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Our new project Adaptation at Altitude has been funded! The «Adaptation at Altitude» project is funded by the Swiss Development and Cooperation Agency and has two overarching goals: (i) strengthen knowledge on climate change adaptation solutions in mountains, both at the regional and global levels; as well as (ii) the consideration of climate change adaptation in mountains in major global policy processes.

To reach the first goal, proven solutions for adaptation to climate change in mountains are collected and synthesized in knowledge products, and their implementation supported via the development of a community of practice. The climate change adaptation solutions for mountains (CCA solutions) will be collected through an appraisal of published mountain-relevant resources and collaboration with the wider climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction communities, their embedded networks and relevant platforms. This appraisal and collaborative effort will focus on eliciting the best global solutions applicable to and adaptable for use in mountain areas. The CCA solutions will be selected through a multi-stage quality control mechanism that ensures their quality, credibility and usefulness to the community of practice. They will be made available through a structured and easy to access global knowledge base hosted by weADAPT and designed in response to the needs of the community of practice.

To reach the second goal, climate change adaptation in mountains will be mainstreamed in key global policy processes on climate change, Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We will contribute to integrating sustainable mountain development and climate adaptation in mountains into the development of National Adaptation Plans and Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement, into national DRR strategies under the Sendai Framework, and into SDG monitoring and implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. To be effective and legally enforceable, international agreements must be transposed into national legislation and strategies, supported by appropriate budget allocation and oversight of government performance. The network of the Inter-Parliamentary Union will be leveraged to disseminate information on good practices in climate change adaptation in mountains and to develop parliamentary capacity to influence their integration on the national level.

The project is coordinated by Zoï Environment Network and implemented with the contributions of the C-CIA team, Geneva Water Hub, Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI Oxford), in collaboration with the international organization of national parliaments, the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU).

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The post The Roman Egypt Laboratory: Climate Change, Societal Transformations, and the Transition to Late Antiquity appeared first on Climate Change Impacts and Risks in the Anthropocene (C-CIA).

On July 8, 1998, the deadliest glacier lake outburst flood (GLOF) in Central Asia for at least the last 100 years occurred in the Shakhimardan catchment, Kyrgyzstan. Most of the >100 victims were, however, killed in the Uzbek enclave of Shakhimardan, i.e. in the downstream part of this transboundary catchment. No warnings were issued between the two countries. In addition, political tensions between the two countries prevented access to the site and a detailed assessment of the disaster could not be realized until now. Using remote sensing, we show that the lake at the origin of the “Shakhimardan event” appeared in the 1960s and drained periodically, without, however, causing damage to downstream areas before it eventually disappeared in the late 1980s. Based on post-event videos, we conclude that the GLOF-producing depression was again filled with a lake before the disaster. The lake burst was likely driven by the rapidly rising air temperatures and the melting of snow/ice in late June and early July. Today, 32 lakes (total area ~300 × 10³ m² in 2018) exist in the catchment, with several of the larger lakes (>5 × 10³ m²) showing signs of instability. The paper, which can be accessed here, calls for a systematic monitoring of environments like the Shakhimardan catchment, as well as for the installation of early warning systems at critical sites, with exchange of data between the Kyrgyz and Uzbek disaster risk management units, so as to mitigate existing and evolving GLOF risks.

The post Putting the poorly documented 1998 GLOF disaster in Shakhimardan River valley (Alay Range, Kyrgyzstan/Uzbekistan) into perspective appeared first on Climate Change Impacts and Risks in the Anthropocene (C-CIA).

