Perspectives on Multi-facet Impacts of Global Warming to the Hydrosphere & Cryosphere
Thian Yew Gan - University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
In recent decades, the world has suffered significant environmental changes such as hydrologic extremes, melting glaciers and ice caps, wet lands drying and shrinking, sea level rise, forest fires, and many natural disasters causing serious damage, massive property losses and even deaths, such as the 2013 Alberta flood of Canada, Congo flood of 2019-2020, European
floods of 2021 in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, and many others. A warmer climate means the atmosphere will be loaded with more water vapor which is fuel for developing intensive storms and hurricanes. Conversely, rising temperature can also give rise to prolonged moisture deficit or droughts in arid/semi-arid regions, resulting in loss of multibillion dollar revenues from agriculture, leading to famine and even humanitarian crisis, such as that of Nigeria and Somalia in 2017. Perspectives on the global energy balance, greenhouse effects
and examples of observed changes to the hydrosphere will be presented. Future climate scenarios projected by general circulation models (GCMs) of the 5th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2013), and that of the 6th Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) of IPCC (2021), and case studies based on regional climate models and land surface schemes will be discussed. The discussions will also include possible implications to the future global climate, hydrology, and water resources under the impacts of
climate change.
4 апр 2023
