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Reliability-based design of structures under non-stationary climate conditions
Published in Joan-Ramon Casas, Dan M. Frangopol, Jose Turmo, Bridge Safety, Maintenance, Management, Life-Cycle, Resilience and Sustainability, 2022
Climate is changing due to increase in greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities. The increasing pace of climate change in recent years has aggravated the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events, which are threatening the existing infrastructure, impacting its effectiveness, reducing lifespan, and adding to the cost of repair and renewal. In the current year 2021, several extraordinary environmental hazards were attributed to climate change effects. For example, a crippling ice storm in Texas (February 2021), a record-setting heatwave that pushed temperatures to dangerous levels of nearly 50 degrees C in British Columbia (Canada, June 2021), unprecedented rainfall and floods in Western Europe (15 July 2021) and British Columbia (Canada, November 2021), and high wind, rain, and flooding caused by hurricane Ida in the United States (31 August 2021). In British Columbia, heavy rains in November 2021 triggered floods and mudslides, which destroyed several sections of highways, railway tracks, and many bridges. This is an example of the coincidence of multiple hazards with catastrophic consequences.
Climate change
Published in Sigrun M. Wagner, Business and Environmental Sustainability, 2020
In the introduction to part two of the book we covered a number of environmental challenges, and having introduced the various geophysical changes resulting from climate change and their impact, it is clear that climate change relates to and affects many other challenges. For example, of Esty and Winston’s (2009) list of top ten environmental challenges (climate change, energy, water, biodiversity and land use, chemicals, toxics, and heavy metals, air pollution, waste management, ozone layer depletion, oceans and fisheries, deforestation), apart from maybe chemicals, most affect or are affected by climate change. For example, energy use from fossil fuels contributes to climate change, water is affected by global warming (droughts and floods), methane emissions from landfill (waste management) contribute to climate change, whilst oceans and fisheries are affected by ocean acidification and sea level rises.
Biodiversity: Climate Change
Published in Yeqiao Wang, Terrestrial Ecosystems and Biodiversity, 2020
Lisa Freudenberger, Jan Hanning Sommer
Climate change means a mid- to long-term change in one or more climate parameters, such as an increase of temperature, or changes in the magnitude and frequency of extreme events such as droughts and heavy rainfall events. It is to a large extent driven by a rise of the concentration of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide.[11] Carbon dioxide, on the other hand, also has a fertilizing effect as it supports plant growth and biomass production.[12]
Updated assessment of occupational safety and health hazards of climate change
Published in Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene, 2023
P. A. Schulte, B. L. Jacklitsch, A. Bhattacharya, H. Chun, N. Edwards, K. C. Elliott, M. A. Flynn, R. Guerin, L. Hodson, J. M. Lincoln, K. L. MacMahon, S. Pendergrass, J. Siven, J. Vietas
Studies incorporating economic models have shown that the climate change effects on workers are among the most important drivers of the total economic costs of climate change (Orlov et al. 2019; Dasgupta et al. 2021; Somanathan et al. 2021). Dillender (2021) examined 6 months of medical costs for workers’ compensation claims associated with extreme temperatures in Texas in 2015. Higher temperatures were associated with worse health outcomes. He found that a majority of the claims resulting from low temperatures involved above-median medical costs, whereas the claims resulting from high temperatures were more evenly split above and below the median costs. He extrapolated his results, using the assumption that claims arising from temperature have an average work-related injury cost of $20,500 in 2014 dollars (Leigh 2011). Each day with a high temperature above 90 °F (32.2 °C) leads to costs from incidents of $0.08 per worker, and each day with a high temperature below 40 °F (4.4 °C) leads to costs from occupational health incidents of $0.15 per worker. Since roughly 10% of workers work outdoors at least one day per week and have an average hourly wage of $18 in 2014 dollars, the implied cost of the reduction in hours worked from each day with a high temperature below 40 °F is about $1.82 per worker in warmer climates, when averaged across all U.S. workers (Dillender 2021). Total annual costs in Texas were estimated to be $69.7 million for days above 90 °F and $97.6 million for days below 40 °F (Dillender 2021).
Performance of MSE walls with sustainable backfills subjected to differential settlements
Published in International Journal of Geotechnical Engineering, 2022
Also, a major part of Kerala is covered with lateritic soil. Kerala receives about 2500 mm of annual average rainfall. Kerala received extreme precipitation during the monsoon seasons of the years 2018, 2019 and 2020. Post rainfall, subsidence of land was observed in lateritic soil in many parts of Kerala. Vibha and Divya (2019) reported that the collapsibility potential of the lateritic soil of Kerala is in the range of 12%. Based on ASTM D 5333, the soil is classified as severe degree of collapse. Due to the impacts of extreme events, there is a significant need in engineering designs to account for the climate change impacts to ensure the safe and sustainable operation of the infrastructure systems and the built-environment (Kumar and Reddy 2020). Post rainfall, land subsidence can happen either due to wetting induced collapse or due to cavity formed due to internal erosion/piping. Also, poor quality or compressible foundation can lead to subsidence or differential settlements in the overlying MSE structures. Loss of foundation support due to internal erosion of soil or cavities or collapsible foundation associated with rainfall may result in settlement and yielding of the retaining structure. Thus, an attempt was also made to study the behaviour of geosynthetic reinforced MSE structures with CDW backfill (both in the reinforced zone as well as in retained zone) at the onset of rainfall-induced subsidence.
Impact of agricultural management practices on soil carbon sequestration and its monitoring through simulation models and remote sensing techniques: A review
Published in Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology, 2022
Agniva Mandal, Atin Majumder, S. S. Dhaliwal, A. S. Toor, Pabitra Kumar Mani, R. K. Naresh, Raj K. Gupta, Tarik Mitran
Climate change may be defined as changes in regional or global climatic patterns over long periods of time either due to natural or anthropogenic factors which are responsible for alteration of atmospheric composition which in turn results in climatic variability. Increase in concentration of GHGs in atmosphere is the key reason behind global warming (WMO, 2009). For maintaining the surface temperature of earth the atmospheric CO2 plays an important role (IPCC, 2018). The global surface temperature has increased by about 0.74 °C since the 18th century and it is predicted to increase by an additional 1.1 °C to 6.4 °C by the end of this century (Stern, 2007) while the temperature play a pivotal role in terrestrial C processes, may enhance the ecosystem C fluxes by increasing decomposition and augmenting the concentration of atmospheric CO2 (Luo, 2007). According to the reports of NOAA (2020), recent global atmospheric concentration of CO2 has increased from preindustrial (prior to 1800) value of 280 ppm to 409.09 mg kg−1 in 2019 and in 2016 the recorded average value of annual growth rate of atmospheric CO2 was 3.00 mg kg−1 year−1 which was maximum throughout history. Hence there is a need of negotiation from developed and developing countries to fight against global warming and to reduce the level of atmospheric CO2.