Climate Change Impacts in Japan

The IPCC 2014 report talks about the major impacts over the globe, discussing in which locations there is physical, biological, or human/manage impacts. In Japan, they are biological impacts. The biological impacts in Japan are marine ecosystems, and are a major contribution of climate change. The confidence in attribution to climate change is medium. The key risk for medium confidence change in Asia lists; increased flooding in coastal/urban/riverine areas which can cause widespread damage to infrastructure, livestock, and settlements. The adaptation issues in Asia include economic diversification, constructing early and effective warning systems, and reduction in vulnerable or weak infrastructures, and effective land-use and planning. Climate Drivers in Asia include damaging cyclones, extreme precipitation, and an increase in sea level.

Next, we look at IPCC 2013 Climate change reports. In this report, it touched on the heating of the land vs. the sea and what global heating is doing to the amount of precipitation in East Asia as well as the wind speeds. What I found most interesting about this was that not only are the waves, hot spells, and days in heat increasing, but so is the precipitation, flooding, winds, and tropical typhoons. The precipitation is projected to increase over East Asia at most through May and July, but this article directly names Japan when talking about extreme precipitation throughout July. What I find interesting as well is that throughout East Asia, temperatures are increasing during the summer and increasing through the winter as well. It's hard for me to grasp this because I am from Colorado, where temperatures get higher every summer but colder every winter.

The take away after reading the executive summary on Asia from WGIIAR5 for me, is that everything is connected. Higher precipitation and hotter days will make it harder for rice production in Asia. Not only will food production be lowered, but freshwater is a huge concern as well. Because sea levels are rising, swamps, lakes, marshes and rivers are all at risk for being mixed with salt water, unless they are extremely far inland (In Japan though, not much is inland as it's an island). If there is a sea level rise, this also is a problem for the marine life as well. Like noted in the first paragraph, marine ecosystems are a huge biological impact in Japan. If sea levels are rising and the ocean is becoming warmer, this can erode natural reef life and cause widespread damage to coral reefs. Also, "More frequent and intense heat waves in Asia will increase mortality and morbidity in vulnerable groups. Increases in heavy rain and temperature will increase the risk of diarrheal disease, dengue fever, and malaria." (Asia, 1331 Chapter 24) This executive summary for me was a way to describe that even though at first glance, a heat wave may not seem so bad-it could cause death. Maybe not directly, but everything is connected. Heat-drought-food shortage-famine-death. It's just a really interesting concept for people that don't believe climate change is an issue.

In the same WGIIAR5, I chose to talk about the food production systems and food security. I think I chose this because of what we talked about in class. It affects many people because without food-what power do you have? One can survive without many different things but food production is something the world cannot survive without. I think this is also an important topic because like the previous paragraphs above, biological marine life is something that Japan impacts and it impacts Japan. So the thought of damaging the coral reefs and marine life decreasing, could mean a limit on Japan's food supply. I think this threat is 'most interesting' to me because I also care a lot about animals and the conservation of wildlife. Japan is an island so I know that many parts of Japan are dependent of fisheries. I learned while reading this that as the reefs around Japan erode, fishing in the marinas can contribute to a more wide range of overfishing, habitat loss, pollution, and this can also lower the population of fish that are not normally caught, creating a loss of species. I think food production is the most interesting threat because it affects people and humans around the globe just as much as it affects animals and wildlife.

http://www.unep.org/dewa/vitalwater/article176.html

Severe Weather in Japan

Tornadoes form by three basic steps; step 1 is the first object that forms is a rotating body of air at the ground and this occurs because of vertical wind shear. The higher that you are in altitude, the higher the wind speeds will get. Step 2 happens when horizontal rotating air is lifted off the ground by the updraft of a thunderstorm. Once this horizontal rotating mass is lifted into a vertical position it is considered a mesocyclone. By step 3 the mesocyclone is fully developed in the updraft of the storm. If a tornado develops it comes from the wall cloud located in the lower part of the cloud. In the United States, tornadoes tend to travel southwest to northeast (west to east) in the United States. This is because of an increased frequency of certain tornado producing weather patterns. Wind blows across the United States from west to east, so the tornadoes are going to follow the thunderstorms and winds across the country. In Japan, tornadoes do occur often but it is far less devastating than parts of the United States. Annually, an average of 20.5 tornadoes occur in Japan. However, only 1 tornado prior to 2000 made it to F4 on the Fujita Scale, and since 1960, no tornado has killed more than 10 people in Japan-even despite its dense population. In the United States, 1,200 tornadoes occur annually.

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/weatherhistorian/f5ef5s-and-the-worlds-deadliest-tornadoes

According to this map, Japan is between low and moderate risk of tornadoes, and it is not as high risk of a place as the eastern part of the United States.

Based on the graph on our blog assignment, tornado occurrences appear to have increased over time. This may not be true just because the occurrences have increased because of global warming or other weather phenomena that could increase dramatically one year, but decrease dramatically the next.


The three main requirements for hurricanes to form are 1)consistent heating of the surface, 2)high humidities, and 3)cumulus and cumulonimbus clouds. The ingredients for hurricane formations are warm ocean temps (equator ward 20 N,S), Coriolis needed to initiate the spinning (between >5N, S) and low values of vertical wind sheer. In Japan, because of the location they are called typhoons. Japan is in the red zone for large typhoons and tropical storms, and satisfies all of these requirements for severe weather such as typhoons and tropical depressions/storms.

The different types of formation regions are used because hurricanes are called by different names depending on where they are on the globe. Hurricanes happen in the Atlantic and East Pacific oceans (mainly USA), while cyclones happen in the Indian Ocean near Australia and are normally south of the equator. Typhoons (what Japan has) happen off the coast of China and Indonesia.

http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-recent/6248

As shown above, hurricanes move through the USA from east to west. This is the dominant direction in which hurricanes travel because of the wind sheer and pressure, because the trade winds and winds aloft go in the opposite direction.

Hurricanes (typhoons) happen in Japan, and Okinawa, Japan is right in the pathway for normal "typhoon alley." On average, 10.3 typhoons a year will approach within 300km of Japan. Years in which 12 or more actually strike Japan is considered 'many typhoons' while a year with 8 or less is considered 'few typhoons.' 


Comparing this to the USA, I found 5 hurricanes strike the United States coastline every 3 years. Only two of these hurricanes are expected to be major hurricanes, passing category 3 or higher.