Региональная оценка климатических рисков с применением ГИС-технологий (на примере Белгородской области)

<p>This presentation is analysing a modern evolution in research and development from specific urban air quality systems to multi-hazard and integrated urban weather, environment and climate systems and services and provides an overview of joint results of large EU FP FUMAPEX, MEGAPOLI, EuMetChem and MarcoPolo projects and international WMO GURME and IUS teams. </p><p>Urban air pollution is still one of the key environmental issues for many cities around the world. A number of recent and previous international studies have been initiated to explore these issues. In particular relevant experience from several European projects will be demonstrated. MEGAPOLI studies aimed to assess the impacts of megacities and large air-pollution hotspots on local, regional and global air quality; to quantify feedback mechanisms linking megacity air quality, local and regional climates, and global climate change; and to develop improved tools for predicting air pollution levels in megacities (doi:10.5194/asr-4-115-2010). FUMAPEX developed for the first time an integrated system encompassing emissions, urban meteorology and population exposure for urban air pollution episode forecasting, the assessment of urban air quality and health effects, and for emergency preparedness issues for urban areas (UAQIFS: Urban Air Quality Forecasting and Information System; doi.org/10.5194/acp-6-2005-2006; doi.org/10.5194/acp-7-855-2007).</p><p>While important advances have been made, new interdisciplinary research studies are needed to increase our understanding of the interactions between emissions, air quality, and regional and global climates. Studies need to address both basic and applied research and bridge the spatial and temporal scales connecting local emissions, air quality and weather with climate and global atmospheric chemistry. WMO has established the Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) Urban Research Meteorology and Environment (GURME) project which provides an important research contribution to the integrated urban services.</p><p>Most of the disasters affecting urban areas are of a hydro-meteorological nature and these have increased due to climate change. Cities are also responsible not only for air pollution emissions, but also for generating up to 70% of GHG emissions that drive large scale climate change. Thus, there is a strong feedback between contributions of cities to environmental health, climate change and the impacts of climate change on cities and these phases of the problem should not be considered separately. There is a critical need to consider the problem in a complex manner with interactions of climate change and disaster risk reduction for urban areas (doi:10.1016/j.atmosenv.2015.11.059, doi.org/10.1016/j.uclim.2017.05.004).</p><p>WMO is promoting safe, healthy and resilient cities through the development of Integrated Urban Weather, Environment and Climate Services (IUS). The aim is to build urban services that meet the special needs of cities through a combination of dense observation networks, high-resolution forecasts, multi-hazard early warning systems, disaster management plans and climate services. This approach gives cities the tools they need to reduce emissions, build thriving and resilient communities and implement the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The Guidance on IUS, developed by a WMO inter-programme working group, documents and shares the good practices that will allow countries and cities to improve the resilience of urban areas to a great variety of natural and other hazards (https://library.wmo.int/doc_num.php?explnum_id=9903).</p>

