Rafiq Hamdi

• Dr. ir.
• Researcher at Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium

High‐resolution climate data is needed for assessing the regional and local impact of climate change. Therefore, in this study, for the first time, a simulation at the resolution of 12.5 km was done over the African domain using the regional climate model ALARO‐0. This simulation was evaluated using multiple reference datasets, including observatio...

The net ecosystem exchange (NEE), determining terrestrial carbon sequestration capacity, is strongly controlled by climate change and has exhibited substantial year-to-year fluctuations. How the increased frequency and intensity of warm extremes affect NEE variations remains unclear. Here, we combined multiple NEE datasets from atmospheric CO2 inve...

As an effect of climate change, cities need detailed information on urban climates at decision scale that cannot be easily delivered using current observation networks, nor global and even regional climate models. A review is presented of the recent literature and recommendations are formulated for future work. In most cities, historical observatio...

There is an increasing need to obtain climate projections for cities using an ensemble approach for uncertainty estimation. Yet, current-day computational resources are too limited to dynamically downscale GCM ensembles to urban scale. Here, a recently developed and validated statistical-dynamical computationally-cheap method is employed to downsca...

The flood–drought severity in arid regions such as Xinjiang is increasingly influenced by climate extremes. While prior studies have explored the relationship between climate extremes and flood–drought dynamics, few have analyzed these interactions at different time and spatial scales using different method combinations. This study addresses that g...

The rapid urbanization of Jaipur has profoundly altered its urban climate, driven by anthropogenic heat flux (AF) and shifts in surface energy dynamics. This study leverages remote sensing techniques, utilizing Landsat data, to quantify AF and assess its influence on the city’s climate. The findings reveal a striking paradox; despite a significant...

Plain Language Summary Over the past two decades, China has faced increasingly frequent extreme events driven by global climate change, alongside significant changes in land cover. However, assessing the impacts of these changes on carbon exchange remains challenging due to limited observational data. This study analyzed carbon exchange dynamics in...

The scarcity and uneven global distribution of eddy covariance (EC) towers are the key factors that contribute to significant uncertainties in carbon cycle studies of terrestrial ecosystems. To address this limitation of EC towers, Zhang et al. (2023b) developed a meteorological station-based net ecosystem exchange (NEE) dataset. This dataset inclu...

Snowmelt and related extreme events can have profound natural and societal impacts. However, the studies on projected changes in snow‐related extremes across the Tianshan Mountains (TS) and Pamir regions have been underexplored. Utilizing regional climate model downscaling and bias‐corrected CMIP6 data, this study examined the changes in snowmelt a...

Global warming has intensified the frequency and intensity of high-temperature stress (HS) events in terrestrial ecosystems, impacting both carbon sequestration through photosynthesis and carbon emissions through respiration. However, the net effect of HS on ecosystem carbon balance remains unclear. This study identifies, global HS thresholds for g...

High-quality climate information tailored to cities’ needs assists decision makers to prepare for and adapt to climate change impacts, as well as to support the targeted transition towards climate resilient cities. During the last decades, two main modelling approaches emerged to understand and analyse the urban climate and to generate information....

Dunkelflautes, events of low renewable production and potentially high demand, are the most extreme examples of the susceptibility of a renewable energy system with respect to weather variability. Yet, these events currently lack a precise definition in the literature. Based on 41 years of weather data, we explore the resilience of the Belgian ener...

The shifting thermal environment brought by global warming presents new concerns for urban residents. However, the lack of urban presentation in the global and regional climate models limits the ability of these models to provide useful information at the urban scale. This study examines the impact of 1.5 °C and 2 °C global warming levels (GWL1.5 a...

The intricate interaction of natural and anthropogenic factors drives changes in land and water in response to societal demands and climate change. However, there has been insufficient information on the feedback effects in dryland hotspots altered by land change dynamics. This research compared two transboundary inland lakes, the Lake Chad basin (...

Phreatic groundwater hydrology has a well-documented influence on the land water/energy/carbon cycles. To capture the resilience of the biosphere to dry spells in land surface models, it is particularly crucial to incorporate groundwater dynamics. With the ISBA-CTRIP land surface system, it is possible to perform a coupled simulation of the land su...

Plain Language Summary Central Asia (CA) has experienced a faster temperature rise than the global land over the past decades, which has brought unprecedented challenges to the survival and flourishing of life. The role of drivers and their associated underlying biophysical mechanisms is explored here. We conclude that the temperature increase in C...

