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Projection and impact assessment of global change

Anthropogenic forcings on global environment are expected to cause intensification of extreme events, sea level rise, ocean acidification, as well as large-scale ecosystem changes. The CMIP6 experimental protocol has been established, based on which modeling groups across the world are starting to provide environmental projection data toward 6th IPCC assessment report due in 2021. Various new types of studies, such as event attribution and coupling of socio-economic processes and Earth system dynamics, are also emerging in the field of global change projection. In addition, impact assessment studies using downscaling technique are becoming increasingly more important for grasping the significance of environmental changes for our society. Interactions and collaborations beyond boundaries of conventional scientific disciplines are desired for dealing with the issues of global change.
In this special issue SPEPS, we invite authors to contribute latest researches or reviews on global change from disciplinary and interdisciplinary viewpoints. The scope ranges over, but not limited to, development of climate/Earth system models, their applications on projections on global and regional scales, impact assessments with a particular emphasis on Asia, and cross-cutting studies with social scientists.

Edited by: Tatsuo Suzuki, Masayoshi Ishii, Kenji Tanaka and Roy Rasmussen

  1. For the purpose of identifying the key processes and sectors involved in the interaction between Earth and socio-economic systems, we review existing studies on those processes/sectors through which the climat...

    Authors: Kaoru Tachiiri, Xuanming Su and Ken’ichi Matsumoto
    Citation: Progress in Earth and Planetary Science 2021 8:24
  2. Previous projections of the frequency of tropical cyclone genesis due to global warming, even in terms of sign of the change, depends on the chosen model simulation. Here, we systematically examine projected c...

    Authors: Yohei Yamada, Chihiro Kodama, Masaki Satoh, Masato Sugi, Malcolm J. Roberts, Ryo Mizuta, Akira T. Noda, Tomoe Nasuno, Masuo Nakano and Pier Luigi Vidale
    Citation: Progress in Earth and Planetary Science 2021 8:11
  3. In this study, we developed two high-resolution future ocean regional projection datasets for coastal applications in Japan, in which we made use of dynamical downscaling via regional ocean models with atmosph...

    Authors: Shiro Nishikawa, Tsuyoshi Wakamatsu, Hiroshi Ishizaki, Kei Sakamoto, Yusuke Tanaka, Hiroyuki Tsujino, Goro Yamanaka, Masafumi Kamachi and Yoichi Ishikawa
    Citation: Progress in Earth and Planetary Science 2021 8:7
  4. In extreme event attribution, which aims to answer whether and to what extent a particular extreme weather event can be attributed to global warming, the probability of an event is generally estimated through ...

    Authors: Akira Hasegawa, Yukiko Imada, Hideo Shiogama, Masato Mori, Hiroaki Tatebe and Masahiro Watanabe
    Citation: Progress in Earth and Planetary Science 2020 7:78
  5. Ensembles of climate change projections created by general circulation models (GCMs) with high resolution are increasingly needed to develop adaptation strategies for regional climate change. The Meteorologica...

    Authors: Rui Ito, Tosiyuki Nakaegawa and Izuru Takayabu
    Citation: Progress in Earth and Planetary Science 2020 7:77
  6. The transient climate response to cumulative carbon emissions (TCRE) is a key metric in estimating the remaining carbon budget for given temperature targets. However, the TCRE has a small scenario dependence t...

    Authors: Kaoru Tachiiri
    Citation: Progress in Earth and Planetary Science 2020 7:74
  7. To date, the treatment of permafrost in global climate models has been simplified due to the prevailing uncertainties in the processes involving frozen ground. In this study, we improved the modeling of permaf...

    Authors: Tokuta Yokohata, Kazuyuki Saito, Kumiko Takata, Tomoko Nitta, Yusuke Satoh, Tomohiro Hajima, Tetsuo Sueyoshi and Go Iwahana
    Citation: Progress in Earth and Planetary Science 2020 7:69
  8. Accurate simulations of land processes are crucial for many purposes, such as climate simulation, weather, flood, and drought prediction, and climate change impact assessment studies. In this paper, we present...

    Authors: Tomoko Nitta, Takashi Arakawa, Misako Hatono, Akira Takeshima and Kei Yoshimura
    Citation: Progress in Earth and Planetary Science 2020 7:68
  9. In the present study, the relative importance of ocean heat uptake and heat redistribution on future sea level changes in the western North Pacific has been reconciled based on a set of climate model experimen...

    Authors: Tatsuo Suzuki and Hiroaki Tatebe
    Citation: Progress in Earth and Planetary Science 2020 7:67
  10. The past 20 years of research using Earth system models (ESMs) is reviewed with an emphasis on results from the ESM based on MIROC (Model for Interdisciplinary Research on Climate) developed in Japan. Earth sy...

    Authors: Michio Kawamiya, Tomohiro Hajima, Kaoru Tachiiri, Shingo Watanabe and Tokuta Yokohata
    Citation: Progress in Earth and Planetary Science 2020 7:64
  11. Sediment dynamics play an important role in various aspects of earth system modeling. In this study, we developed a global sediment dynamics model that considers suspended sediment and bedload at short timesca...

