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AbstractSpatial variation in the landscape factors climate, geomorphology, and lithology cause significant differences in water quality issues even when land use pressures are similar. The Physiographic Environment Classification (PEC) classifies landscapes based on their susceptibility to the loss of water quality contaminants. The classification is informed by a conceptual model of the landscape factors that control the hydrochemical maturity of water discharged to streams. In New Zealand, a case study using climatic, topographic, and geological data classified the country into six, 36, and 320 classes at Levels 1 (Climate), 1–2 (Climate + Geomorphology), and 1–3 (Climate + Geomorphology + Lithology), respectively. Variance partitioning analysis applied to New Zealand's national surface water monitoring network (n = 810 stations) assessed the contributions of PEC classes and land use on the spatial variation of water quality contaminants. Compared to land use, PEC explained 0.6× the variation in Nitrate Nitrite Nitrogen (NNN), 1.0× in Total Kjeldahl Nitrogen (TKN), 1.8× in Dissolved Reactive Phosphorus (DRP), 2.3× in Particulate Phosphorus (PP), 2.6× in E. coli, and 4.3× in Turbidity (TURB). Land use explained more variation in riverine NNN, while landscape factors explained more variation in DRP, PP, E. coli, and TURB. Overall, PEC accounted for 2.1× more variation in riverine contaminant concentrations than land use. The differences in contaminant concentrations between PEC classes (p < 0.05), after adjusting for land use, were consistent with the conceptual model of hydrochemical maturation. PEC elucidates underlying causes of contaminant loss susceptibility and can inform targeted land management across multiple scales.

Abstract. Trends of extreme-temperature episodes in cities are
increasing (in frequency, magnitude and duration) due to regional climate
change in interaction with urban effects. Urban morphologies and thermal
properties of the materials used to build them are factors that influence spatial and temporal climate variability and are one of the main
reasons for the climatic singularity of cities. This paper presents a
methodology to evaluate the urban and peri-urban effect on extreme-temperature exposure in Barcelona (Spain), using the Local Climate Zone
(LCZ) classification as a basis, which allows a comparison with
other cities of the world characterised using this criterion. LCZs were
introduced as input of the high-resolution UrbClim model (100 m spatial
resolution) to create daily temperature (median and maximum) series for
summer (JJA) during the period 1987 to 2016, pixel by pixel, in order to
create a cartography of extremes. Using the relationship between mortality
due to high temperatures and temperature distribution, the heat exposure
of each LCZ was obtained. Methodological results of the paper show the
improvement obtained when LCZs were mapped through a combination of two
techniques (land cover–land use maps and the World Urban Database and Access Portal Tools – WUDAPT – method), and the paper proposes a methodology to obtain the exposure to high temperatures of
different LCZs in urban and peri-urban areas. In the case of Barcelona, the
distribution of temperatures for the 90th percentile (about
3–4 ∘C above the average conditions) leads to an increase in
the relative risk of mortality of 80 %.

The research aims to explore climate indicators of Canary Islands as autonomous area of Spain. Climate conditions have a special significance in the EU countries and particularly on the territory of Canary Islands. Canary Islands are separate climatic zone described by six climate types.

Ensuring a crisis-proof food supply has become a key political issue. In Germany, official spatial planning allows the use of priority and reserved areas to secure land for agricultural use and regional food supply. The focus should be particularly on climate-resilient areas that also have a stable yield potential in the future. This paper supplements widely used, static approaches for determining priority and reserved areas with a dynamic bio-economic analysis that takes future climate scenarios into account. The results for the German federal state of Brandenburg show a high area equivalence between the static and dynamic approaches. In the case of data gaps, for example, static approaches such as soil quality indices can serve as an adequate proxy for future yield potentials. However, not all climate-robust areas can be classified as potential reserved or priority areas. Furthermore, areas that show low yield potential under future conditions are not released for other land uses. Feedback from stakeholders involved in the study showed that the use of the dynamic approach and a target value using the results of a foodshed model lead to broad acceptance. The method developed here can make a valuable contribution to climate change adaptation in spatial planning instruments.

