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Adapting Albanian Agriculture to a Changing Climate: A Path to Resilience and SustainabilityThis study provides a clear and comprehensive plan for aligning agricultural policies with climate change in Albania. It details developing the capabilities of key agricultural institutions and making needed investments in infrastructure, support services, and on-farm improvements. * Understand the economic impacts of climate change on Albanian agriculture. * Discover sustainable adaptation strategies for agricultural systems. * Implement policy recommendations to support climate change adaptation. For policymakers, agricultural experts, researchers, and donor communities interested in climate change adaptation in Albania and similar regions. This study offers insights and practical guidance for building climate-resilient agricultural systems.

The information on the projected climate changes over China is of great importance for preparing the nation’s societal adaptiveness to the future natural ecosystem. This study reports the surface mean temperature changes during 2014–2100 over China and its four sub-regions (Northern China, Northwestern China, Southern China, and the Tibetan Plateau) by analyzing 20 models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) under three Shared Socio-economic Pathway (SSP) scenarios: SSP126, SSP245 and SSP585. The multi-model ensemble mean (MMEM) of 20 CMIP6 models has cold biases over China during 1979–2014, with improved performance compared with the CMIP5 models. In contrast, the CMIP6 models simulate well in the spatial climatology with lower warming rates over China. Relative to 1986–2005, the regionally averaged surface mean temperatures from the MMEM over China under SSP126, SSP245, SSP585 scenarios are projected to increase by 1.31 °C, 1.32 °C, 1.45 °C in the near-term (2021–2040), 1.75 °C, 2.06 °C, 2.66 °C in the mid-term (2041–2060), and 1.08 °C, 2.97 °C, 5.62 °C in the long-term (2081–2100), respectively. The CMIP6 models simulate accelerated warming occurs over the Northwestern China and the Tibetan Plateau, suggesting that the arid and semi-arid regions are particularly sensitive to future climate warming. We quantify uncertainty for future projections of temperature changes over China, and the main sources of uncertainty are model and scenario uncertainty particularly for the regions with the largest cold bias. This suggests that the observational constraints on these regions will lead to significant improvements for climatic projections over China.

The atmospheric large‐scale environment determines the occurrence of local extreme precipitation, and it is unclear how climate change affects this relationship. Here we investigate the present‐day relationship between large‐scale circulation types (CTs) and daily precipitation extremes over Scandinavia and its future change. A 50‐member EC‐Earth3 large ensemble is used to assess future changes against internal variability. We show that CTs are related to extreme precipitation over the entire domain. The intensity of extreme daily precipitation increases in all seasons in the future climate, generally following the strength of warming in the six different future scenarios considered. However, no significant future change is found in the relationship between extreme precipitation and the CTs in any season or scenario. The results have important implications for applications that rely on the stability of this relationship, such as statistical and event‐based dynamical downscaling of future weather and climate predictions and long‐term climate projections. Plain Language Summary The occurrence of local devastating extreme precipitation events is influenced by the large‐scale flow of the atmosphere, that is, high‐ or low‐pressure systems and winds from different directions. Understanding this connection helps us to predict precipitation extremes using more readily available information about the large‐scale flow. However, it is not known if the relationship that we observe in the present climate will hold under future climate conditions. Here we study the present‐day relationship between the large‐scale flow and local precipitation events over Scandinavia and analyze how it will change toward the end of the 21st century. We find that extreme precipitation events become more intense over entire Scandinavia in the future climate, but their connection to the large‐scale environment remains unchanged. Key Points Large‐scale circulation types (CTs) can be used as precursors of local extreme precipitation events over Scandinavia The intensity of extreme precipitation events over Scandinavia increases with the warming strength in the future climate The relationship between extreme precipitation and CTs remains unchanged over Scandinavia in the future climate

This paper compares the historical simulations and future projections of surface air temperature over the Tibetan Plateau of the updated Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase (CMIP6) and the precedent phase of the project (CMIP5) to quantify differences in the projections under different scenarios. Model evaluation for the historical period (1961–2005) indicates that the multi-model ensemble (MME) mean of CMIP6 outperforms CMIP5 MME in simulating spatial–temporal characteristics of surface air temperature. The temperature changes relative to 1986–2005 are projected in the near-term (2021–2040), mid-term (2041–2060), and long-term (2081–2100) future under Shared Socio-economic Pathway (SSP)2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5 of CMIP6 and Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP)4.5 and RCP8.5 of CMIP5. The projected temperature shows larger increases in the long-term projection compared with the near- and mid-term projection under both SSPs and RCPs. CMIP6 MME projects higher temperature changes and accelerated warming trends relative to CMIP5 MME. Additionally, the projected temperature increases and warming rates show a significant elevation dependency, especially in the long-term projection. The uncertainty for future projections is quantified by the square root of error variance (SREV) method. The results record a clear reduction in the uncertainty of CMIP6 temperature relative to CMIP5 primarily concentrated at the elevation zones of over 5000 m. The analysis of the projected temperature over the Tibetan Plateau is of great significance for policy-makers to make socio-economic adjustments for the future warming. This study is conducive to the credibility of future temperature projections for CMIP6 and enhances our comprehension of the uncertainty of SSP and RCP scenarios.

