October 13, 2016

Regional and Environmental Impacts in a Changing Climate

Convener:
Cristina Sabbioni, Istituto di Scienze dell’Atmosfera e del Clima (ISAC), Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Bologna

Research has been able to link observed changes in global and regional climate to changes in external forcing of the climate system and to climate variability. Key aspects of regional climate variability and trends are, among others, the amplification of surface warming trends with elevation, the modulation of temperature trends by tropical sea surface temperature, the impact of aerosol particles on atmospheric circulation in the monsoon-dominated regions or in the glacier dynamics. On the other hand, climate variations affect every aspect of our society through, for example, changes in the various components of the hydrological cycle from evaporation to precipitation to runoff and subsurface processes, leading to impacts on water accessibility and storage, energy and food production, agriculture, air quality and human health and others. Climate projections from the state-of-the-art global and regional climate models suggest that these variations may become more prominent in the future leading to non-negligible impacts on ecosystems and their services and, ultimately, on the society as a whole.

This session aims at gathering studies on the environmental impacts of climate change and climate variability.

The contributions will be focus on various aspects of the multifaceted interactions between climate change and their impacts, including basic research studies, data measurements, modeling studies, past, present, and future climate conditions, downscaling methods, impact models.