پژوهشهای تغییرات آب و هوایی

Human thermal comfort is strongly dependent on climatic parameters variations. Variations of climatic parameters such as air temperature, precipitation, and wind speed under the effect of atmospheric teleconnection patterns can influence thermal conditions. Therefore, the main objective of this study is evaluating the effect of North-Caspian Sea Pattern (NCP) on Human Thermal Discomfort (HDI) in southern coasts of Caspian Sea. To do so, air temperature and dew point temperature data at 2 m, were extracted from the reanalysis of the ERA-Interim/European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) in monthly time scale during 1979-2018 with a spatial resolution of 0.125° × 0.125°. Then, different phases of NCP were extracted including positive, negative and neutral phases. Human thermal discomfort index was calculated during each phases. Also, influence of NCP’s intensity on thermal conditions were analyzed for positive and negative phases regarding to neutral phase and ΔHDI were computed. Results illustrated that cold stress is predominate thermal conditions during the positive phases of NCP in studied region while negative phase of NCP cause more comfortable conditions especially in eastern coasts of Caspian Sea. Also, intensity of NCP can influence the thermal conditions of the region. 

Studying global warming and assessing its impacts is very important due to economic and social consequences and financial losses. Changes in extreme temperatures can cause enhancement of demands for energy, increase mortality, reduce biodiversity and damage to crops, which makes it essential to be studied. The aim of this study is predicting the changes of extreme temperatures in west of Iran during 2015-2045 period under climate change conditions according to the RCP emission scenarios. To this purpose, the SDSM model under the RCP 8.5 scenario is used for statistical downscaling and data generation of future period, using the GCM models of the CanESM2 and Mann-Kendall nonparametric test is used to analyze trends. From 27 extreme indices of climate change which are defined by ETCCDI, 6 indices of extreme temperatures were selected including diurnal temperature range (DTR), warm and cold days, warm and cold nights, and number of summer days. The results showed that in the predicting period (2015-2045), except Shahr-e-Kord station, the DTR index has a decreasing trend. There was an increasing trend in number of summer days index in all stations, except Hamedan station. In cold night index a decreasing trend is observed in all stations except Shahr-e-Kord station. A significant decreasing trend is observed in number of cold days index in all stations except Sahr-e-Kord. In warm days index, a significant increasing trend is observed in all station. Generally it was found that the significant trend of cold extreme and warm extreme temperatures were decreasing and increasing respectively. Also in most of the studied indices the rate of changes were associated with latitude of the weather station.

One of the main concerns of today's world is the reduction of non-renewable energies and environmental pollution caused by them in buildings, which can be controlled by saving and optimizing energy consumption. On the other hand, global climate change and its local and regional effects are important in buildings energy management policies. To this end, identifying and exploiting passive systems and climate-friendly design strategies are one of the cheap and sustainable solutions in this regard. The present study examined the use of soil thermal potentials and earth-sheltered design as one of the practical solutions for providing thermal comfort and reducing energy consumption in hot and dry climates and case studied “Shahdad Desert”. Various active and passive techniques are currently used throughout the world to reduce energy consumption, some of which have been common from the past to the present such as the construction of buildings in the shelter of earth, like the Iranian native architecture. This study empirically and practically investigated the effect of the depth of a building in the soil on the rate of cooling and heating energy consumption. The information required for the construction site of the earth-sheltered building was obtained by conducting a field survey in the Shahdad Desert. It was further suggested to build a tourist residence by taking refuge in the heart of the Kaluts in the hot and dry climates of Shahdad. By moving the designed building inside Kalut, the rate of cooling and heating energy consumption of the building during the year was calculated and the results showed that changing the depth of the earth-sheltered building did not have much effect on heating energy, but as it approached the earth edges, its cooling energy increased. As the building left the earth, the total cooling and heating energy consumption increased dramatically.

Climate change is significantly affecting the livelihoods and health of human societies. During the Holocene, climatic events have occurred repeatedly. These events typically have affected large regions between 100 and 600 years. Paleoclimate studies of the Northern Hemisphere have identified climatic events of 9.2, 8.2, 5.2, 4.2, 3.2 ka BP, Roman warming, the early medieval cooling, medieval warming, and Little Ice Age. Also, by adapting the archaeological studies and the paleoclimate research of Iran, other periods of climate change such as 7.5, 7, 6.2 and 4.8 ka BP can be introduced. Due to the vastness and geographical diversity of Iran, the impact of each of these events in different parts of the country has been different, but, in general, during droughts related to climate change, semi-arid to arid regions of Iran have been more vulnerable, and therefore, people were using a variety of strategies to resilience and adapt, such as changing subsistence patterns, managing water resources, and migrating. However, in some periods of climate change, the effects of climatic hazards have been such that it has led to the cultural, socio-economic and political decline of societies.