Cities are at the forefront of the battle against climate change. We are the source of approximately 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions. And as the climate changes, densely populated urban areas—particularly coastal cities—–will disproportionately feel the impacts. Those of us in local government recognize the importance of national and international leadership on climate change. But we are not waiting for others to act first. Under PlaNYC, New York City's comprehensive sustainability plan, most of our efforts have focused on reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. Initiatives including the Greener, Greater Buildings Plan, which will increase energy efficiency of existing buildings, and retrofitting ferries to use cleaner fuel, will help us meet our goal of reducing the city's emissions by 30% by 2030. These actions alone, however, will not stop climate change. We already face climate risks today, including heat waves, blackouts, flooding, and coastal storms. With climate change these risks will only increase. To ensure that New York City is resilient to existing and future climate risks, we must take further action. Through a generous contribution from the Rockefeller Foundation, I convened the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC), which gathered the leading climate change scientists, academics, and insurance, risk management and legal experts. These experts helped develop a framework and tools to assist the City create a risk-based response to climate change that is grounded in state-of-the-art science information. In February 2009, the NPCC released the most detailed climate risk information for any major city in the world; this volume of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences presents the NPCC's full findings. The NPCC climate change projections put numbers to what we already know: climate change is real and could have serious consequences for New York if we do not take action. I appreciate the hard work of the members of the New York City Panel on Climate Change. Through PlaNYC, the City will build on their work as we craft strategies to improve the city's resilience to climate. Building climate resilience can take many forms, including increasing our understanding of climate risks and vulnerabilities, hardening facilities and assets to prevent impacts, educating vulnerable populations about risks, and ensuring that we can quickly resume operations after weather events occur. In the coming months, the New York City Climate Change Adaptation Task Force, another PlaNYC initiative, will release a plan detailing how Task Force members will prepare the city's critical infrastructure for warmer temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, and rising sea levels. Planning for climate change today is less expensive than rebuilding an entire network after a catastrophe. We simply can't wait to plan for the effects of climate change. The NPCC and Rockefeller Foundation's contributions to the City's climate resilience efforts will help ensure that we create a greener, greater New York for future generations. In 2008, Mayor Bloomberg established the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC), with the mandate to provide New York City with the most up-to-date and comprehensive scientific, technical, and socioeconomic information about climate change and its impacts on the city and environs. Climate Change Adaptation in New York City: Building a Risk Management Response is the first report of the NPCC. The report will help New York City develop, adopt, and implement policies to adapt the city's critical infrastructure to the changing climate. This NPCC report outlines a powerful and novel framework for deploying sophisticated tools of risk management to address the city's climate adaptation challenges, and details with rigor and insight the critical challenges that climate change poses to New York City's energy, transportation, water, and communications systems. The report also presents a coordinated set of climate projections prepared by the NPCC to be used by the many public agencies and private-sector organizations that manage critical infrastructure in the region as they develop adaptation strategies, and it describes how legal and regulatory tools can support adaptation policies. The challenges facing the insurance industry and the use of insurance to reduce climate risks are also described at length. A final section sets forth the indicators and monitoring activities needed to inform Flexible Adaptation Pathways as the City and region move forward. The NPCC report is the product of the committed scientists and experts in the New York City region who served as authors, led by Co-chairs Cynthia Rosenzweig and William Solecki. The dedicated Science and Policy Team at the Columbia Earth Institute and the CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities organized the process that has resulted in the production of this landmark report. It is becoming recognized throughout the world that cities have a crucial role to play in responding to climate change. The NPCC 2010 Report puts climate change adaptation in New York City in the broader national and international contexts and helps establish New York City as a thought and policy leader in this urgent endeavor. Climate Change Adaptation in New York City will be widely read around the world, both for its specific insights and also as a roadmap for other cities in preparing plans for climate change adaptation. The work of the NPCC is a pioneering activity for which all New Yorkers, and all others around the world who will benefit, should be most grateful. The Rockefeller Foundation also merits our gratitude for the generous support it has provided to this endeavor. Climate change will have a profound impact on New York City and its residents as it alters environmental baselines on which the urban infrastructure was built. Despite this, both the City and its stakeholders have a wide range of tools and resources with which to respond to the problem. Key insights in the following report derive from the highly integrated connections between science and public policy as they relate to climate change. The New York City Panel on Climate Change, for example, comprises a number of scientists and other technical experts capable of considering the issues at hand with a view to understanding the potential impacts of climate change and options for adaptation. The City University of New York is well placed to contribute to the multifaceted complex questions of climate change and how the city will be affected. This requires a multidisciplinary approach that can draw from the deep resources of the colleges that make up our institution. In addition, the New York City Panel on Climate Change had ongoing, continuous, and fruitful communication with the Mayor's Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability, and the New York City Climate Change Adaptation Task Force. The collaborations brought forward in this document embody the culmination of a first step in a science–policy linkage that will be required to effectively address climate change in New York City. In addition, these collaborations show how great universities in a great city can link together to make a positive difference in the lives of its citizens.

