Effects of nuclear chimney on climate

In this paper, according to the data from several single nuclear explosion experiments of an equivalent to magnitude of million tons, and combined with meteorological data, their effects on the regional climate nave been analysed.     

Agricultural adaptation to climate change in China

ＩｎｔｒｏｄｕｃｔｉｏｎＡｄａｐｔａｔｉｏｎｒｅｆｅｒｓｔｏｅｆｆｏｒｔｓｔｏｒｅｄｕｃｅｓｙｓｔｅｍ’ｓｖｕｌｎｅｒａｂｉｌｉｔｉｅｓｔｏｃｌｉｍａｔｅ.Ａｍｏｎｇｔｈｅｍｏｓｔｆｒｅｑｕｅｎｔｌｙｃｉｔｅｄｈｕｍａｎｓｙｓｔｅｍｓｌｉｋｅｌｙｔｏｂｅａｆｆｅｃｔｅｄｂｙｃｌｉｍａｔｉｃｃｈａｎｇｅｉｓａｇｒｉｃｕｌｔｕｒｅ.Ｉｔｉｓｅｓｐｅｃｉａｌｌｙｓｅｎｓｉｔｉｖｅｔｏｔｈｅｃｏｎｓｅｑｕｅｎｃｅｓｏｆｇｌｏｂａｌｗａｒｍｉｎｇａｓｉｔｒｅｌｉｅｓｈｅａｖｉｌｙｏｎｔｈｅｗｅａｔｈｅｒａｎ…     

Correction to: Assessing local climate vulnerability and winegrowers’ adaptive processes in the context of climate change

Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change - Section 3.4.2: Reference “Nicholas and Durham 2012” should have been cited in the last sentence. That is “Using a list of...     

The role of atmospheric aerosol composition in climate change

The chemical composition of atmospheric aerosols has been investigated. Contributions ofsulfate and soot in aerosols to the atmospheric extinction are studied. Discussions are made on the problems of aerosol emitted from volcano, forest fires in northern China, 1987 and oil field fires in Kuwait, 1991. It is indicated that the changes in concentration, particle size, and chemical composition of aerosol after those events could have impacts on the climate change either regionally or globally and that the impact of aerosol particles on climate change could compensate for some temperature increase caused by greenhouse gases and the increase of surface intensity of ultraviolet radiation due to ozone layer depletion.     

The global climate change and forest prediction in China

ＴｈｅｇｌｏｂａｌｃｌｉｍａｔｅｃｈａｎｇｅａｎｄｆｏｒｅｓｔｐｒｅｄｉｃｔｉｏｎｉｎＣｈｉｎａＪｉａｎｇＹｏｕｘｕＦｏｒｅｓｔｒｙＩｎｓｔｉｔｕｔｅ，ＣｈｉｎｅｓｅＡｃａｄｅｍｙｏｆＦｏｒｅｓｔｒｙ，Ｂｅｉｊｉｎｇ１０００９１，ＣｈｉｎａＴｈｅｇｌ...     

Simulating sensitivities of Changbai Mountain forests to potential climate change

ＳｉｍｕｌａｔｉｎｇｓｅｎｓｉｔｉｖｉｔｉｅｓｏｆＣｈａｎｇｂａｉＭｏｕｎｔａｉｎｆｏｒｅｓｔｓｔｏｐｏｔｅｎｔｉａｌｃｌｉｍａｔｅｃｈａｎｇｅ￥ＹａｎＸｉａｏｄｏｎｇ；ＺｈａｏＳｈｉｄｏｎｇ（ＩｎｓｔｉｔｕｔｅｏｆＡｐｐｌｉｅｄＥｃｏｌｏｇｙ．Ｃｈ...     

Impact assessment of climate policy on Poland's power sector

This article addresses the impact of the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) on Poland’s conventional energy sector in 2008–2020 and further till 2050. Poland is a country with over 80% dependence on coal in the power sector being under political pressure of the European Union’s (EU) ambitious climate policy. The impact of the increase of the European Emission Allowance (EUA) price on fossil fuel power sector has been modelled for different scenarios. The innovation of this article consists in proposing a methodology of estimation actual costs and benefits of power stations in a country with a heavily coal-dependent power sector in the process of transition to a low-carbon economy. Strong political and economic interdependence of coal and power sector has been demonstrated as well as the impact caused by the EU ETS participation in different technology groups of power plants. It has been shown that gas-fuelled combined heat and power units are less vulnerable to the EU ETS-related costs, whereas the hard coal-fired plants may lose their profitability soon after 2020. Lignite power plants, despite their high emissivity, may longer remain in operation owing to low operational costs. Additionally, the results of long-term, up to 2050, modelling of Poland’s energy sector supported an unavoidable need of deep decarbonisation of the power sector to meet the post-Paris climate objectives. It has been concluded that investing in coal-based power capacity may lead to a carbon lock-in of the power sector. Finally, the overall costs of such a transformation have been discussed and confronted with the financial support offered by the EU. The whole consideration has been made in a wide context of changes ongoing globally in energy markets and compared with some other countries seeking transformation paths from coal. Poland’s case can serve as a lesson for all countries trying to reduce coal dependence in power generation. Reforms in the energy sector shall from the very beginning be an essential part of a sustainable transition of the whole nation’s economy. They must scale the power capacity to the future demand avoiding stranded costs. The reforms must be wide-ranging, based on a wide political consensus and not biased against the coal sector. Future energy mix and corresponding technologies shall be carefully designed, matched and should remain stable in the long-term perspective. Coal-based power capacity being near the end of its lifetime provides an economically viable option to commence a fuel switch and the following technology replacement. Real benefits and costs of the energy transition shall be fairly allocated to all stakeholders and communicated to the society. The social costs and implications in coal-dependent regions may be high, especially in the short-term perspective, but then the transformation will bring profits to the whole society.     