South Africa is a water-scarce country that is highly dependent on agriculture. This means that the local impacts of climate altering phenomenon, such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), are critical to understand. At a broad scale, these systems are known to affect rainfall distribution, resulting in drought (flood) conditions during El Niño (La Niña) events in the majority of the country, and the converse in the southwestern Cape. However, fine resolution analyses of local impacts of these events have been restricted to the coastal zone, and little is known for the interior. We explore the uniformity in the transition of the climatic deviations [for minimum temperature (T_min) and maximum temperature (T_max), and rainfall] along a 12-site transect spanning the South African interior. The majority of the deviations determined were not statistically significant which suggests that the common understanding of the climatic impacts of ENSO events in South Africa is not well understood. However, it should be acknowledged that all the locations used in this research, aside from Hermanus, were located inland which may be the reason the deviations at these locations were not statistically significant.

Cold and heat stress are environmental factors influencing the state of health of individuals and the wider population. There is a large number of research to document significant increases in mortality and morbidity during cold and heat waves in every climate zone. In spite of the well-documented nature of heat/cold-related health problems, only in few countries local or national authorities have developed any special adaptation strategies for their healthcare systems (HCS), with a view to addressing predicted increases in the frequency and severity of cold- and heat-stress events. Such strategies draw on epidemiological and climatological research.  For example in Poland in the years 2012-2015 research project pursued to study regional differentiation in climate-related diseases in Poland, with regional-level predictions for their occurrence through to 2100. The results of the project were applied in a national strategy for adaptation to climate change This paper presents key results of the part of this project dealing with heat- and cold related mortality in various regions of Poland. Overall, in the near future a 4-28% increase in the number of days imposing heat stress is anticipated, and may result in heat-related mortality significantly higher by the last decade of the 21 st century than in the years 1991-2000 (at a level between 137 and 277%).

The agricultural drought, severely affecting human life, occurs unpredictably at different times with different intensities. The conventional methods for assessing drought often relay on indices obtained using meteorological data, but due to the low spatial coverage, incompleteness and inaccuracy of these data, meteorological indices cannot be considered as a comprehensive method. Therefore, it is suggested that remote sensing constitute more versatile approach, as it allows to assess the drought using the adequate spatial and temporal coverage for the study area. In the study, performed for the Panjshir river basin in Afghanistan, the 2010-2019 period is used to evaluate vegetation rate using NDVI data from MODIS. To calculate agricultural drought indices (DSI, VCI and TCI), May and June were selected, as the peak vegetation time occurs for these months. On the base of the remote sensing indicators it was shown that during the study period the drought conditions were normal in the region, except for 2011, 2017, and 2018, which were the driest years, and for 2019, which was the wettest year. Agricultural drought indices were compared to SPI index calculated using winter and spring precipitation data recorded at the meteorological stations. It was observed that the remote sensing indices showed the highest correlation with data from Kabul meteorological station, which is located at the same altitude and climate as the dense vegetation zone. Furthermore, the comparison showed that the ground precipitation data is characterized by higher amplitudes than the remote sensing data. From the above it steams that the vegetation in the Panjshir basin is influenced by both seasonal rainfall and rivers that continuously flood the area.

Review of current progress in Mid to Late Ordovician astrochronological studies exposes some important issues related to cyclostratigraphical studies, including the completeness and correlation of successions, and the connection between inferred astronomical cycles and geological events recorded in the sedimentary record. While bulk, low-field, mass specific magnetic susceptibility methods are widely applied in studies of high resolution cyclostratigraphy, they require close support from sequence stratigraphy and biostratigraphy, and should be linked back to outcrop patterns. Otherwise they risk distortion in the calibration against geological time, through lack of anchoring to well-defined biostratigraphical horizons and unrecognised condensed intervals and larger hiatuses. A significant limitation currently is that few high-resolution radio-isotope ages are linked to well-defined biostratigraphical boundaries. Nevertheless, fourth order sedimentary sequences linked to 405 ky orbital eccentricity cycles, and longer orbital cyclicity impressed in third-order sequences, represent good grounds for development of a reliable astrochronological scale. The astrochronologically calibrated sequence-stratigraphical record documented from high latitude Gondwana shows significant impact from orbital forcing on the Mid to Late Ordovician global climate.