Challenge And Adaption Of Permafrost Engineering To A Changing Climate

Author : Bernardo Stephan Teufel
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (131 download)

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Download or read book Novel and Actionable High-resolution Climate Change Information for Adaptation of Engineering Systems in Cold Environments written by Bernardo Stephan Teufel and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Engineering systems are designed to withstand their operating environment, which generally includes a variety of factors influenced by climate variability and extremes. Given that engineering systems usually have long lifespans, it becomes necessary to account for future environmental conditions, which due to climate change, are unlikely to be represented in historical archives. It follows that the first step to adapt engineering systems to the changing environmental conditions is the generation of actionable climate change information. Climate models are the primary tools available to develop projections of future climate, but these projections need to be of sufficiently high quality and resolution to be useful for the adaptation of engineering systems. In this thesis, novel climate change information was developed using the state-of-the-art regional climate model GEM (Global Environmental Multiscale), which is extensively used for climate research. Contributions to original knowledge arose by applying innovative analysis methods to an ensemble of climate projections, including 4 km resolution projections over the Canadian Arctic, developed for the first time. Several knowledge gaps were addressed, which contributed significantly to the advancement of the understanding of climate-infrastructure interactions in cold regions. Analysis of rainfall and snowmelt as flood-generating mechanisms across Canada demonstrated the importance of keeping global warming below the 2 °C threshold of the Paris Agreement. Under 2 °C of global warming, slight increases of rainfall contribution to flood peaks are projected, while a high-warming scenario leads to widespread increases in rainfall contribution and the emergence of hotspots of change in currently snowmelt-dominated regions. These changes influence flood magnitude and timing, which has implications for the management of flood risks and freshwater resources and for the development of flow regulation plans. Large projected changes over northern regions motivated further analysis, which revealed the possibility of abrupt decreases in soil moisture in response to increased drainage due to permafrost degradation for the high-warming scenario. This regime shift is projected to result in abrupt changes to many variables and processes of high significance to northern interests, such as flood predictors and wildfire intensity. The abruptness of these changes presents additional challenges to climate change adaptation and potential retrofitting of engineering systems. The adaptation of these systems requires high-resolution projections, which were developed here for the first time at 4 km resolution over the Canadian Arctic, for the investigation of hazards to northern transportation. By 2040, significant increases to short-duration rainfall and wind gust extremes, as well as further permafrost degradation, are expected to foment deterioration of northern infrastructure and transportation systems. A novel approach integrating climate model output and machine learning algorithms allowed deriving projections of fog - a complex variable. Overall fog frequency is projected to increase over most of the Canadian Arctic by 2040, presenting an additional hazard to northern transportation. The main contribution of this thesis is the advancement of the understanding of several different pathways through which changing climatic conditions are expected to impact engineering systems in cold regions. On one hand, the projections highlight the crucial importance of climate change mitigation, as remaining below the 2 °C global warming threshold would prevent large changes over many regions and decrease the likelihood of abrupt changes. On the other hand, some climatic hazards are projected to soon exceed those in historical records regardless of emissions scenario, and the high-quality, high-resolution projections analyzed here contain useful and actionable information for the adaptation of engineering systems"--