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Agency climate change adaptation plan 2012
This adaptation plan is an annex to the agency sustainability plan which assesses climate change risks, vulnerabilities, and opportunities for USAID missions, programs, and operations, and it identifies agency-level actions to understand and address climate change vulnerabilities. This plan also highlights: (i) USAID climate change adaptation plan for 2013; (ii) USAID policy framework for climate change adaptation; (iii) agency vulnerability assessment - analysis of climate change risk and pportunities; (iv) infrastructure and support systems (v) health and safety.
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Climate change and agriculture in the United States: effects and adaptation
The report analyses the effects of climate change on U.S. agriculture on the basis of research needs categorized within a vulnerability framework addressing specific actions that would improve understanding of the exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity to: (i) improve projections of future climate conditions, including extreme temperatures, precipitation, and related variables; (ii) evaluate and develop process-level understanding of the sensitivity of plant and animal production systems; and (iii) develop and extend the knowledge, management strategies and tools needed by U.S. agricultur ...
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Flood preparedness in the Netherlands: a US perspective
This report discusses some aspects of Dutch crisis management for flooding and for the recovery period, and gives a description of what the American approach could mean for the Dutch situation. It contains a series of articles in which several aspects of the crisis are addressed: (i) flood response, an introduction; (ii) early warning, forecast, situational assessment and sense making; (iii) self reliance and community involvement in Dutch flood response; (iv) managing the response to large scale floods; (v) vertical evacuation: rethinking urban, rural and social space; (vi) public/private par ...
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Climate Security Report
ASP, 2012One of the most significant challenges to the global security system in the 21st Century will be a changing climate; the effects of these changes are already being felt all over the world. Climate change poses a clear and present danger to the United States through its effects on our global allies as well as its direct effects on our agriculture, infrastructure, economy and public health.
An exploration of the link between development, economic growth, and natural risk
This paper investigates the link between development, economic growth, and the economic losses from natural disasters in a general analytical framework, with an application to hurricane flood risks in New Orleans. It concludes that where capital accumulates through increased density of capital at risk in a given area, and the costs of protection therefore increase more slowly than capital at risk, (i) protection improves over time and the probability of disaster occurrence decreases; (ii) capital at risk -- and thus economic losses in case of disaster -- increases faster than economic growth; ...
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Climate change, water stress, conflict and migration
UNESCO, 2012This collection of papers, presented at the symposium ‘Climate change, water stress, conflict and migration’ held on 21 September 2011 in the Netherlands, highlight how climate change, water stress and other environmental problems threaten human security. For example, the paper by Muniruzzaman ilustrates how water ignores political and community boundaries, and how decisions in one place can significantly affect water use elsewhere. India’s plans to build more dams could, for instance, have devastating affects for Pakistan’s agricultural productivity which is highly dependent on water supply f ...
Climate vulnerability monitor
DARA, 2012The Climate Vulnerability Monitor 2nd Edition reveals that climate change has already held back global development and inaction is a leading global cause of death. Harm is most acute for poor and vulnerable groups but no country is spared either the costs of inaction or the benefits of an alternative path.
Commissioned by the world’s most vulnerable countries and backed by high-level and technical panels, the new Monitor estimates human and economic impacts of climate change and the carbon economy for 184 countries in 2010 and 2030, across 34 indicators.
Building urban resilience to climate change: what works where, and why
This document reports on a resilience-building curriculum that includes laying the groundwork for addressing climate change and climate resilience, conducting a climate change vulnerability and risk assessment, and using this assessment and other materials to prepare an initial resilience strategy, developed in 15 cities in 5 countries — Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Thailand and the United States.
Managing drought risk on the ranch: a planning guide for great plains ranchers
National Drought Mitigation Center ; United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) - University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), 2012This guide is designed to help rangeland managers to better prepare for and manage drought. For ranchers in the United States, drought can be defined as too little soil moisture to meet the needs of dominant forage species during their rapid growth windows. The longer you wait to make decisions, the fewer options you will have available to you and producers who focus on increasing flexibility and maximizing the health of resources are more likely to find solutions during drought that minimize painful decisions with limited resources. Accordingly, having a plan will help producers get through a ...