Global warming can change the freeze‐thaw cycles (FTCs) in seasonally frozen ground and influence soil and water conservation. This study employed an enhanced SWAT‐FT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool‐FTCs) model to explore the effects of different future climate change scenarios on the FTCs, soil hydrothermal dynamics, and soil erosion in the Upper Mississippi River Basin (UMRB), a typical black soil region with seasonally frozen ground. Results suggested that SWAT‐FT could more representatively simulate soil hydrothermal dynamics and soil erosion compared to SWAT. The SWAT‐FT simulations revealed that soil temperature in 0–100 cm soil layers of the UMRB could increase by approximately 2°C–4°C during the FTCs period under SSP5‐8.5 in the mid to late 21st century, decreasing the freezing days (FD) and even the absence of FTCs in some southern zones, but an increase in FD for some central zones. These changes were affected by air temperature, soil water content, and snow cover, resulting in three dominant response patterns of soil hydrothermal dynamics to global warming during the FTCs period in the UMRB, which were lag symmetric response in the northern zones, non‐symmetric response in the central zones, and rapid symmetric response in the southern zones. The alterations in soil hydrothermal dynamics due to global warming exacerbated soil erosion in early spring after the FTCs by 2.3 times under SSP5‐8.5 in 2071–2100 compared to the baseline scenario (1985–2014). Moreover, the erosion pattern converted from “dual‐peak” to “single‐peak” in April or May, increasing challenges of spring erosion control. Plain Language Summary This study examines how global warming could impact the freeze‐thaw cycles (FTCs) in the Upper Mississippi River Basin (UMRB) and its implications for soil erosion. Researchers used an improved SWAT model to simulate the effects of different future climate scenarios on FTCs, soil hydrothermal dynamics, and soil erosion. The findings indicated geographical differences in the UMRB caused FTCs to be influenced by air temperature, snow cover, and soil water content. These factors led to great changes in the freezing days of all soil layers during the mid to late 21st century. Therefore, researchers summarized three response patterns of freezing days to global warming: a lag symmetric response in northern zones, a non‐symmetric response in central zones, and a rapid symmetric response in southern zones. Additionally, changes in soil hydrothermal dynamics during the FTCs period would alter soil erosion patterns, with annual soil erosion risk converting from a “dual‐peak” to a “single‐peak”, posing greater challenges for early spring erosion control. These findings highlight the need for effective soil and water management strategies to mitigate the adverse effects of changing FTCs on erosion and agriculture.

This study examines the future climate change in the South Asia region during 2070–2099 with respect to the historical period (1975–2004) under RCP8.5 scenario using a high-resolution regional earth system model. We found substantial changes in the key climatic parameters over the South Asia region including ocean biological productivity, however, the magnitude of response varies spatially. A substantial increase (> 2.5 °C) in the projected annual-mean sea surface temperature (SST) was found over the Indian Ocean with the highest increase (~ 3.4 °C) locally in the northern part of the Arabian Sea and in the Persian Gulf, SST changes being significant throughout the study area with 95% confidence level. The changes in the sea surface salinity showed strong spatial variability with the highest freshening over northern Bay of Bengal and highest salinity in the Persian Gulf followed by northern Arabian Sea. The amount of annual-mean precipitation will substantially increase over the eastern coast of the Bay of Bengal (up to 1.5–2.0 mm/day) and along the equator in the band 10° S–10° N (0.5–1.5 mm/day), while it will decrease over the western part of the Bay of Bengal and in the northern states of India (− 0.5 to 1.0 mm/day). The most pronounced increase of precipitation rate in the future climate will occur over India (3–5 mm/day) and the eastern coasts of the Bay of Bengal (> 5 mm/day) during the monsoon period, and over the equatorial band (2–3 mm/day) during the post-monsoon period, with all precipitation changes indicated above being significant at 95% confidence level.

