Climate change has been attracting extensive attention worldwide due to its significant and irreversible impacts on the human living environments including hydrometeorological disasters, freshwater availability, land use and land change, urbanization, food production, disease outbreaks, and many other aspects. It has caused huge socio-economic losses, and is the utmost obstacle to the sustainable development of human society. Therefore, addressing the above problems is an urgent and necessary issue to explore the impacts of climate change on different aspects of the human living environment, as an important basis to adopt effective adaptive measures and actions for mitigation of climate change impacts.

Extreme weather and climate events, interacting with exposed and vulnerable human and natural systems, can lead to disasters. This Special Report explores the social as well as physical dimensions of weather- and climate-related disasters, considering opportunities for managing risks at local to international scales. SREX was approved and accepted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on 18 November 2011 in Kampala, Uganda.

Biodiversity loss in terrestrial environments associated with human activities has been appreciated as a major issue for some years now. What is less well documented is the effect of such activities, including climate change, on marine biodiversity. This pioneering book is the first to address this important but neglected topic, which is likely to be the key challenge for marine scientists in the near future. Using a multidisciplinary and a holistic approach, the book reveals how climatic variability controls biodiversity at time scales ranging from synoptic meteorological events to millions of years and at spatial scales ranging from local sites to the whole ocean. It shows how global change, including anthropogenic climate change, ocean acidification and more direct human influences such as exploitation, pollution and eutrophication may alter biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and regulating and provisioning services. The author proposes a theory termed the 'macroecological theory on the arrangement of life', which explains how biodiversity is organized and how it responds to climatic variability and anthropogenic climate change. The book concludes with recommendations for further research and theoretical development to identify oceanic areas in need of observation and gaps in current scientific knowledge. Many references and comparisons with the terrestrial realm are included in all chapters to better understand the universality of the relationships between biodiversity, climate and the environment. The book will serve as a textbook for all students and researchers of marine science and environmental change, but will also be accessible to the more general reader.

Known as the “roof of the world,” the Tibetan Plateau is the highest and largest plateau on Earth. Tibetan Plateau hosts several mountain ecosystems characterized by high elevations, cold conditions, and a wide range in water availability. Its unique physical and geographical environment includes ecosystems typical for alpine regions, classified as alpine grasslands, which account for 50-70% of the total land area of the Tibetan plateau. Most of these grasslands contain fragile tundra-like environments which are seriously affected by anthropogenic modifications and whose restoration presents a challenge. These natural grassland types include alpine deserts, alpine steppes, alpine meadows, and alpine swamp meadows along precipitation gradients, as well as the transition types between them. Alpine grasslands remain subject to severe degradation by multiple factors, mainly overgrazing and climate warming. As a result, grasslands exhibit a decreased capacity to support biodiversity and complexity, and more generally, ecosystem functions. Therefore, these changes also affect social and recreational activities and restrict access to clean water and food by local communities.

Wetlands and grassland are important components of natural ecosystems, which have rich values in maintaining ecological balance, regional economy and human development. Wetlands can provide freshwater resources and food sources for human beings, purify the water environment and mitigate climate change. The grassland ecosystem has such ecological functions as windbreak, sand fixation, soil preservation, climate regulation, air purification, water conservation and so on, which are closely related to human survival and well-being. In recent years, climate change and human activities have caused a profound impact on the structure and function of wetland and grassland ecosystems, and the problems of decline in size and function have attracted extensive attention from researchers globally. However, there are still many uncertainties about the variety of wetland and grassland ecosystem composition, structure and dynamics, as well as how they respond and adapt to climate change and human activities.

Are extreme weather events becoming more common? How do extreme weather events impact society? These are critical questions that must be examined as we confront the possibility that the world will experience a change in climate over the next century. Much of the research in climatology over the past decade has focused on potential changes in long- term averages of temperature, precipitation and other factors. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that changes in average values will be accompanied by changes in extreme events. Furthermore, extreme weather events will impact society to a greater extent as people around the world continue to locate in more hazard-prone areas such as coastal zones. This book represents a major step forwards in developing a comprehensive set of information about changes in extreme events by providing a review of the problems in data availability, quality and analysis that make deriving a clear picture of world-wide changes in extreme events so difficult. Audience: The book is intended for policy-makers, professionals, graduate students and others interested in learning how extreme weather events have changed, and how they impact society both now and in the future.