Climate Change and Variability

Suzanne Simard

• Publisher: IntechOpen
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9789533071442
• eBook ISBN: 9789535145462
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Environmental Management
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Climate change is emerging as one of the most important issues of our time, with the potential to cause profound cascading effects on ecosystems and society. However, these effects are poorly understood and our projections for climate change trends and effects have thus far proven to be inaccurate. In this collection of 24 chapters, we present a cross-section of some of the most challenging issues related to oceans, lakes, forests, and agricultural systems under a changing climate. The authors present evidence for changes and variability in climatic and atmospheric conditions, investigate some the impacts that climate change is having on the Earth's ecological and social systems, and provide novel ideas, advances and applications for mitigation and adaptation of our socio-ecological systems to climate change. Difficult questions are asked. What have been some of the impacts of climate change on our natural and managed ecosystems? How do we manage for resilient socio-ecological systems? How do we predict the future? What are relevant climatic change and management scenarios? How can we shape management regimes to increase our adaptive capacity to climate change? These themes are visited across broad spatial and temporal scales, touch on important and relevant ecological patterns and processes, and represent broad geographic regions, from the tropics, to temperate and boreal regions, to the Arctic.

Table of contents

• Climate Change and Variability
• Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1 A regional approach to the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age
• Chapter 2 Multi-months cycles observed in climatic data
• Chapter 3 Summer-Time Rainfall Variability in the Tropical Atlantic
• Chapter 4 Tropical cyclones, oceanic circulation and climate
• Chapter 5 Possible impacts of global warming on typhoon activity in the vicinity of Taiwan
• Chapter 6 Influence of climate variability on reactive nitrogen deposition in temperate and Arctic climate
• Chapter 7 Climate change: impacts on fisheries and aquaculture
• Chapter 8 Community ecological effects of climate change
• Chapter 9 Pelagic ecosystem response to climate variability in the Pacific Ocean off Baja California
• Chapter 10 Climate change and resilience value of mussel farming for the baltic sea
• Chapter 11 Temperate forests and climate change in mexico: from modelling to adaptation strategies
• Chapter 12 The influence of climate change on tree species distribution in west part of south-east europe
• Chapter 13 Climate change impact on vegetation: lessons from an exceptionally hot and dry decade in south-eastern France
• Chapter 14 Climate change, forest fires and air quality in Portugal st in the 21 century
• Chapter 15 The role of mycorrhizas in forest soil stability with climate change
• Chapter 16 Impact of temperature increase and precipitation alteration at climate change on forest productivity and soil carbon in boreal forest ecosystems in Canada and Russia: simulation approach with the EFIMOD model
• Chapter 17 Simulating peatland methane dynamics coupled to a mechanistic model of biogeochemistry, hydrology, and energy: Implications to climate change
• Chapter 18 Towards a New Agriculture for the Climate Change Era in West Asia, Iran
• Chapter 19 Simulated potato crop yield as an indicator of climate variability and changes in Estonia
• Chapter 20 Determining the relationship between climate variations and wine quality: the WEBSOM approach
• Chapter 21 Ecological modernisation and the politics of (un)sustainability in the Finnish climate policy debate
• Chapter 22 Transportation and climate change
• Chapter 23 Cost-optimal technology and fuel choices In the transport sector under a stringent climate stabilization target
• Chapter 24 Impact of climate change on health and disease in Latin America