The gross primary production (GPP) of the terrestrial biosphere is a key source of variability in the global carbon cycle. It is modulated by hydrometeorological drivers (i.e. short-wave radiation, air temperature, vapour pressure deficit and soil moisture) and the vegetation state (i.e. canopy greenness, leaf area index) at instantaneous to intera...

The greening of land plays a meaningful role in improving human settlements by regulating ecosystem functions in the central coast region of China. However, research on the spatiotemporal heterogeneity of green land changes in different urbanized regions and the cooling temperature effect of the different green land densities are still lacking in t...

Cool materials and rooftop vegetation help achieve urban heating mitigation as they can reduce building cooling demands. This study assesses the cooling potential of different mitigation technologies using Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF)- taking case of a tropical coastal climate in the Kolkata Metropolitan Area. The model was validated usin...

The eddy covariance (EC) flux stations have great limitations in the evaluation of the global net ecosystem carbon exchange (NEE) and in the uncertainty reduction due to their sparse and uneven distribution and spatial representation. If the EC stations are linked with widely distributed meteorological stations using machine learning (ML) and remot...

A low-threshold methodology for mapping the nocturnal air temperature in an urbanized region based on bicycle measurements and a number of in-situ weather stations is presented. Firstly, two corrections are applied on the bike measurements: a thermal inertia correction to account for the finite reaction speed of the temperature sensor and a tempera...

The gross primary production (GPP) of the terrestrial biosphere is a key source of variability in the global carbon cycle. It is modulated by hydrometeorological drivers (i.e., shortwave radiation, air temperature, vapor pressure deficit and soil moisture) and the vegetation state (i.e., canopy greenness, leaf area index) at instantaneous to intera...

The dynamics of Gross Primary Productivity (GPP) is key to understand the global carbon cycle. Multiple GPP products are currently available based on remote sensing, Light Use Efficiency model (LUE) or diagnostic biophysical model. However, little knowledge is available on the spatial patterns of the uncertainty of different GPP products and their...

The unique geographical diversity and rapid urbanization across the Indian subcontinent give rise to large-scale spatiotemporal variations in urban heating and air emissions. The complex relationship between geophysical parameters and anthropogenic activity is vital in understanding the urban environment. This study analyses the characteristics of...

Within land surface models (LSM), the biomass allocation scheme (BAS) allows to simulate the dynamics of vegetation growth in response to climatic variation and other drivers. It distributes the assimilated carbon across different biomass pools, and consequently determines the spatio-temporal variability of the leaf area index (LAI). In many LSM,...

Within land surface models (LSM), the biomass allocation scheme (BAS) allows to simulate the dynamics of vegetation growth in response to climatic variation and other drivers. It distributes the assimilated carbon across different biomass pools, and consequently determines the spatio-temporal variability of the leaf area index (LAI). In many LSM, l...

The central coast is one of the importantly livable regions in China, and green land plays a meaningful role in improving human settlements through regulating ecosystem services. However, the research on spatiotemporal heterogeneity of green land in different urbanized areas are still lacking in this region, which limits the timeliness of reporting...

Different heat mitigation technologies have been developed to improve the thermal environment in cities. However, the regional impacts of such technologies, especially in the context of a tropical city, remain unclear. The deployment of heat mitigation technologies at city‐scale can change the radiation balance, advective flow, and energy balance b...

Plain Language Summary Heavy precipitation is known to have major impacts on society, including crop damage, soil erosion, landslides, and increased flood risk. In recent years, there is a growing body of evidence that human‐induced climate change has intensified extreme precipitation on the global scale. Both regional and global climate models pre...

Estimating the impact of climate change and emission scenarios on air pollution can be done using regional climate models (RCMs). Climate uncertainties are commonly estimated using RCM ensembles such as provided by EURO-CORDEX. Despite the strong relations between the weather and air pollutants, interactions are usually complex and require meteorol...

Drip irrigation underneath plastic film mulch was extensively applied to mitigate water scarcity in oasis agroecosystems over arid northwest China. However, the local climate effects induced by the agricultural practice were still not appraised clearly, especially from the perspective of the Mountain-Oasis-Desert System (MODS), a basic landscape co...

Cities often exhibit higher temperatures, drier soils and greater habitat fragmentation than rural areas, and may thus represent constraining growing environments for plants. This variety of environmental conditions along urban-to-rural gradients might lead to plasticity in plant traits. Urban conditions could affect plant traits such as germinatio...

Rain-on-snow (ROS) events can greatly affect the snow process and cause severe snowmelt-related hazards. It is important to monitor the spatiotemporal distribution of ROS events over the ungauged High Mountain Asia (HMA). This study investigated the spatiotemporal variability of ROS events over the HMA and its potential influencing factors from 198...

