The Erchung Floodway, one of the successful measures of the Taipei Flood Prevention System, was constructed to mitigate the Tanshui River floods in the Taipei metropolitan area. The Taipei metropolitan area is the most crowded region in Taiwan. More than one-third of the total population of the...

In Jakarta, climate change has been detected through rising air temperatures, increased intensity of rainfall in the wet season, and sea level rise. The coupling of such changes with local anthropogenic driven modifications in the environmental setting could contribute to an increased...

In the present study, we analyze the magnitude and frequency of long-term droughts throughout the present century in Catalonia in the north-eastern Iberian Peninsula (Spain). In fact, this western Mediterranean region has recently suffered one of the most extreme dry episodes (2006–2008) in...

The inter-annual variation and linear trends of the surface air temperature in the regions in and around the Bay of Bengal have been studied using the time series data of monthly and annual mean temperature for 20–40 years period within 1951–1990. The study area extends from Pusma Camp of...

Of the various types of disasters caused by extreme climate and weather, extreme temperature events (ETEs) have led to a heightened awareness due to their increasing frequency, intensity, widespread distribution, and severe health impacts. Although many previous studies have surveyed the severe...

There is a growing understanding that the impacts of climate change affect different communities within a country, in a variety of ways—not always uniformly. This article reports on research conducted in the middle hills region of Nepal that explored climate change vulnerability in terms of...

The past 15 years has been characterized by a high density of record-breaking weather extremes in Europe. These include the extratropical cyclones Lothar, Kyrill and Xynthia across western and mid Europe; the major floods in the UK, Germany and eastern Europe; the heat waves in 2003 and 2007 and,...

In the Netherlands the current dike design policy is to design flood defence structures corresponding to an agreed flooding probability with an extra safety board of at least 0.5 m. For river dikes a return period of 1,250 years is used to determine the design water levels. A problem with this...

A prototype multi-purpose index is proposed for use in the evaluation of practices for adaptation to climate variability and change. The Index of Usefulness of Practices for Adaptation (IUPA) allows the user to assign weights and scores to a set of user-defined evaluation criteria. Individual...

Winter storms are a major weather problem in the United States and their losses have been rapidly increasing. A total of 202 catastrophic winter storms involving ice storms, blizzards, and snowstorms, each causing $5 million in damages, occurred during 1949–2003, and their losses totaled...