Search Results for: "climate change"

Author: Prein, Andreas F. Description: Straight line winds (SLWs), or non-tornadic thunderstorm winds, are causing widespread damage in many regions around the world. These powerful gusts are associated with strong downdraughts in thunderstorms, rear inflow jets and mesovortices. Despite their significance, our understanding of climate change effects on SLWs remains limited. Here, focusing on the central USA, a global hot spot for SLWs, I use observations, high-resolution modelling and theoretical considerations to show that SLWs have intensified over the past 40 years. Theoretical considerations suggest that SLWs should intensify at…

Author: Ratter-Rieck, Jacqueline M.; Roden, Michael; Herder, Christian Description: Climate change will be a major challenge for the world’s health systems in the coming decades. Elevated temperatures and increasing frequencies of heat waves, wildfires, heavy precipitation and other weather extremes can affect health in many ways, especially if chronic diseases are already present. Impaired responses to heat stress, including compromised vasodilation and sweating, diabetes-related comorbidities, insulin resistance and chronic low-grade inflammation make people with diabetes particularly vulnerable to environmental risk factors, such as extreme weather events and air pollution. Additionally,…

Author: Muellner, Nikolaus; Arnold, Nikolaus; Gufler, Klaus; Kromp, Wolfgang; Renneberg, Wolfgang; Liebert, Wolfgang Description: With increased awareness of climate change in recent years nuclear energy has received renewed attention. Positions that attribute nuclear energy an important role in climate change mitigation emerge. We estimate an upper bound of the CO2 saving potential of various nuclear energy growth scenarios, starting from our projection of nuclear generating capacity based on current national energy plans to scenarios that introduce nuclear energy as substantial instrument for climate protection. We then look at needed uranium…

Author: Ray, Deepak K.; West, Paul C.; Clark, Michael; Gerber, James S.; Prishchepov, Alexander V.; Chatterjee, Snigdhansu Description: Crop yields are projected to decrease under future climate conditions, and recent research suggests that yields have already been impacted. However, current impacts on a diversity of crops subnationally and implications for food security remains unclear. Here, we constructed linear regression relationships using weather and reported crop data to assess the potential impact of observed climate change on the yields of the top ten global crops-barley, cassava, maize, oil palm, rapeseed, rice,…

Author: De Frenne, Pieter; Van Langenhove, Lisa; Van Driessche, Alain; Bertrand, Cedric; Verheyen, Kris; Vangansbeke, Pieter Description: Predicting how the timing of cyclic life-history events, such as leafing and flowering, respond to climate change is of paramount importance due to the cascading impacts of vegetation phenology on species and ecosystem fitness. However, progress of this field is hampered by the relative scarcity, and geographic and phylogenetic bias, of long-term phenology datasets. By taking advantage of archived television video footage, we here developed an innovative tool using previously unexploited records to…