Climate risks, emerging threats to humanity, increase the level of disaster in many ways. A comprehensive understanding of climate risks and their impacts is a pre-requisite for developing suitable adaptation strategies toward sustainable development. This paper assessed the socio-economic vulnerability based on sustainable development goals (SDG) in the state of Tamil Nadu in the context of climate risks to comprehend the links between climate risks and the physical setting of Tamil Nadu, along with its capability to adapt. An indicator-based methodology of vulnerability assessment as per the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was adopted to understand the links between the sensitivity of the state and its ability to cope and adapt. The climate extremities, which cause risks, were determined based on India Meteorological Department (IMD) norms. The indicators which directly or indirectly label specific/integrated goals of SDG were used as sensitivity and adaptive capacity indicators. Data from each district for all identified indicators were collected from authentic sources and categorized into four components: natural, social, economic, and infrastructure. The indicators were analyzed and weights were assigned to the indicators using Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The district-wise vulnerability indices were calculated and categorized as natural vulnerability index (NVI), social vulnerability index (SVI), economic vulnerability index (EVI), infrastructure vulnerability index (IVI), and overall cumulative vulnerability index (CVI). The study revealed the significant contributing indicators of risk and the vulnerable districts of Tamil Nadu. Ariyalur was identified as the most vulnerable district due to its high sensitivity and low adaptive capacity to climate risks. The other top vulnerable districts were Nagapattinam, Ramanathapuram, Thiruvarur, Thiruvallur, Thanjavur, Perambalur, Pudukottai, and Thiruvannamalai. The outcome of the study may be deliberated as an indicator of alarming socio-economic and infrastructural conditions of the districts and may help planners to prioritize their actions toward climate resilience.

<p>The Belgian expertise with respect to climate research is very fragmented and led by both federal (like the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium, hereafter RMI) as well as regional scientific research institutions and universities. Furthermore, both in societal, research as well as policy context there is an increasing need for detailed, quantitative, reliable and consistent climate information and services, in particular linked to the expected climate changes and its impacts in different sectors (e.g. water, agriculture, energy, health, transport).</p><p>To make all this scientific expertise and climate information available in a coordinated and, above all, user-friendly way, a Belgian climate centre or a one-stop shop for climate research and services would fully address the needs. With its long-standing scientific expertise and service provision, RMI plays a crucial role in fulfilling this growing need for climate information and services.</p><p>Hence, RMI has elaborated a proposal on the creation of a Belgian climate centre. For the creation of such centre it is preferable to use existing collaborations from previous or ongoing research and service-provision activities in Belgium, requiring a structural cooperation in which each members’ expertise can be fully deployed. In the context of a previous research project, a large consortium of Belgian research institutions active in regional climate modelling, calculated for the first time a consistent set of high-resolution climate projections and sectoral impacts for Belgium. Nevertheless, it should be emphasized that the number of models used was far too limited to develop reliable information of the future climate. Moreover, this was a one-time project and there is currently an urgent need to update the climate projections to meet the new scientific requirements of the IPCC's new sixth Assessment Report.</p><p>One of the activities of the centre would thus be the coordination of the climate research based on scientific research projects. Furthermore, in order to ensure the continuous development and provision of climate services based on this objective and scientifically based expertise coming from Belgian climate scientists, the climate centre would carry out two main core tasks: (i) the production and storage of climate information and (ii) the support for the development of climate services.</p><p>The financing and implementation of a Belgian climate centre, would provide a structural framework for climate research and services, establishing partnerships with the various regions and communities, at both policy and research levels. In this way, RMI, as national meteorological institute and at the start of the climate services value chain, can guarantee a continuous scientific expertise and respond to the major needs for climate information and services at national and international level.</p>