Simulating global soil-CO2 flux and its response to climate change

It has been argued that increased soil respiration would become a major atmospheric source of CO2 in the event of global warming. The simple statistical models were developed based on a georeferenced database with 0.5° × 0.5° longitude/latitude resolution to simulate global soil-CO2 fluxes, to investigate climatic effects on these fluxes using sensitivity experiments, and to assess possible responses of soil-CO2 fluxes to various climate change scenarios. The statistical models yield a value of 69 PgC/a of global soil CO2 fluxes for current condition. Sensitivity experiments confirm that the fluxes are responsive to changes in temperature,precipitation and actual evapotranspiration, but increases in temperature and actual evapotranspiration affect soil-CO2 fluxes more than increases in precipitation. Using climatic change projections from four global circulation models, each corresponding to an equilibrium doubling of CO2, it can be found that the largest increases in soil-CO2 fluxes were associated with the boreal and tundra regions. The globally averaged soil-CO2 fluxes were estimated to increase by about 35 ％ above current values, providing a positive feedback to the greenhouse effect.     

Constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment in cold climate — A review

Constructed wetlands (CWs) have been successfully used for treating various wastewaters for decades and have been identified as a sustainable wastewater management option worldwide. However, the application of CW for wastewater treatment in frigid climate presents special challenges. Wetland treatment of wastewater relies largely on biological processes, and reliable treatment is often a function of climate conditions. To date, the rate of adoption of wetland technology for wastewater treatment in cold regions has been slow and there are relatively few published reports on CW applications in cold climate. This paper therefore highlights the practice and applications of treatment wetlands in cold climate. A comprehensive review of the effectiveness of contaminant removal in different wetland systems including: (1) free water surface (FWS) CWs; (2) subsurface flow (SSF) CWs;and (3) hybrid wetland systems, is presented. The emphasis of this review is also placed on the influence of cold weather conditions on the removal efficacies of different contami-nants. The strategies of wetland design and operation for performance intensification, such as the presence of plant, operational mode, effluent recirculation, artificial aeration and in-series design, which are crucial to achieve the sustainable treatment performance in cold climate, are also discussed. This study is conducive to further research for the understanding of CW design and treatment performance in cold climate.     

Advancing the climate regime through linking domestic emission trading systems?

More and more countries are incorporating the instrument of emissions trading into their national climate policies. This emerging mosaic of emissions trading schemes (ETS) raises the question of whether they should be linked with each other. From an economic point of view, linking of domestic schemes is supposed to increase the economic efficiency of carbon markets. In addition, linking is also expected by some to yield substantial political benefits in terms of the evolution of the UNFCCC/Kyoto regime. However, these optimistic prospects are based on a best-case scenario where all major countries establish environmentally effective emissions trading systems and then link them with each other. Real-life politics might develop rather differently. This paper therefore examines to what extent the current status of emissions trading in industrialised countries provides a basis for reinforcing and moving forward the international climate regime through linking domestic ETS. After comparing emerging emissions trading schemes from an institutional perspective, it emerges that not only emissions trading is at a very early stage in most countries, in addition the emerging systems are probably going to be designed very differently from the EU ETS. While for some design features such as the coverage design differences do not matter, there are some areas where the plans in many non-EU countries look crucially different from the EU system. The outlook for a linked international ETS is therefore currently still very uncertain. Given this state of affairs, the EU should pro-actively engage with the non-EU countries to try to harmonise their developing national emissions trading schemes with the EU ETS, widely disseminate the lessons it has learned from the EU ETS, strongly make the case for environmental integrity and at the same time make clear that systems that want to link to the EU ETS will need to meet certain quality criteria.

Can strategic technology development improve climate cooperation? A game-theoretic analysis

Clean technology has figured prominently in recent debates on international climate policy. This article offers a game-theoretic investigation of the possibility and effectiveness of strategic technology development: environmental leaders setting policies that reduce the global cost of clean technology. The game-theoretic model combines technology development and adoption with pollution abatement, and it allows technology costs to differ across countries. The key theoretical findings are as follows. First, free riding is an obstacle to technology development in two ways: countries fail to fully internalize the beneficial effect of technology development on (i) global pollution abatement and (ii) the reduced cost of technology adoption in outsider countries. Second, strategic technology development can be effective when (i) a key group of frontrunner countries prefers to invest in research and development and (ii) many other countries are willing to adopt the new technology. The findings suggest that strategic technology deployment by a group of frontrunners can enable more effective climate cooperation in the future.     

