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Over the last half-century, the probability of heat extreme events has changed by orders of magnitude in almost every region of the world, with occurrences that are now up to a hundred times more in respect to a century ago. Of all-natural disasters, extreme high temperature events are the main cause of weather-related mortality and they are also expected to be the main factor responsible for additional deaths due to climate change in the coming years.
In cities, the heat island effect creates higher temperatures than in vegetated areas. But conditions within urban areas are not equal in all their parts - either due to their physical form or to the specific needs or vulnerabilities of inhabitants - therefore not all districts of a city are equally vulnerable to heatwaves. Thus, identifying those areas which are particularly vulnerable to heat stress is particularly important to implement interventions at local level aimed at improving the capacity to cope with the impacts
Oxygen levels in the ancient oceans were surprisingly resilient to climate change, new research suggests.
Scientists used geological samples to estimate ocean oxygen during a period of global warming 56 million years ago - and found limited expansion of seafloor anoxia (absence of oxygen).
Global warming - both past and present - depletes ocean oxygen, but the new study suggests warming of 5°C in the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) led to anoxia covering no more than 2% of the global seafloor.
However, conditions are different today to the PETM - today s rate of carbon emissions is much faster, and we are adding nutrient pollution to the oceans - both of which could drive more rapid and expansive oxygen loss.
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IMAGE: Observed sea surface temperatures in August over the northwestern Pacific Ocean. The white boxes are the region focused on in this new study. The COBE SST2 dataset from JMA-MRI is. view more
Credit: NIES
August 2020 set new record high sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the northwestern Pacific Ocean and around the Japan coasts. A new study led by National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) researchers revealed that this warming record could not happen without human-induced climate changes.
The northwestern Pacific sea surface becomes warm seasonally around August every year. However, it was unprecedentedly high in August 2020, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The extremely high SSTs exceeding 30°C, which lasted until mid-September, may have intensified tropical cyclones such as Typhoon Haisheng, causing severe damages to the East Asian countries. Although human-induced greenhou
Credit: Alexander Forryan
New research has unlocked the mystery of how the Galápagos Islands, a rocky, volcanic outcrop, with only modest rainfall and vegetation, is able to sustain its unique wildlife habitats.
The Galápagos archipelago, rising from the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean some 900 kilometres off the South American mainland, is an iconic and globally significant biological hotspot. The islands are renowned for their unique wealth of endemic species, which inspired Charles Darwin s theory of evolution and today underpins one of the largest UNESCO World Heritage Sites and Marine Reserves on Earth.
Scientists have known for decades that the regional ecosystem is sustained by upwelling of cool, nutrient-rich deep waters, which fuel the growth of the phytoplankton upon which the entire ecosystem thrives.
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IMAGE: Example of BIO34 - Potential Evapotranspiration (PET, mm/y) according to Hargreaves formulation for historical time interval 1960-1999 (left). Ensemble anomaly of the 11 CMIP5 simulations for the future period compared. view more
Credit: Noce, S., Caporaso, L. & Santini, M. A new global dataset of bioclimatic indicators. Sci Data 7, 398 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-020-00726-5
Creative Commons License: CC BY.
Climate change impacts, affecting primarily ecosystems functions and consequently human sectors, have become a crucial topic. Observed and expected variations in climate conditions can in fact undermine the ecosystems ecological equilibrium: average climate patterns, mainly represented by intra-annual (monthly to seasonal) temperature and precipitation cycle, directly influence the distribution, abundance and interactions of biological species.