BackgroundTerrestrial biomes in South America are likely to experience a persistent increase in environmental temperature, possibly combined with moisture reduction due to climate change. In addition, natural fire ignition sources, such as lightning, can become more frequent under climate change scenarios since favourable environmental conditions are likely to occur more often. In this sense, changes in the frequency and magnitude of natural fires can impose novel stressors on different ecosystems according to their adaptation to fires. By focusing on Brazilian biomes, we use an innovative combination of techniques to quantify fire persistence and occurrence patterns over time and evaluate climate risk by considering key fire-related climatic characteristics. Then, we tested four major hypotheses considering the overall characteristics of fire-dependent, fire-independent, and fire-sensitive biomes concerning (1) fire persistence over time; (2) the relationship between climate and fire occurrence; (3) future predictions of climate change and its potential impacts on fire occurrence; and (4) climate risk faced by biomes.MethodsWe performed a Detrended Fluctuation Analysis to test whether fires in Brazilian biomes are persistent over time. We considered four bioclimatic variables whose links to fire frequency and intensity are well-established to assess the relationship between climate and fire occurrence by confronting these climate predictors with a fire occurrence dataset through correlative models. To assess climate risk, we calculated the climate hazard, sensitivity, resilience, and vulnerability of Brazilian biomes, and then we multiplied the Biomes’ vulnerability index by the hazards.ResultsOur results indicate a persistent behaviour of fires in all Brazilian biomes at almost the same rates, which could represent human-induced patterns of fire persistence. We also corroborated our second hypothesis by showing that most fire-dependent biomes presented high thermal suitability to fire, while the fire-independent biome presented intermediate suitability and fire-sensitive biomes are the least suitable for fire occurrence. The third hypothesis was partially corroborated since fire-dependent and independent biomes are likely to increase their thermal suitability to fire, while fire-sensitive biomes are likely to present stable-to-decreasing thermal suitability in the future. Finally, our fourth hypothesis was partially corroborated since most fire-dependent biomes presented low climate risk, while the fire-independent biome presented a high risk and the fire-sensitive biomes presented opposite trends. In summary, while the patterns of fire persistence and fire occurrence over time are more likely to be related to human-induced fires, key drivers of burned areas are likely to be intensified across Brazilian biomes in the future, potentially increasing the magnitude of the fires and harming the biomes’ integrity.

How can the UK road system be adapted to the impacts posed by climate change? By creating a climate adaptation framework

Topics of sustainable urban development and environmental sustainability are worldwide considered as fundamental for every strategy of urban transformation, renewal and regeneration. In particular, urban regenerations are urban re-development programs involving the rebirth or renewal of selected urban areas or district that have faced periods of decline due to compounding and intersecting pressures. The programs cover many aspects of the area to be re-generated such as physical, social and environmental contexts. Re-use of already built up areas and buildings, reduction of the demand for new soils to be developed, increasing of appealing of dense city areas, increasing of social and spatial resilience are among the positive consequences of these programs. However, in the current debate about urban regeneration, few studies have evaluated the real environmental outcomes and effectiveness of regeneration programs in terms of physical variables such as new provided greenspaces, accessibility to public transportation, climate change or seismic risk reduction. This paper proposes a method to quantify the real outcomes and effectiveness of urban regeneration programs with reference to the above mentioned variables. As a real experience of urban planning, the new Local Spatial Plan for the Municipality of Catania, a medium sized city in Southern Italy, is presented. The city is characterised by a high density urban fabric, a general lack of urban greenspaces and high levels of traffic congestion due to a massive use of private transportation. The urban fabric is also very vulnerable to seismic and climate change risks. Among the transformation tools, the new Local spatial plan proposes regeneration actions aimed at the complete regeneration of old and dilapidated areas, not classified as historical heritage and heavily vulnerable to seismic risk. These actions include the complete demolition and reconstruction of these areas within clearly defined boundaries, contributing to minimise soil consumption, maintaining as open public spaces the majority of existing non urbanised areas within the densely built-up settlement. The program of regeneration can dramatically contributes to the reduction of seismic and climate change risk and achieve a general requalification of the urban environment. Starting from this planning experience, this paper focus on the evaluation of the regenerations programs included in the Local Spatial Plan. Regeneration Areas (RAs) have been identified by the municipality as characterized by high level of seismic vulnerability, urban degradation, lack of public services and urban environment quality. For the chosen areas, this study proposes the evaluation of the transformations potentially occurring in the urban context by the proposed regeneration program. The following aspects are evaluated: reduction of risks (in terms of exposition and vulnerability to seismic and climate change related risks) 2 International Scientific Conference GEOBALCANICA 2016 256 mobility (concerning the presence of public means of transports, distance to the transit stops, roads, pedestrian and cycling lanes) accessibility increase (in terms of access to trip attractions) land-use diversity (in terms of number and distribution of different land uses) public spaces and services (in terms of extension and functions) Each of the aforementioned aspects are evaluated by spatial indicators calculated by GIS. All indicators are calculated at different and size increasing units, in order to understand the effect of a single regeneration project and of a number of concurrent projects within the considered geographical units. The geographical units are the RAs and districts. Different combinations of regeneration projects will be thus evaluated to highlight which projects produce the most relevant effects, calculated with the proposed indicators. This will allow the municipality to define scenarios of regeneration priority, in terms of which projects might be financed and implemented firstly because of their higher positive effect on the urban environment. Such scenarios will generate positive effects not only to the single areas to be regenerated but also to wider urban contexts, significantly reducing the urban vulnerability to seismic and climate change risks and at the same time producing more livable and healthy urban environment.