Balancing China’s climate damage risk against emission control costs

In this study, we incorporate a three-reservoir climate module into our energy-economy-environmental integrated (3E-integrated) system model, in order to estimate the effect of China’s contribution of unilateral emissions on global warming and to weigh the macro-mitigation cost against the risk of damage, and we also explore the role of adaptation in reducing climate change risk. Our results suggest that China’s unilateral emission-control action plays a relatively limited role in mitigating global warming and is not particularly cost-effective, given that the macro-reduction cost is much larger than the benefit in the corresponding climate damage mitigation. Adaptation plays a large role in curbing China’s climate damages and improving the economics of China’s unilateral emission-control actions, and it is little affected by the introduction and option mitigation strategies. To prevent global warming from exceeding critical thresholds, more international collaborations and cooperative efforts are therefore anxiously needed; as for China, bolstering a low-carbon economy and installing an effective mechanism for improving the adaptation level are two feasible options for controlling climate damage risks, given the great uncertainty on the present situation of international cooperation mitigation.     

Disclosure of climate risk information by the world’s largest companies

The risks related to global climate change are seen as threats to companies, taking into consideration their impact on the return on investment. In order to mitigate climate risk and introduce new opportunities to financiers, companies need to identify, manage, and report climate risks. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the climate risks disclosed by the 100 largest companies in the world, according to the Bloomberg and Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC 2015) classification, and identify some characteristics of these companies that explain the disclosure level of such information. Preliminary results revealed that of the companies investigated, 14% did not disclose any climate risk information in the Carbon Disclosure Program (CDP) report. Also, from the companies that disclosed information according to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), 9.9% did not provide information regarding policies, actions, and strategies for mitigating the risks related to climate change. The results shown by the content analysis suggested that, in general, there is still a low level of disclosure about climate risks by these companies. The final results through econometric instruments and statistical tests indicate that the size of the company or the fact that corporations are from developed countries do not necessarily explain the level of information disclosed. However, the activity sector, the continent, and the efficiency of the Board of Directors are factors that strongly explain the level of climate risk disclosure. We conclude that more effort is needed to encourage an engaging attitude from corporations to develop actions, policies, and strategies to mitigate climate change risks and threats. In addition, the world’s largest companies should make a greater investment in climate risk disclosure.     

regionalclimate Characteristics of regional climate change and pattern analysis on Ordos Plateau

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Impacts of climate change on wheat development and production in the northern China

In this paper, impacts of climate change on wheat development rate and production in the northern China are discussed. The results show that the temperature is a controlling factor of development rate but the precipitation is not. The higher the temperature is. the faster the development and the shorter development period will be. Without consideration to varieties and cropping system, meteorological yield of winter wheat would decrease 170.40, 134.25, 98.70 and 97.20 kg/hm2 in the north China and 13.97, 7.95, 39.60 and 19.80 kg/hm2 in the northwest China compared with that in 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, respectively, when the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is doubled. In drought and semi-drought regions, the spring wheat yield would drop with the temperature rise in and raise with the precipitation increase. The influence of temperature on weight of leaf and stalk is also remarkable.     

Relationship between structure and aboveground biomass of typical steppe and climate in Inner Mongolia

Typical steppe in Inner Mongolia belongs to a part of Central Asia sub-region in Eurasian temperate steppe region. In climate distinct wet and dry season, coherence of water and heat result in single peak type of seasonal dynamic of steppe biomass. Community biomass has linear regressional equation with community height, its correlation coefficient (R) is 0.959***. Growth rate of biomass in June, July and August is usually at 1.5-3.0 g/m2. d-1. Community standing dead occurs in June and equates green living biomass by mid-September. Community biomass is only standing dead biomass in the mid-October. Biomass, green production and standing dead have linear regressional relation with days of plant growing, their correlation coefficient (R) are 0.9919***, 0.9878*** and 0.9923***, respectively. Yearly dynamic of typical steppe biomass is variable, the maximum value is 2.4 times as much as the minimum. The peak biomass of Stipa grandis steppe was 87g/m2 in dry 1980 and 210g/m2 in rainy 1981, and their height     

Indicators for assessing Indonesia’s Javan rhino National Park vulnerability to climate change

Climate change is already affecting ecosystems in protected forest areas. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has predicted its impacts will accelerate rapidly over the coming decades. The components of vulnerability have been defined as exposure, sensitivity and the capacity to adapt to climate change. Vulnerability, however, is not an easy concept for policy makers, local communities and other affected stakeholders to understand. This paper illustrates the use of participatory processes in understanding climate change adaptation and defines indicators for assessing the vulnerability of the Javan rhino's national park habitat in Indonesia. The processes generated local vulnerability indicators, organised hierarchically as principles, criteria and indicators (PCIs). While vulnerability principles and criteria were pre-determined and globally defined, the indicators were designed to address the local context. We found the PCIs to be practical tools for communicating vulnerability and for multi-stakeholder dialogues on vulnerability to climate change.