Radon is a radioactive gas produced from the natural radioactive decay of uranium and is found in almost all rocks and soils. In confined places (e.g., dwellings, workplaces, caves, and underground mines), radon may accumulate and become a substantial health risk since it is considered the second most important cause of lung cancer in many developed countries. Radon risk assessment commonly considers either field or estimate values of the radon concentration and the gas permeability of soils. However, radon risk assessment from single measurement surveys to radon potential largescale mapping is strongly sensitive to the soil texture variability and climate changes, and particularly, to the soil water content dynamic and its effect on soil gas permeability. In this paper, the gas permeability of soils, and thus, the estimation of radon risk, is studied considering the effect of three different climates following the Köppen classification and four soil textures on soil water content dynamics. This investigation considers the CLIGEN weather simulator to elaborate 100-year length climatic series; Rosseta 3 pedotransfer function to calculate soil hydraulics parameters, and the HYDRUS-1D software to model the dynamics of water content in the soil. Results reveal that climate strongly affects gas permeability of soils and they must be considered as an additional factor during the evaluation of radon exposure risk. The impact of climate and texture defines the soil water content dynamic. Coarse soils show smaller gas permeability variations and then radon risk, in this case, is less affected by the climate type. However, in clay soils, the effect of climate and the differences in soil water content derive in gas permeability variations between 100 and 1,000 times through an annual cycle. As a result, it may cross the boundary between two radon risk categories. Results deeply confirm that both climate and texture should be compulsory considered when calculating the radon exposure risk and in the definition of new strategies for the elaboration of more reliable geogenic radon potential largescale maps. ; This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities [grant number RTI2018-099052-BI00] and Regional Governments of Comunidad Valenciana (Spain) [grant number AICO/2020/175]. A pre-doctoral research fellowship (PRE2019-088294) was awarded to SG-O for the project RTI2018-099052-BI00.

This paper attempts to portray the classification of Malaysian architecture according to the trends and changes along with the advancement of the economy, technology and growth of architecture schools in Malaysia. The faces of Malaysian architecture are very much influenced by graduates in architecture returning from overseas and the establishment of the Malaysian Institute of Architects. Malaysia is blessed with natural beauty and resources that enable it to be independent. The hot-wet equatorial climate of Malaysia and its high humidity together with the abundance of timber and other cheap building materials enable builders and architects alike to experiment with the built forms. The traditional and vernacular architecture that has been crystallized in the colonial style by the pioneer British architects who designed the government quarters and other government buildings in Malaysia revealed the attention towards the climatic factors and the style that later developed into modern and post-modern style that appear in the residential design of the Malaysian landscape today. This paper employs an exploratory technique from earlier writings and longitudinal historical evidences of Malaysian architecture, visual surveys from the digital media and verbal comments from the practising Architects interviewed. The finding shows that the Malaysian Architecture can be classified according to era, style and contemporary trends influenced by the changes in the world.

The climate parameters (rainfall, number of rainy days and temperature) data for about seventy years from 1941 – 2009 for three Iraqi meteorological stations (Diwaniya, Nasiriya, and Kut) were investigated and gave good evidence of climate change. As well as the climatic water balance and the climatic conditions were determined at Karbala meteorological station for the years (1982-2015). The annual precipitation for Karbala station-reflect declination from 105 mm for the period 1982-1990 to about 71 mm for the years 2011- 2015 confirms the effect of global climate change. Analyzing Karbala climate parameters reflects that the total annual rainfall is (89 mm), evaporation is (2984 mm), while the mean monthly relative humidity% is 47.9%, sunshine is 8.8 h/day, temperature is 24.1 C and wind speed is 3.0 m/sec. the water surplus in the Karbala area is 8.49 mm, 12.28 mm, and 6.65 mm in December, January and February, respectively. The climate classification of the Karbala area was continental and dry climates, as well as the region, has a significant water deficit of up to 93 % of the total rainfall values.