Have a look at our new paper focusing on recent and past flood disasters in Kashmir. In September 2014, the Kashmir valley (north-west India) experienced a massive flood causing significant economic losses and fatalities. This disaster underlined the high vulnerability of the local population and raised questions regarding the resilience of Kashmiris to future floods. Although the magnitude of the 2014 flood has been considered unprecedented within the context of existing measurements, we argue that the short flow series may lead to spurious misinterpretation of the probability of such extreme events. Here we use a millennium-long record of past floods in Kashmir based on historical and tree-ring records to assess the probability of 2014-like flood events in the region. Our flood chronology (635 CE–nowadays) provides key insights into the recurrence of flood disasters and propels understanding of flood variability in this region over the last millennium, showing enhanced activity during the Little Ice Age. We find that high-impact floods have frequently disrupted the Kashmir valley in the past. Thus, the inclusion of historical records reveals large flood hazard levels in the region. The newly gained information also underlines the critical need to take immediate action in the region, so as to reduce the exposure of local populations and to increase their resilience, despite existing constraints in watershed management related to the Indus Water Treaty.

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We have great news ;-)! Or MNEMOSYNE project will be funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).

The MNEMOSYNE project –the acronym has been borrowed from the Greek goddess of memory – is funded by the SNSF funding instrument “Spark” aimed at supporting projects that show unconventional thinking and introduce a unique approach. if you want to know more feel free to read the abstract of the project below:

Glaciers are a major component of mountain culture, landscape and environment, but have also become a key icon of global warming. An adequate understanding of processes that have determined glacier variations in the past is a prerequisite for an adequate forecasting of likely responses of Alpine glaciers to 21st century warming. As such, in-situ measurements of glacier mass balance constitute a key element in worldwide glacier monitoring. The mass balance of a glacier, whether measured at the level of individual stakes or extrapolated to the entire glacier surface, is the difference between winter accumulation and summer ablation, and generally acknowledged to be one of the most direct indicators of climate variations. Glacier Monitoring Switzerland (GLAMOS) hosts a complete compilation of measured and re-analyzed mass-balance data of Swiss glaciers, of which several are spanning much of the 20th century. Despite the uniqueness of these records at the global scale, data does not yet extend back to pre-20th century or even preindustrial times. Tree-ring records contain information on past temperature and precipitation variations over timescales of centuries, and thus likely have the potential to overcome this limitation and to extend point and glacier-wide mass balance series farther back in time. The aim of the MNEMOSYNE project therefore is to combine existing and new tree-ring proxies (i.e. tree-ring width, maximum latewood density, cell anatomical features, isotope chronologies) to reconstruct multi-centennial, annually-resolved time series of stake and glacier-wide mass balance series for the Silvretta and Great Aletsch glaciers. The reconstruction will be used to complement the current state-of-the-art of glacier history during key periods of the Common Era (Roman Optimum, Migration Era Pessimum, Medieval Warm Period, Little Age Age, recent warming). If successful, the reconstructions will yield unprecedented data of glacier MB and glacier dynamics over past centuries, and thereby contribute considerably to process understanding regarding glacier–climate relations prior to the industrial period.

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We have exciting news!!!  Our Synergia project will be funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation!

This project will help scientists to better understand the impacts of large volcanic eruptions on the Climate System and their effects on human societies. The project hasn’t started yet but If you want to know more about our research questions, feel free to read the abstract below:

CALDERA – EffeCts of lArge voLcanic eruptions on climate and societies: UnDerstand the impacts of past Events and related subsidence cRises to evAluate potential risks in the future

Large explosive volcanic eruptions can inject massive amounts of sulphuric gases into the stratosphere. Sulphate aerosols – produced in the stratosphere by the oxidation of these gases (mainly SO2 and H2S) – can sub-stantially perturb Earth’s radiative balance and lead to a cooling of the troposphere and surface temperatures at timescales of months to years. Volcanically induced cooling was held responsible for crop failures and the subsequent rise in grain prices, and to thereby contribute to subsistence crisis and famines. The explosive erup-tion of Tambora in April 1815 – the largest event of the last 500 years – yielded strong evidence for a causal links between extreme weather experienced in 1816 in parts of the northern hemisphere (year without summer), poor harvests, a sharp rise in grain prices in Europe and America and the last great subsistence crisis of the Western world. It is often assumed that such consequences are unlikely to occur in modern societies as globalized food trade networks and disaster relief can offer a collective response to modern crises. Yet, one only needs to consider the catalogue of recent famines that have afflicted many parts of Africa, and the slow and often ineffective international response, to find ample evidence that modern societies are in no way immune to potentially catastrophic impacts of major volcanic eruptions. As no “Tambora-scale” eruption has occurred during the 20th century, we lack experience of potential impacts of high-magnitude eruptions on modern societies. This lack of knowledge –in terms of spatio-temporal climatic impacts and societal abilities to respond to such disasters – calls for in-depth transdisciplinary research.