As climate change accelerates and environmental uncertainties mount, traditional models fall short in effectively handling the complexity and fluidity of multi-hazard risk and corresponding resilience measures. Notably, the vast amount of data being collected and the rapid advancements in artificial intelligence offer extraordinary potential. These advancements can equip us to tackle complex climate risks and develop innovative services that empower both government and communities to adapt and thrive. This review aims to bolster research on the transformative potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI), propelled by Machine Learning (ML) and Big Data (BD), to address the escalating challenges posed by climate change across several key areas. On the one hand, it examines AI's capability to process and integrate diverse data sources, such as satellite imagery, monitoring stations, climate models, social data, with varying spatial and temporal resolutions, including the potential of AI tools in identifying and quantifying cascading and interconnected hazard events and potential resilience measures. On the other hand, the review delves into the development of AI-powered climate services designed to manage climate risk and enhance resilience across various sectors. It evaluates the integration of AI techniques in climate services for dynamic, user-centric platforms that offer actionable insights and decision support. The current and future data constraints and emerging opportunities in implementing these services are explored, alongside strategies to overcome these challenges. Additionally, the review considers the scalability and adoption of AI-powered climate services in the future, highlighting the role of AI in revolutionizing the landscape of climate risk assessment and resilience planning. In summary, this comprehensive literature review synthesizes insights from multi-hazard risk assessment and resilience building. It aims to bridge the gap between static risk models and the dynamic reality of climate threats, paving the way for a comprehensive AI-driven framework helping building climate resilience. This research is funded under the European projects MYRIAD-EU (Horizon 2020) and EXPEDITE (Horizon 2021 MSCA).

Increased educational attainment is a sustainable development priority and has been posited to have benefits for other social and environmental issues, including climate change. However, links between education and climate change risks can involve both synergies and trade-offs, and the balance of these effects remains ambiguous. Increases in educational attainment could lead to faster economic growth and therefore higher emissions, more climate change and higher risks. At the same time, improved attainment would be associated with faster fertility decline in many countries, slower population growth and therefore lower emissions, and would also be likely to reduce vulnerability to climate impacts. We employ a multiregion, multisector model of the world economy, driven with country-specific projections of future population by level of education, to test the net effect of education on emissions and on the Human Development Index (HDI), an indicator that correlates with adaptive capacity to climate impacts. We find that improved educational attainment is associated with a modest net increase in emissions but substantial improvement in the HDI values in developing country regions. Avoiding stalled progress in educational attainment and achieving gains at least consistent with historical trends is especially important in reducing future vulnerability. The effect of education on climate change risks is integral to the relation between climate and development, but difficult to quantify. This article finds potential increases in emissions as well as HDI values due to improved educational attainment in developing countries.