Sea level rise and the Freely Associated States: addressing environmental migration under the compacts of free association
Dema Briana - Columbia Law School, 2012This paper is concerned with rising sea levels that have the potential to submerge coastal regions and displace millions of people. It reports on how current international legal frameworks applicable to refugees and immigrants will offer little protection to citizens of Freely Associated States (FAS) displaced by rising sea levels. The FAS are sovereign nations (Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Palau) that have negotiated Compacts of Free Association with the United States, under which the U.S. provides the states with certain types of assistance. It addresses how current refugee and immigrat ...
Crisis response and disaster resilience 2030: forging strategic action in an age of uncertainty
This progress report addresses the Strategic Foresight Initiative (SFI), which is a transformative, community-wide effort in the United States to create an enduring foresight capability intended to advance strategic planning and thinking about the future. SFI also seeks to prepare the community for emerging challenges and for the key opportunities presented by the world's changing environment. This report is concerned about a future which is highly uncertain, noting that the complexity of this uncertainty will test the ability of the emergency management community to execute its mission. It is ...
Heat waves and climate change
A report about the current scientific understanding of the connection between climate change and the recent increase in extreme temperatures, as reported in peer-reviewed research articles published through May 2012. Issues addressed: (i) heat waves: the details; and (ii) heat waves and wild fires.
Improving the Assessment of Disaster Risks to Strengthen Financial Resilience: A Special Joint G20
GFDRR, 2012This report – Avoiding Future Famines: Strengthening the Ecological Basis of Food Security through
Sustainable Food Systems - has been a unique collaboration of 12 leading scientists and
experts involved in world food systems including marine and inland fisheries.
The institutions involved include the UN Environment Programme, the International Fund
for Agricultural Development, the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations,
the World Bank, the World Food Programme and the World Resources Institute. The report provides
detai ...
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US Weather Satellites saw tornado swarm coming 5 days out
SAN FRANCISCO — Five days before approximately 200 tornadoes swept through six states in the Southeastern United States between April 25 and April 28, local meteorologists were alerted to the possibility of unusually severe weather by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite data.
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Multi-scale modeling study of the source contributions to near-surface ozone and sulfur oxides levels over California during the ARCTAS-CARB period
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP), Vol. 11. N° 7. Huang M.; Carmichael Gregory R.; Spak S.N.; et al. - Copernicus GmbH, 2011Chronic high surface ozone (O3) levels and the increasing sulfur oxides (SOx = SO2+SO4) ambient concentrations over South Coast (SC) and other areas of California (CA) are affected by both local emissions and long-range transport. In this paper, multi-scale tracer, full-chemistry and adjoint simulations using the STEM atmospheric chemistry model are conducted to assess the contribution of local emission sourcesto SC O3 and to evaluate the impacts of transported sulfur and local emissions on the SC sulfur budgetduring the ARCTAS-CARB experiment period in 2008. Sensitivity simulations quantify c ...
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Evaluation of urban surface parameterizations in the WRF model using measurements during the Texas Air Quality Study 2006 field campaign
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP), Vol. 11. N° 5. Lee S.-H.; Kim S.-W.; Angevine W.M.; et al. - Copernicus GmbH, 2011The performance of different urban surface parameterizations in the WRF (Weather Research and Forecasting) in simulating urban boundary layer (UBL) was investigated using extensive measurements during the Texas Air Quality Study 2006 field campaign. The extensive field measurements collected on surface (meteorological, wind profiler, energy balance flux) sites, a research aircraft, and a research vessel characterized 3-dimensional atmospheric boundary layer structures over the Houston-Galveston Bay area, providing a unique opportunity for the evaluation of the physical parameterizations. The m ...
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Ozone production in remote oceanic and industrial areas derived from ship based measurements of peroxy radicals during TexAQS 2006
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP), Vol. 11. N° 3. Sommariva R.; Brown S.S.; Roberts J.M.; et al. - Copernicus GmbH, 2011During the Texas Air Quality Study II (TexAQS 2006) campaign, a PEroxy Radical Chemical Amplifier (PERCA) was deployed on the NOAA research vessel R/V Brown to measure total peroxy radicals (HO2+Σ RO2). Day-time mixing ratios of HO2+Σ RO2 between 25 and 110 ppt were observed throughout the study area – the Houston/Galveston region and the Gulf coast of the US – and analyzed in relation to measurements of nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds (VOC) and photolysis rates to assess radical sources and sinks in the region.