The key aim of the CALDERA project is to document and reconstruct the spatio-temporal impacts of past major eruptions in unprecedented detail with proxy records and climate models. It also aims at providing state-of-the-art climate projections (i) to quantify impacts of future eruption scenarios on crop yield and global food security (ii) and to assess whether future, major eruptions could mitigate global warming, or instead generate persistent climate instability. CALDERA will thus substantially improve our knowledge of the impacts of volcanism on temperature and precipitation anomalies by employing (a) recently unearthed historical archives, (b) unprecedented, millennia-long tree-ring datasets (spanning 7000 yrs) of wood-anatomic parameters (c) in combination with a tailored processing of PAGES 2k global datasets. This benchmark data will be used to (d) calibrate microphysical/climate models to more realistically simulate the cooling and hydroclimatic anomalies induced by those 28 eruptions of the last 2000 years being at least as big as the Pinatubo event in 1991. In addition, the project will (e) determine the role of volcanism in the transition from Medieval Climate Anomaly to Little Ice Age climatic regimes, and (f) examine societal impacts and responses to volcanically induced climatic anomalies in these periods using historical archives. The calibrated climate model predictions will then be (g) employed to simulate a suite of future “Tambora-scale” scenarios to provide the climatic input data for statistical crop yield models and to document the effect of volcanic activity on agricultural production, (h) its likely impacts on global food systems and trade, as well as on (i) water and energy (in line with the water-energy-food nexus). The key strength of CALDERA lies in the systematic, transdisciplinary coupling of approaches and generation of unique, high-resolution datasets to better understand the effects of past, massive volcanism, but also to comprehend and forecast environmental and socio-economic impacts of future volcanic disasters. In addition, the synergetic efforts of the CALDERA consortium will generate breakthrough outcomes which could not be reached by individual teams and within separate disciplines.

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We have good news!! We have just received the confirmation that the Swiss National Science Foundation will fund our TURBERAS project. If you want to know more about this exciting project feel free to read the abstract below:

TURBERAS: Reconstruction of Holocene hydro-climatic fluctuations based on multi-proxy peatland records

The anticipated impact of ongoing and projected future climate changes on ecosystems and societies is a crucial concern that requires detailed understanding of the climate system in general, but also natural climate variability and its forcing mechanisms in particular. A suite of paleoclimate reconstructions has advanced our understanding of climate dynamics over much of the Holocene, mostly in terms of temperature variations. By contrast, it is quite striking to see how little we still know about past hydro-climatic changes, mostly because of a persistent scarcity of annually resolved proxies that has so far prevented an extension or densification of annually resolved, hydro-climatic reconstructions across major parts of the Holocene.

Subfossil trees from peatlands of Northern Europe and Scandinavia have been shown to be sensitive to changes in hydro-climatic variability. Paradoxically, however, the resulting tree-ring series could not be used so far to quantify the amplitude of moisture changes at the annual scale. This was due to the fact that peatland trees, in contrast to trees growing on mineral soils, show more complex, often weaker, and clearly site-dependent responses to monthly temperature and precipitation changes, with the latter presumably reflecting a multi-annual synthesis of moisture variability and water-table changes related to a hydrological lag in peatlands. Here we hypothesize that our current understanding of past hydro-climatic variability would benefit quite substantially from a systematic coupling of different, peat-based proxies – such as testate amoebae, diatoms, pollen, non-pollinic microfossils, tree rings – with different temporal resolutions.