The Aral Sea once covered 68 × 103 km², but lost 90% of its area during the last decades due to unreasonable water resources utilization. Fortunately, some measures to save the Aral Sea have been proposed. Regional climate model ALARO-SURFEX was applied in dynamic downscaling simulations to quantify the climatic effects generated by increasing gree...

The processes involved in the exchange of water, energy and carbon in terrestrial ecosystems are strongly intertwined. To accurately represent the terrestrial biosphere in land surface models (LSMs), the intrinsic coupling between these processes is required. Soil moisture and leaf area index (LAI) are two key variables at the nexus of water, energ...

This Cross-Working Group Box on Cities and Climate Change responds to the critical role of urbanisation as a megatrend impacting climate adaptation and mitigation. Issues associated with cities and urbanisation are covered in substantial depth within all three Working Groups (including WGI Box TS.14, WGII Chapter 6 ‘Cities, settlements and key infr...

Special Issue "The Confinement Period and Its Potential Impact on Urban Heat Island and Surface Temperature Using Remote Sensing"

The accumulation and ablation processes of seasonal snow significantly affect the land surface phenology in a mountainous ecosystem. However, the ability of snow to regulate the alpine land surface phenology in the arid regions is not well described in the context of climate change. The impact of snowpack changes on land surface phenology and its d...

Control of infections with Dictyocaulus viviparus is difficult due to its volatile epidemiology. In the absence of predictive models, ‘vigilance and treatment’ is today’s mainstay for control. In order to evaluate the potential of predictive model development to support a more preventative approach, this longitudinal study aimed at understanding th...

Understanding the response of extreme precipitation (EP) at a city scale to global warming is critical to reducing the respective risk of urban flooding. Yet, current knowledge on this issue is limited. Here, focusing on an urban agglomeration in the tropics, Singapore, we reveal that future global warming enhances both frequency and intensity of E...

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This study investigates how the individual and combined effects of urbanization and irrigation affect summer climate using convection‐permitting regional climate model simulations with/without urbanization or irrigation over the Huang‐Huai‐Hai plain (3HP). We found that (a) In dramatic urban expansion areas, T2max, T2avg, and T2min increased by 0.5...

In the context of the COVID-19 outbreak, a strict lockdown was ordered by Belgian authorities from 18/03/2020 till 04/05/2020. This led to a limitation of industrial production, human activities and transport use where only essential motorized transport were permitted. This research is an attempt to study the impact of these measures on the canopy...

To capture the vegetation-driven seasonal variability in surface fluxes, land surface models (LSM) simulate the evolution of leaf area index (LAI) prognostically. A common approach to achieve this, is by directly coupling the carbon assimilation flux to the leaf biomass evolution. In this study, we evaluate this scheme by isolating it from the LSM...

The increasing frequency and intensity of droughts in a warming climate are likely to exacerbate adverse impacts on ecosystems, especially for water-limited regions such as Central Asia. A quantitative understanding of the impacts of drought on vegetation is required for drought preparedness and mitigation. Using the Global Inventory Modeling and M...

Mapping the distribution of allergenic plants in urbanized landscapes is of high importance to evaluate its impact on human health. However, data is not always available for the allergy-relevant species such as alder, birch, hazel, especially within cities where systematic inventories are often missing or not readily available. This research presen...

Snowfall is a critical component of the hydrological cycle and water resources supply in mountainous areas. The snowfall regime varies according to time and space, and its uncertainties exist under climate change conditions. It is a necessary process to monitor the moisture characteristics of snowfall so as to investigate the information on snowfal...

The processes involved in the exchange of water, energy and carbon in terrestrial ecosystems are strongly intertwined. To accurately represent the terrestrial biosphere in land surface models (LSM), the intrinsic coupling between these processes is required. Soil moisture and leaf area index are two key variables at the nexus of water, energy and v...

Purpose: This study assesses the potential acute effects of heatwaves on human morbidities in primary care settings. Methods: We performed a time-stratified case-crossover study to assess the acute effects of heatwaves on selected morbidities in primary care settings in Flanders, Belgium, between 2000 and 2015. We used conditional logistic regre...

Lakes play an important role in regulating the regional climate, especially the large one in the arid region. The Aral Sea located in Central Asia, was once the fourth largest lake in the world, but gradually shrunk and lost more than 80% of its surface. As the Ara Sea dries up in last 60 years, the role of Aral Sea in regulating the regional clima...

The Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium (RMI) gathered ambient aerosol data in Brussels with a 7-wavelengths aethalometer and a 3 wavelengths integrating nephelometer. The amount of light-absorbing particles showed a clear daily and weekly cycle, with a sharp peak in the morning rush hour time and a broader peak in the evening. During weekend...