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HFC-152a and HFC-134a emission estimates and characterization of CFCs, CFC replacements, and other halogenated solvents measured during the 2008 ARCTAS campaign (CARB phase) over the South Coast Air Basin of California
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP), Vol. 11. N° 3. Barletta B.; Nissenson P.; Meinardi S.; et al. - Copernicus GmbH, 2011This work presents results from the NASA Arctic Research of the Composition of the Troposphere from Aircraft and Satellites (ARCTAS) study. Whole air samples were obtained on board research flights that flew over California during June 2008 and analyzed for selected volatile organic compounds, including several halogenated species. Samples collected over the South Coast Air Basin of California (SoCAB), which includes much of Los Angeles (LA) County, were compared with samples from inflow air masses over the Pacific Ocean. The levels of many halocarbon species were enhanced significantly over t ...
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Investigations of aerosol impacts on hurricanes: virtual seeding flights
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP), Vol. 11. N° 3. Carrio G.G.; Cotton William R. - Copernicus GmbH, 2011This paper examines the feasibility of mitigating the intensity of hurricanes by enhancing the CCN concentrations in the outer rainband region. Increasing CCN concentrations would cause a reduced collision and coalescence, resulting in more supercooled liquid water to be transported aloft which then freezes and enhances convection via enhanced latent heat of freezing. The intensified convection would condense more water ultimately enhancing precipitation in the outer rainbands. Enhanced evaporative cooling from the increased precipitation in the outer rainbands would produce stronger and more ...
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IWR Report, 2011-R-08. Flood risk management approaches : as being practiced in Japan, Netherlands, United Kingdom and United States
The Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT), the Dutch Rijkswaterstaat, the United Kingdom Environment Agency, and the United States Army Corps of Engineers agreed in 2009 to develop a document to explore risk-informed approaches as being practiced and developed primarily in those four countries. This document, the result of that collaboration, reflects contributions from agencies within the four participating nations but is not an official position of any government or international organization. It is organized around a conceptual framework developed to encomp ...
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Climate: observations, projections and impacts
The Met.Office, 2011Understanding the potential impacts of climate change is essential for informing both adaptation strategies and actions to avoid dangerous levels of climate change.
But assessing the impacts is scientifically challenging and has, until now, been fragmented. To date, only a limited amount of information about past climate change and its future impacts has been available at national level, while approaches to the science itself have varied between countries.
In April 2011, we were asked by the United Kingdom's Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change to begi ...
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White Paper | Science and Impacts Program. Extreme Weather and Climate Change : understanding the Link, Managing the Risk
Typically, climate change is described in terms of average changes in temperature or precipitation, but most of the social and economic costs associated with climate change will result from shifts in the frequency and severity of extreme events.[1] This fact is illustrated by a large number of costly weather disasters in 2010, which tied 2005 as the warmest year globally since 1880.[2] Incidentally, both years were noted for exceptionally damaging weather events, such as Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the deadly Russian heat wave in 2010. Other remarkable events of 2010 include Pakistan’s bigge ...
15th Biennial Report on Great Lakes Water Quality
The focus of this report is the nearshore zone, the vital ecological link between watersheds, tributaries, wetlands, groundwater, and offshore waters of the Great Lakes. Most people live in the nearshore and get their drinking water from this zone. The nearshore also supports critical habitat for fish, invertebrate and wildlife populations. Beach losings, nuisance algal growth, the establishment of alien invasive species, and habitat loss are just some of the troublesome developments in the nearshore that act as harbingers of future changes in offshore waters. A revised Agreement should be ...
National Security Implications of Climate Change for U.S. Naval Forces
In response to the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), the National Research Council appointed a committee operating under the auspices of the Naval Studies Board to study the national security implications of climate change for U.S. naval forces. In conducting his study, the committee found that even the most moderate current trends in climate, if continued, will present new national security challenges for the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. While the timing, degree, and consequences of future climate change impacts remain uncertain, many changes are already underway in regions around ...
15e Rapport biennal sur la qualité de l'eau dans les Grands Lacs
Dans son 15e Rapport biennal sur la qualité de l'eau dans les Grands Lacs, la Commission formule 32 recommandations d'actions à mettre en ouvre par les autorités fédérales, étatiques, provinciales et locales. Les recommandations soulignent, en particulier, le besoin pour les États-Unis et le Canada d'approuver une version réviséé de l'Accord relatif à la qualité de l'eau dans les Grands Lacs qui traite des menaces pouvant peser sur la qualité de l'eau, afin d'en prévenir ou d'en réduire l'impact sur la santé humaine et la santé écologique.
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