Climate change perception in Romania.

In the last decades, anthropogenic drivers have significantly influenced the natural climate variability of Earth's atmosphere. Climate change has become a subject of major interest for different levels of our society, such as national governments, businesses, local administration, or citizens. While national and local policies propose mitigation and adaptation strategies for different sectors, public perception is a key component of any implementation plan. This study investigates the CC perception in Romania, based on a national-scale online survey performed in the spring of 2020, aiming to outline the prominence of environmental and CC issues, level of information and interest, perceived causes, changes perceived in meteorological phenomena at the regional scale, perceived impacts, and the psychological representation of the CC. The study investigates single causal factors of perception. We found that particularly (i) the regional differences on climate change intensity strongly bias the perception of CC causes; (ii) age is very likely to influence the acceptance of CC, the importance of environmental issues, and the levels of information and interest; while (iii) age, gender, and place of residence (rural-urban) are very likely to control the changes perceived in the occurrence of various meteorological phenomena, and their impact. This research is the first statistically relevant analysis (± 4%, statistical significance) developed at national and regional scales and the only study of climate change perception performed during the COVID-19 pandemic in Romania. Its results may represent the baseline for more in-depth research. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00704-022-04041-4.

Global COVID-19 lockdown highlights humans as both threats and custodians of the environment.

The global lockdown to mitigate COVID-19 pandemic health risks has altered human interactions with nature. Here, we report immediate impacts of changes in human activities on wildlife and environmental threats during the early lockdown months of 2020, based on 877 qualitative reports and 332 quantitative assessments from 89 different studies. Hundreds of reports of unusual species observations from around the world suggest that animals quickly responded to the reductions in human presence. However, negative effects of lockdown on conservation also emerged, as confinement resulted in some park officials being unable to perform conservation, restoration and enforcement tasks, resulting in local increases in illegal activities such as hunting. Overall, there is a complex mixture of positive and negative effects of the pandemic lockdown on nature, all of which have the potential to lead to cascading responses which in turn impact wildlife and nature conservation. While the net effect of the lockdown will need to be assessed over years as data becomes available and persistent effects emerge, immediate responses were detected across the world. Thus, initial qualitative and quantitative data arising from this serendipitous global quasi-experimental perturbation highlights the dual role that humans play in threatening and protecting species and ecosystems. Pathways to favorably tilt this delicate balance include reducing impacts and increasing conservation effectiveness.

Exploratory Analysis of Urban Climate Using a Gap-Filled Landsat 8 Land Surface Temperature Data Set.

The Landsat 8 satellites have retrieved land surface temperature (LST) resampled at a 30-m spatial resolution since 2013, but the urban climate studies frequently use a limited number of images due to the problems related to missing data over the city of interest. This paper endorses a procedure for building a long-term gap-free LST data set in an urban area using the high-resolution Landsat 8 imagery. The study is applied on 94 images available through 2013-2018 over Bucharest (Romania). The raw images containing between 1.1% and 58.4% missing LST data were filled in using the Data INterpolating Empirical Orthogonal Functions (DINEOF) algorithm implemented in the sinkr R packages. The resulting high-spatial-resolution gap-filled land surface temperature data set was used to explore the LST climatology over Bucharest (Romania) an urban area, at a monthly, seasonal, and annual scale. The performance of the gap-filling method was checked using a cross-validation procedure, and the results pledge for the development of an LST-based urban climatology.

Observed and Potential Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Environment.

Various environmental factors influence the outbreak and spread of epidemic or even pandemic events which, in turn, may cause feedbacks on the environment. The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was declared a pandemic on 13 March 2020 and its rapid onset, spatial extent and complex consequences make it a once-in-a-century global disaster. Most countries responded by social distancing measures and severely diminished economic and other activities. Consequently, by the end of April 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to numerous environmental impacts, both positive such as enhanced air and water quality in urban areas, and negative, such as shoreline pollution due to the disposal of sanitary consumables. This study presents an early overview of the observed and potential impacts of the COVID-19 on the environment. We argue that the effects of COVID-19 are determined mainly by anthropogenic factors which are becoming obvious as human activity diminishes across the planet, and the impacts on cities and public health will be continued in the coming years.

Ten principles to integrate the water-energy-land nexus with climate services for co-producing local and regional integrated assessments.

The water-energy-land nexus requires long-sighted approaches that help avoid maladaptive pathways to ensure its promise to deliver insights and tools that improve policy-making. Climate services can form the foundation to avoid myopia in nexus studies by providing information about how climate change will alter the balance of nexus resources and the nature of their interactions. Nexus studies can help climate services by providing information about the implications of climate-informed decisions for other economic sectors across nexus resources. First-of-its-kind guidance is provided to combine nexus studies and climate services. The guidance consists of ten principles and a visual guide, which are discussed together with questions to compare diverse case studies and with examples to support the application of the principles.