Slope Safety Preparedness for Impact of Climate Change - Texas A&M University (TAMU) Scholar

2017 Taylor & Francis Group, London, UK. Climate change is a significant change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods of time ranging from decades to millions of years. The issue on climate change has been discussed and reported comprehensively in the first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report (IPCC, 1990), fifth IPCC report (2013), Kyoto Protocol (Oberthur and Ott, 1999) and United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) report (United Nations, 1993). The reports indicated that 90% of human activities caused the increase in the concentrations of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, CO2; methane, CH4; nitrous oxide, NO2; ozone, O3 and halocarbons), resulting in the destabilizing effect on the global climate, known as global warming. The study by Stern (2007) showed that the impacts of climate change were across nations and sectors, such as: food, water (i.e. increase in groundwater table, ice melting), ecosystems and extreme weather events (i.e. intense rainfall, high temperature, strong wind and floods). Among all sectors, water and extreme weather events were the main factors that affect slope stability around the world.

Slope Safety Preparedness for Impact of Climate Change Book