Based on the above considerations, the TURBERAS project has four key objectives that will be addressed in two case study regions in Estonia and Sweden: (i) augment the pool of existing, moisture-sensitive peatland tree-ring width series in the case-study region; (ii) understand and quantify hydrological lag effects recorded in tree growth following changes in precipitation and water-table fluctuations using automated dendrometers, cell-wall thickness and isotope measurements; (iii) develop transfer functions between the tree-growth parameters identified under point (ii) and climate variables by taking account of hydrological lags; (iv) based on point (iii), reconstruct climate using a multi-proxy approach in which other, existing peatland proxies (i.e. testate amoebae, diatoms, pollen, non-pollinic microfossils,) are used to add the middle and low frequency signals to the annually-resolved tree-ring records. The key innovation of the project in terms of long-term hydro-climatic reconstructions lies in the diversification of tree proxies (tree-ring width, cell wall thickness, isotopes) and their systematic coupling with water-table-sensitive proxies such as plant macrofossil assemblages, testate amoebae and diatoms existing at the two case-study regions, but for the latter mostly with lower temporal resolutions. The proposed procedure uses three analytical steps: (a) a spectral algorithm with a Fast Fourier Transformation to decompose both the different proxy records and climatic matrixes into their low and high frequency components. After decomposition, (b) using the proxy matrix for each frequency component to reconstruct the corresponding band of climatic data over the Holocene. Finally, (c) assembling the two bands in one single band and back-transformation of results into original meteorological data using an inverse modeling procedure.

The TURBERAS project is designed in a way that should allow key insights into how woody vegetation in fragile wetland ecosystems evolves over time and into how tree growth is controlled by hydro-climatic fluctuations. In return, we also expect to provide reconstructions of past hydro-climatic changes for key periods of the Holocene.

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January 2018 was a month of extremes. Not only was it by far the warmest January on record across the Western Alps, but also one of the wettest in systematic weather measurements, with widespread landslides at low elevations and massive snowfall in mountains. The weather of January 2018 was unusual, freakish in fact, at the upper extreme of the historical distribution of storminess, temperatures and precipitation in the Western Alps – breaking many weather records. Not only was January 2018 unprecedentedly warm, but also was it extremely wet and with unusual snowfall at higher elevations. As Regional Climate Models do not only predict substantial warming in the European Alps but also a slight increase in precipitation totals, we hypothesize that the extreme weather conditions observed during January 2018 and its ensuing impacts could yield valuable insights into typical winter conditions to be expected by the end of the 21^st century.

At higher elevations, the January 2018 calamities started with the passage of winter storm Burglind (Eleanor) and new all-time wind gust records on summits as well as hefty snowfall in the Northern French and Western Swiss Alps. During the first three weeks of January, subsequent, stormy low-pressure systems transported further warm-wet air masses from the Atlantic and the Mediterranean to the Alps, leaving snow accumulations exceeding five meters (and even eight meters in regions affected by massive snowdrift, like Grand St. Bernard; Fig. 1b). These immense snow burdens pushed avalanche risk to extreme levels in the Alps, threatening many villages and communication routes, and leaving thousands of tourists stranded in mountain resorts. Indeed, several of the major ski destinations of the Alps, including Chamonix, Saas Fee, Val d’Isère, or Zermatt, had to shut their ski runs and to put helicopter shuttles in place to evacuate tourists from resorts during the major snowfall episodes.

Local residents and authorities were, however, not equally well prepared for the widespread, shallow landsliding, debris flows and rain-on-snow floods in smaller, low-elevation catchments in January 2018. This can at least in part be credited to a lack of experience with comparable events during other winter seasons, for which there is virtually no historical evidence of rainfall-induced mass movements, despite scientific surmise that ongoing climate warming could indeed promote landslides and debris flows, even at higher elevations and in winter.

For further information, read the paper entitled Future winters glimpsed in the Alps.

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