The global signature of the El Niño/La Niña Southern Oscillation

Assessment of Climate Change Impacts on Sea Surface Temperatures and Sea Level Rise—The Arabian Gulf

The Arabian Gulf is one of the regions in the world experiencing major changes due to increased economic growth rates and development practices. As a shallow water body within a hot desert, the Gulf is exposed to obvious warming in the sea surface temperatures (SST). Remotely sensed SST data were utilized to estimate decadal change in SST with a focus on coral reef locations. There is a positive trend in monthly time series SSTs, with a maximum value of about 0.7 °C/decade for the western side of the Gulf. This high trend of SST is associated with significant coral reef bleaching and it coincides with major climate/ocean interactions. Most of the Arabian countries along the Gulf have coastal developments at low-land areas of high vulnerability to sea level rise. Digital elevation models showed that there are more than 3100 km2 of coastal areas that occur at 1 m level along the Arabian countries of the Gulf. Coastal protection and conservation measures are crucial to protect low-lying coasts of urban use.

Future Temperature Extremes Will Be More Harmful: A New Critical Factor for Improved Forecasts

There is increasing evidence that extreme weather events such as frequent and intense cold spells and heat waves cause unprecedented deaths and diseases in both developed and developing countries. Thus, they require extensive and immediate research to limit the risks involved. Average temperatures in Europe in June-July 2019 were the hottest ever measured and attributed to climate change. The problem, however, of a thorough study of natural climate change is the lack of experimental data from the long past, where anthropogenic activity was then very limited. Today, this problem can be successfully resolved using, inter alia, biological indicators that have provided reliable environmental information for thousands of years in the past. The present study used high-resolution quantitative reconstruction data derived from biological records of Lake Silvaplana sediments covering the period 1181-1945. The purpose of this study was to determine whether a slight temperature change in the past could trigger current or future intense temperature change or changes. Modern analytical tools were used for this purpose, which eventually showed that temperature fluctuations were persistent. That is, they exhibit long memory with scaling behavior, which means that an increase (decrease) in temperature in the past was always followed by another increase (decrease) in the future with multiple amplitudes. Therefore, the increase in the frequency, intensity, and duration of extreme temperature events due to climate change will be more pronounced than expected. This will affect human well-being and mortality more than that estimated in today's modeling scenarios. The scaling property detected here can be used for more accurate monthly to decadal forecasting of extreme temperature events. Thus, it is possible to develop improved early warning systems that will reduce the public health risk at local, national, and international levels.