goal without losing the respect for the plurality of all. At the same time, giving a specific purpose to people allow them to relinquish the usual every day "developed society worries" as the focus becomes only...

In order to tackle climate change, we should review its effects with a dualistic approach both from a more scientific and as well a human-centric perspective. The former analyses more in depth the ecological consequences that changes in climate variables, such as temperature, precipitations etc would have in different forecasted scenarios in a rational logic of cause-effect. The latter considers more in depth the involvement into the warming of the climate as well the socio-economic-political aspects which affect different regions in the world in different ways. By doing so, we come also to the matter of equitability: can we approach climate change policies in a more equitable way? And how would this then benefit the whole globe? How do we convince policy makers of the advantages in sustaining such policies? Today's globalization and global supply chains impact both positively and negatively all regions in the world in a two way stream. Today's situation is an example, we might...