Predictions of future climate are based on elaborate numerical computer models. As computational capacity increases and better observations become available, one would expect the model predictions to become more reliable. However, are they really improving, and how do we know? This paper discusses how current climate models are evaluated, why and where scientists have confidence in their models, how uncertainty in predictions can be quantified, and why models often tend to converge on what we observe but not on what we predict. Furthermore, it outlines some strategies on how the climate modelling community may overcome some of the current deficiencies in the attempt to provide useful information to the public and policy-makers.

Climate change is a major source of concern in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, and migration is often understood as one of several strategies used by households to respond to changes in climate and environmental conditions, including extreme weather events. This study focuses on the link between climate change and migration. Most micro-level studies measure climate change either by the incidences of extreme weather events or by variation in temperature or rainfall. A few studies have found that formal and informal institutions as well as policies also affect migration. Institutions that make government more responsive to households (for example through public spending) discourage both international and domestic migration in the aftermath of extreme weather events. Migration is often an option of last resort after vulnerable rural populations attempting to cope with new and challenging circumstances have exhausted other options such as eating less, selling assets, or removing children from school. This study is based in large part on new data collected in 2011 in Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Syria, and the Republic of Yemen. The surveys were administered by in-country partners to a randomly selected set of 800 households per country. It is also important to emphasize that neither the household survey results nor the findings from the qualitative focus groups are meant to be representative of the five countries in which the work was carried, since only a few areas were surveyed in each country. This report is organized as follows: section one gives synthesis. Section two discusses household perceptions about climate change and extreme weather events. Section three focuses on migration as a coping mechanisms and income diversification strategy. Section four examines other coping and adaptation strategies. Section five discusses perceptions about government and community programs.

Atmospheric circulation type classification methods were applied to an ensemble of 57 regional climate model simulations from Euro-CORDEX, their 11 boundary models from CMIP5 and the ERA5 reanalysis. We applied a field anomaly technique to focus on the departure from the domain-wide daily mean. We then compared frequencies of the different circulation types in the simulations with ERA5 and found that the regional models add value especially in the summer season. We applied three different classification methods (the subjective Grosswettertypes and the two optimisation algorithms SANDRA and distributed k-means clustering) from the cost733class software and found that the results are not particularly sensitive to choice of circulation classification method. There are large differences between models. Simulations based on MIROC-MIROC5 and CNRM-CERFACS-CNRM-CM5 show an over-representation of easterly flow and an under-representation of westerly. The downscaled results retain the large-scale circulation from the global model most days, but especially the regional model IPSL-WRF381P changes the circulation more often, which increases the error relative to ERA5. Simulations based on ICHEC-EC-EARTH and MPI-M-MPI-ESM-LR show consistently smaller errors relative to ERA5 in all seasons. The ensemble spread is largest in summer and smallest in winter. Under the future RCP8.5 scenario, the circulation changes in the summer season, with more than half of the ensemble showing a decrease in frequency of the Central-Eastern European high, the Scandinavian low as well as south-southeasterly flow. There is in general a strong agreement in the sign of the change between the regional simulations and the data from the corresponding global model.

The present investigation attempted to understand the intensity, frequency and spatial coverage of rainfall, runoff, groundwater and agricultural droughts in the semi-arid region of Maharashtra during 1981–2014. For this, various indices similar to Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) (probabilistic nature) were applied. The linear regression, partial correlation and Student’s t-Test techniques were also used to evaluate inter-connections in hydro-meteorological and agricultural droughts. The hydrological deficiencies mimic the pattern of meteorological droughts in the study area with respect to coverage and intensity. Moderate hydro-meteorological droughts occurred frequently (once in 3 to 4 years). Additionally, the research highlighted an increase in the frequency and intensity of hydrological droughts during the post-1990 period, possibly linked to anthropogenic interventions (dam constructions and irrigation expansion). Despite El Niño events resulting in below-average rainfall, runoff, and groundwater levels in the study area, other phenomena such as Equatorial Indian Ocean Monsoon Oscillation (EQUINOO) / Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) may have played a crucial role in major drought occurrences in 1986, 2003, and 2012 (events that happen once in > 30 years). The hydro-meteorological droughts lead to agricultural droughts, as they significantly affect the rainfed and irrigated crops in terms of productivity and cropped area. This effect was particularly notable during severe and region-wide droughts in 1985-86, 2002-03, and 2011-12. Furthermore, the investigation suggested that the study area is likely to experience hydro-meteorological deficiencies with ~ 25% probability between 2029 and 2050, coupled with a significant temperature rise (by 1.05 °C). This projected scenario could exacerbate water scarcity and agricultural distress in the future (up to 2050).