Impact of Climate Change and Urbanization Effect on Extremely Heavy Rainfalls in Megacities in China

Date: 

Wednesday, February 1, 2017, 3:30pm to 4:45pm

Location: 

Pierce Hall 100F, 29 Oxford St., Cambridge, MA

Speaker: Ding Yihui

DING Yihui, Professor and Special Advisor on Climate Change, China Meteorological Administration; Vice-Chairman, China Expert Panel on Climate Change

Sponsored by China Project, Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
 
Abstract: Under impacts of natural and anthropogenic climate change as well as urbanization effect, the occurrence frequency, day numbers and intensity of extremely intense rainfalls have demonstrated long-term variations. They have shown an increasing trend, with exceeding thresholds for 60 years, especially for the southern megacities (e.g. Shanghai and Guangzhou ). The detection and attribution study has shown that: the natural climate change (weakening of East Asian summer monsoon ) determines the overall spatial patterns of urban extremely intense rainfall events. The anthropogenic climate change (climate warming) and urbanization effect have enhanced the frequency and intensity of extremely intense rainfall events as well as focusing in urban area, thus leading to increase in disastrous risks caused by urban heavy rainfalls.