Is climate change insurable? Can insurance, as a technology of risk and governance, organize an adequate social and economic response to the complexity and scale of this modern, global risk? The dissertation assesses the insurability of climate change risks through the lens of the U.S. National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), the public insurance program that underwrites virtually all flood insurance for homes and small businesses in the U.S. The NFIP is under intense financial strain, struggling to pay claims from recent flooding events and $23 billion in debt to the U.S. Treasury after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Federal reforms to the NFIP in 2012 and 2014 revisited the question of financial responsibility for flood risk, bringing renewed scrutiny to risk classification, pricing, and distribution in the NFIP, and how these insurance processes should change with the expectation of rising sea levels and stronger storms. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative data, the dissertation traces these processes: the political contestation that shaped them and their social effects. I find that these processes serve as channels through which this particular climate change burden, of more frequent and severe flooding, is individualized. Specifically, updated official risk classifications, combined with changes to the calculation of insurance premiums, shifted more financial responsibility to individual policyholders, who had to find ways to mitigate the risk and its cost in the short term, and grapple with the price of flood risk as a "signal" of climate change in the long term. The dissertation uncovers the social and political challenges of using insurance to manage the risks associated with climate change, of using old programs to meet new threats.Much of the scholarly debate on the insurability of climate change has emphasized technical and epistemological problems related to risk knowledge. Based on the case of the NFIP, I argue instead that distinct and significant limits to insurability derive from contentious risk politics and the social uncertainties that enhanced risk assessments generate. I develop this argument with chapters on risk classification, about establishing boundaries, physical, social, and symbolic, that set categories of risk; on pricing, the use of practices and tools to calculate the cost of risk; and on distribution, the social and spatial allocation of risk and responsibility. Preceding these chapters, a historical chapter traces the origins of the NFIP, how it governs flood risk, and how it arrived at its crisis point. In addition to intervening in the insurability debate, Underwater also seeks to break new ground in the sociology of climate change. Sociologists have shown that the natural disasters—floods, storms, wildfires, heat waves, and so forth—we connect to climate change have fundamentally social sources, and the threats now facing individuals and communities intersect with social differences, such as gender, race/ethnicity, class, and age. However, it is not simply the social production and distribution of hazards themselves that are sociologically important. It is also the representation of those hazards as risk, their economization, and how they are used to govern societies and shape behavior. In other words, we can build our sociological understandings of climate change not solely from investigating the social production and effects of floods, but also from examining the policies and programs that govern them. These policies and programs both shape how our society adapts to the physical, economic, and political pressures of climate change and structure how individuals experience these pressures in their daily lives.

Set in the immediate context of the recent UN conference on climate change (COP 2021) in Glasgow and the sudden emergence of the variant, Omicron, this paper involves discussion of the present state of discourse concerning globalization in the broadest sense. It begins by contrasting the approaches and substance of two specific books: Globalization Matters by Manfred Steger and Paul James and Grave New World by Stephen King. The difference between the two books is brought into sharp relief by the economism of the book by King and the multidimensionality of the volume by Steger and James. More generally, these recent books are chosen because they are almost complete opposites, the central difference being the adamant optimism about globalization in Globalization Matters and the extreme pessimism and negativity in Grave New World. It is also very important to emphasize the wide ranging and penetrative character of Globalization Matters compared with the latter. Also invoked is recent and very significant work by Dipesh Chakrabarty. Two themes are claimed here to be neglected, namely global history and the concept of glocalization. Attention is also drawn to the crucial omission of the fact that much of globalization talk began in the fields of religious study and theology. The disparity between these two latter fields of study and mainstream social science and conventional history is given attention. The contributions of other crucial commentators to the overall debate, Lovelock and Latour, are also invoked. The focus by Steger and James, on the one hand, and Chakrabarty on the other, on the Anthropocene is given attention. Overall, the article concludes by placing the global-local problematic at the centre of what is called here globalization discourse.

Abstract. Aridity indices have been widely used in climate
classification. However, there is
not enough evidence for their ability in identifying the multiple climate
types in areas with
complex topography and landscape, especially in those areas with a
transition climate. This
study compares a traditional meteorological aridity index (AI), defined as the
ratio of precipitation (P) to potential evapotranspiration (PET), with a
hydrological aridity index, the
evaporative stress index (ESI) defined as the ratio of actual
evapotranspiration (AET) to PET
in the Heihe River Basin (HRB) of arid northwestern China. PET was estimated
using the
Penman–Monteith and Hamon methods. The aridity indices were calculated using
the high-resolution climate data simulated with a regional climate model for the
period of 1980–2010.
The climate classified by AI shows a climate type for the upper basin and a
second type for the middle and lower basin, while three different climate
types are found using ESI, each for one
river basin, indicating that only ESI is able to identify a transition climate
zone in the middle
basin. The difference between the two indices is also seen in the
interannual variability and
extreme dry/wet events. The magnitude of variability in the middle basin
is close to that in
the lower basin for AI, but different for ESI. AI had a larger magnitude of the
relative interannual
variability and a greater decreasing rate from 1980 to 2010 than ESI, suggesting the
role of local
hydrological processes in moderating extreme climate events. Thus, the
hydrological aridity
index is better than the meteorological aridity index for climate
classification in the arid Heihe
River Basin.