Background: The rising concern about climate change and risks associated with it around the world and locally compared to the disproportionate level of awareness in Jos Metropolis inspired this study. Achieving adaptation to climate change always relies on the level of awareness. Hence effort must be made to intensify awareness. Though religious leaders in the study area have significant followership to positively change the tides of climate change awareness, risk perception, adaptation, and action, the opportunity is not harnessed. The study sought to project the role and attitude of religious leaders in Jos Metropolis in the global climate crisis. Methodology: Through a survey of a systematically drawn sample of 293 religious leaders using the Climate Change Survey Questionnaire (CCSQ), data was gathered to answer questions on climate change awareness, climate risk perception, attitude towards climate change, and the role of religious leaders in fighting the climate crisis. The reliability of the CCSQ was computed using the Cronbach Alpha method to be 0.98 after validation by experts in the field of Geography. Findings: Insights from the data suggest that religious leaders have a superficial awareness but lack meaningful awareness of climate change, giving rise to the shrouded perception of climate risks. Further, their attitude towards climate change issues was found to be positive, but not to the extent of neither taking individual measures to reduce climate change nor accepting organized media communications on climate change as factual. The level of awareness, risk perception, and attitude of the subjects under study were sufficient to inspire acceptance of climate change issues for discussions in churches/mosques and inclusion in their strategic plans. Findings also revealed that though nearly all the religious leaders have never taught in church/mosque on the subject of climate change or taken climate action in their immediate communities, the result shows the willingness of religious leaders to accept informed persons/experts to talk to their members on climate change. Recommendations: Considering the necessity of awareness in combating climate change, it is recommended that the government should seek opportunities to deepen awareness among religious leaders which could have a ripple effect on the Nigerian populace. Religious leaders were advised to teach or create platforms to bring awareness of climate change and its risks to their members. Circulation of climate laws and policies to religious leaders and the public is strongly advocated.

The knowledge base to support climate change adaptation is rapidly growing with the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2022 report on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability with over 34,000 citations; nearly three times compared to its predecessor published in 2014. This information is complex, requiring specialist knowledge to interpret the science and further expertise to understand how to act upon the information. The small pool of experts across the world presents a challenge with the need of an ever-growing set of decision-makers who need tailored information.To date, most attention has focused on the use of machine learning for climate science rather than the application of AI technologies to enhance climate services provision. With the advent of public access to large language models and more generally, generative AI technologies, we consider here the opportunities that they bring to solve the problems around delivering climate services but also the implications on the pillars of saliency, credibility and legitimacy.We present the findings from the “Towards AI for Climate Services” workshop held on 22 February 2024 in the UK which aimed to understand if and how AI technologies could help to address existing challenges in the sector. Participants represented academic, public and private providers of climate and AI services. Discussions focused on three aspects: challenges in climate services that AI technologies are addressing, emerging risks with employing AI technologies and pathways to mitigating these risks.We will show that while many of the issues raised are not exclusive to using AI technologies, their rapid development and accessibility suggest that the climate services sector need to urgently engage with the debate