    Authors: Misako Hatono and Kei Yoshimura
    Citation: Progress in Earth and Planetary Science 2020 7:59
  12. The Yedoma layer, a permafrost layer containing a massive amount of underground ice in the Arctic regions, is reported to be rapidly thawing. In this study, we develop the Permafrost Degradation and Greenhouse...

    Authors: Tokuta Yokohata, Kazuyuki Saito, Akihiko Ito, Hiroshi Ohno, Katsumasa Tanaka, Tomohiro Hajima and Go Iwahana
    Citation: Progress in Earth and Planetary Science 2020 7:56
  13. Mineral dust is the major source of external micro-nutrients such as iron (Fe) to the open ocean. However, large uncertainties in model estimates of Fe emissions and aerosol-bearing Fe solubility (i.e., the ra...

    Authors: Akinori Ito, Morgane M. G. Perron, Bernadette C. Proemse, Michal Strzelec, Melanie Gault-Ringold, Philip W. Boyd and Andrew R. Bowie
    Citation: Progress in Earth and Planetary Science 2020 7:42
  14. Earth system models (ESMs) are commonly used for simulating the climate–carbon (C) cycle and for projecting future global warming. While ESMs are most often applied to century-long climate simulations, millenn...

    Authors: Tomohiro Hajima, Akitomo Yamamoto, Michio Kawamiya, Xuanming Su, Michio Watanabe, Rumi Ohgaito and Hiroaki Tatebe
    Citation: Progress in Earth and Planetary Science 2020 7:40
  15. In August 2016, northern Japan was stuck by apparently unusual occurrence of the landfall of four typhoons and experienced record-breaking heavy precipitations. This study analyzed the extreme precipitations c...

    Authors: Sridhara Nayak and Tetsuya Takemi
    Citation: Progress in Earth and Planetary Science 2020 7:39
  16. The effective radiative forcing (ERF) of anthropogenic gases and aerosols under present-day conditions relative to preindustrial conditions is estimated using the Meteorological Research Institute Earth System...

    Authors: Naga Oshima, Seiji Yukimoto, Makoto Deushi, Tsuyoshi Koshiro, Hideaki Kawai, Taichu Y. Tanaka and Kohei Yoshida
    Citation: Progress in Earth and Planetary Science 2020 7:38
  17. Climate change currently affects the resilience and aquatic ecosystem. Climate change alters rainfall patterns which have a great impact on river flow. Annual flooding is an important hydrological characterist...

    Authors: Sophal Try, Shigenobu Tanaka, Kenji Tanaka, Takahiro Sayama, Giha Lee and Chantha Oeurng
    Citation: Progress in Earth and Planetary Science 2020 7:34
  18. Permafrost is a large reservoir of soil organic carbon, accounting for about half of all the terrestrial storage, almost equivalent to twice the atmospheric carbon storage. Hence, permafrost degradation under ...

    Authors: Kazuyuki Saito, Hirokazu Machiya, Go Iwahana, Hiroshi Ohno and Tokuta Yokohata
    Citation: Progress in Earth and Planetary Science 2020 7:31
  19. We evaluate the Oyashio and Kuroshio fronts latitudinal transition under the projected climate change scenarios using eddy resolving regional ocean climate projection products from 1981 to 2100. The regional o...

    Authors: Haruka Nishikawa, Shiro Nishikawa, Hiroshi Ishizaki, Tsuyoshi Wakamatsu and Yoichi Ishikawa
    Citation: Progress in Earth and Planetary Science 2020 7:29
  20. Large-ensemble climate experiments were performed to simulate future climates for a + 1.5 K rise in the global mean surface air temperatures relative to preindustrial levels as a subset of the database for Pol...

    Authors: Masaya Nosaka, Masayoshi Ishii, Hideo Shiogama, Ryo Mizuta, Akihiko Murata, Hiroaki Kawase and Hidetaka Sasaki
    Citation: Progress in Earth and Planetary Science 2020 7:27
  21. To investigate future changes in snow cover and snowfall over mountainous areas in central Japan, we conducted regional climate projections using a high-resolution non-hydrostatic regional climate model (NHRCM...

    Authors: Hiroaki Kawase, Takeshi Yamazaki, Shiori Sugimoto, Takahiro Sasai, Rui Ito, Takashi Hamada, Masatoshi Kuribayashi, Mikiko Fujita, Akihiko Murata, Masaya Nosaka and Hidetaka Sasaki
    Citation: Progress in Earth and Planetary Science 2020 7:10
  22. The evolution of regional arid/humid patterns caused by global climate change deserves attention. We investigated the changes in the area of arid/humid climate regions over Asia under the aegis of national-com...

    Authors: Fang Wang and Jintao Zhang
    Citation: Progress in Earth and Planetary Science 2020 7:11
  23. This study investigated the representation of surface winds in complex terrain during the passage of Typhoon Sondga (2004) in downscaling simulations with the horizontal grid spacing of 200 m. The mountainous ...

    Authors: Tetsuya Takemi and Rui Ito
    Citation: Progress in Earth and Planetary Science 2020 7:4