The targeted climate indices were frequency of extreme events, and changes in onset and cessation of the two main growing seasons MAM and OND.
Soils and their functions may be impacted by these extreme events through changes in the biomass, composition and activities of edaphic microbial communities.
Their effects can be both direct, through extreme events and changes in the disease environment, and indirect through their impact on the economic livelihood of the population (1, 2).
Meanwhile, evidence is mounting that climate change has already affected human health directly and indirectly in China, including mortality from extreme weather events; changes in air and water quality; and changes in the ecology of infectious diseases.
Evidence is mounting that climate change has already affected human health directly and indirectly in China, including mortality from extreme weather events, changes in air and water quality, and changes in the ecology of infectious diseases (Zhang et al. 2010).
Some extreme events have changed as a result of anthropogenic influence.
On the global scale, there is a robust observational evidence that, over the last decades, the frequency and intensity of extreme events significantly changed, even if regional and local studies have highlighted complex and non-uniform spatial patterns.
"We know enough now to know that changes in extreme events with climate change, whether droughts or floods, are costly to agriculture," Hohenstein said.
It has therefore been suggested that tests for climatic change should focus on changes in extreme events rather than on changes in climatic means (von Storch and Zwiers, 1988; Mason et al. 1999).
"As we get more extreme events, that absolutely changes how we design," said D. Wayne Klotz, president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, who has raised the topic repeatedly at the society's meetings.