The demand from the city planners and stakeholders concerning climate change impact on cities is increasing. Due to the global warming, cities, which are already more vulnerable, will experience an increasing number of extreme events such as heat waves. However, the information about long-term climate projections are extracted from global or region...

Climate change leads to more days with extremely hot temperatures. Previous analyses of heat waves have documented a short-term rise in mortality. The results on the relationship between high temperatures and hospitalisations, especially in vulnerable patients admitted to nursing homes, are inconsistent. The objective of this research was to examin...

This study aimed to simulate oak and beech forest growth under various scenarios of climate change and to evaluate how the forest response depends on site properties and particularly on stand characteristics using the individual process-based model HETEROFOR. First, this model was evaluated on a wide range of site conditions. We used data from 36 l...

Sub-daily precipitation extremes are high-impact events that can result in flash floods, sewer system overload, or landslides. Several studies have reported an intensification of projected short-duration extreme rainfall in a warmer future climate. Traditionally, regional climate models (RCMs) are run at a coarse resolution using deep-convection pa...

Although climate change is a global phenomenon, its manifestations and consequences are different in different regions, and therefore climate information on spatial scales ranging from sub-continental to local is used for impact and risk assessments. Chapter 10 assesses the foundations of how regional climate information is distilled from multiple,...

The Working Group I (WGI) contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) assess the physical science basis of climate change. As part of that contribution, this Technical Summary (TS) is designed to bridge between the comprehensive assessment of the WGI Chapters and its Summary for Policymakers (SPM). I...

Urban heat island, a phenomenon that urban temperature is higher than the rural area nearby, affects directly citizens' human health and well-being. However, the cooling effect from urban green space (UGS) and the attribution of the different land processes to surface urban heat island intensity (SUHI) under different background climates remains un...

Quantifying the variation of biophysical parameters and their driving mechanisms is essential for monitoring land surface environmental changes and for understanding the land–atmosphere interaction in the arid region. Due to the complexity of human activities, most researches are limited to climate change, whereas the response analysis of human act...

Surface carbon fluxes associated with terrestrial vegetation play a key role in the global carbon cycle. Remote sensing (RS) and land surface models (LSM) have demonstrated to be valuable tools in assessing the gross primary production (GPP). Yet, the seasonal variability of this flux, and timing of the seasonal cycle remain challenging to observe...

This Deliverable (5.3) builds on the current climate simulations of D5.2 in which approaches and results were presented for current (recent) climate and current city for selected regions and phenomena. In this Deliverable the results for future climate and – if feasible – for the future city are first presented based on the same models and approach...

The application of Land surface models (LSMs) at regional scales still faces challenges and large uncertainties exist in simulating regional energy fluxes and land surface temperature (LST). This is possibly caused by their poor representations of surface parameter properties (e.g., fractional vegetation coverage (FVC) and surface roughness length...

Mountain snow is a fundamental freshwater supply in the arid regions. Climate warming alters the timing of snowmelt and shortens the snow cover duration, which greatly influences the regional climate and water management. However, a reliable estimation of snow mass in the Tianshan Mountains (TS) is still unclear due to the scarcity of extensive con...

Cropland redistribution to marginal land has been reported worldwide; however, the resulting impacts on environmental sustainability have not been investigated sufficiently. Here we investigated the environmental impacts of cropland redistribution in China. Due to urbanization-induced loss of high-quality croplands in south China (∼8.5 t ha–1), cro...

Today, the vast majority of meteorological data are collected in open, rural environments to comply with the standards set by the World Meteorological Organization. However, these traditional networks lack local information that would be of immense value, for example, for studying urban microclimate, evaluating climate adaptation measures, or impro...

In the Aral Sea region, significant land use/cover change (LUCC) occurred in the past 50 years, especially the shrinking of Aral Sea due to unreasonable usage of water resources under intensified agricultural activities. However, to date, regional climatic feedbacks on fine‐scale exerted by such LUCC in Central Asia have not been studied clearly. I...

To allow for climate impact studies on human and natural systems, high-resolution climate information is needed. Over some parts of the world plenty of regional climate simulations have been carried out, while in other regions hardly any high-resolution climate information is available. The CORDEX Central Asia domain is one of these regions, and th...

When colonizing new areas, alien plant species success can depend strongly on local environmental conditions. Microclimatic barriers might be the reason why some alien plant species thrive in urban areas, while others prefer rural environments. We tested the hypothesis that the climate in the native range is a good predictor of the urbanity of alie...