CR Climate Research Contact the journal Facebook Twitter RSS Mailing List Subscribe to our mailing list via Mailchimp HomeLatest VolumeAbout the JournalEditorsSpecials CR 47:83-94 (2011) - DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/cr00950 Contribution to the CR Special: 'Climate services for sustainable development' Provision of climate information for adaptation to climate change Xianfu Lu* United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat, Martin-Luther-King Strasse 8, 53175 Bonn, Germany *Email: xlu@unfccc.int ABSTRACT: Climate data and information is central to understanding the risks of climate change and to planning for adaptive actions to reduce such risks. The multi-scale, multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder nature of climate change impacts, vulnerability and adaptation require effective and sustained collaboration between the providers and users in order to ensure the relevance, practicality and applicability of climate data and information. The Nairobi Work Programme (NWP) on impacts, vulnerability and adaptation to climate change was launched as a mechanism under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to engage stakeholders, facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration, and catalyze targeted actions on adaptation. The NWP has engaged a wide array of stakeholders, providers, users and knowledge intermediaries for climate data and information. Through discussions under the NWP, Parties to the UNFCCC recognized that there is an urgent need to improve the provision and delivery of climate information, particularly in developing countries. Improvement in the availability of and access to high quality observed climate data and climate scenarios, practical guidance for the use of climate information, and the systematic documentation and wide dissemination of good practices in applying climate information to support adaptation are all identified as priority areas of work. These clearly defined priorities, together with synergies among relevant initiatives, represent considerable opportunities to enhance the provision and delivery of climate information and services, particularly within the context of the development and implementation of the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS). KEY WORDS:Climate information · Adaptation · Nairobi Work Programme Full text in pdf format PreviousNextCite this article as: Lu X (2011) Provision of climate information for adaptation to climate change. Clim Res 47:83-94. https://doi.org/10.3354/cr00950 Export citation RSS - Facebook - Tweet - linkedIn Cited by Published in CR Vol. 47, No. 1-2. Online publication date: March 31, 2011 Print ISSN: 0936-577X; Online ISSN: 1616-1572 Copyright © 2011 Inter-Research.

The primary needs for climate services in China, in the form of climate information for decision-making, are to better prepare for and manage meteorological-related disasters, adaptation to climate change, and sustainable development. In this paper, the vision, structure, content, and governance of the China Framework for Climate Services, which is designed to respond to these primary needs, is described. This paper reflects on practice, lessons, and experience developing and delivering climate services in China for disaster risk reduction, agriculture, water, energy, urbanization, and major engineering projects. Four key aspects of successful climate services are highlighted: the transition of climate research to operational climate services; delivering relevant, tailored, and usable climate information; effective engagement between users and providers of climate services; and building interdisciplinary professional teams. Key challenges and opportunities for climate services are recognized in this paper: a growing gap between climate science and services capability and societal need, a lack of awareness in user communities of the climate service value for their activities, and the important need for closer and more meaningful interactions between users and providers of climate services. The delivery and uptake of high-quality, relevant, usable, and effective climate services will facilitate climate-smart decisions that will reduce climate risks and improve Chinese societal resilience.

Climate-related vulnerability indices are increasingly being utilized to enhance the creation of better disaster management strategies and to better understand and anticipate the effects of disasters related to climate change. This study evaluates the climate change vulnerability of the cities in Türkiye through focusing on their exposure, susceptibilities and adaptive capacities to climate change. Data from social, economic and environmental sub-indicators were assessed and most relevant indicators were aggregated with the goal of constructing a composite Climate Change Vulnerability Index (CCVI). The CCVI includes six forms of capital leading to socio-economic and environmental sustainability i.e. social, public utility and transport, economics, land cover, meteorology and atmospheric conditions, and natural disaster capitals, and will be assessed combining each of these forms of capitals and its three dimensions (exposure, susceptibility and adaptive capacity). Stakeholder-driven structured methodology that discovers and ranks context-relevant indicators and sets weights for aggregating indicator scores by using the Best-Worst method (BWM) and stepwise weight assessment ratio analysis (SWARA) method are utilised. The indicators are aggregated through application of the BWM and SWARA weights using a linear aggregation method. From BWM and SWARA, the highest weights were obtained for meteorological conditions and land cover which are more than 0.36 and 0.22, respectively. The lowest weights were assigned to social characteristics and economy both of which were smaller than 0.10. The findings indicated that the cities on the northern, western and southern coasts as well as the cities in south-east region are the most vulnerable to climate change. The construction of CCVI can be used as part of decision-making process to minimize hazards and exposure to risk of climate change for the cities of Türkiye.

Detecting vulnerability of humid tropical forests to multiple stressors