A Changing climate can result in unprecedented extreme weather and climate events. The possibility of these events leading to disasters depends strongly on the level of vulnerability and exposure. Although risks cannot fully be eliminated, both disaster risk management and adaption to climate change focus on reducing vulnerability and exposure, as well as increasing resilience to the potential adverse impacts of extreme events, thus promoting sustainability in social and economic development. A more comprehensive disaster risk management raises challenges for the proper allocation of efforts among disaster risk reduction, disaster management, and so on. Disaster risk reduction becomes emphasis of concern currently as opposed to mainstream historical disaster management. This prospective disaster risk management and adaption can contribute to avoiding future, and not just reducing existing risk and disaster, and provide a background for closer integration of disaster risk management and adaption to climate change. Disaster risk management can help those practicing adaption to climate change to learn from addressing current impacts, and adaption to climate change can help those practicing disaster risk management to more effectively address future conditions that will differ from those of today.

The impacts of disaster risk not only are determined by hazard events, but also depend on the determinants of risk: exposure and vulnerability. Exposure and vulnerability are dynamic and multi-dimensional. High exposure and vulnerability are generally the outcome of skewed development processes. In the context of climate change, designing and implementing effective disaster risk management strategies to adapt to longer-term climate change need to understand dimensions of exposure and vulnerability rigorously, pay attention to risk communication and risk accumulation, and choose reliable methodologies for risk assessment. While aiming to reduce, transfer and share risk, it is also important to prepare for and respond to disaster risk, and increase resilience to changing risk. By using these integrative disaster risk management approaches, disaster risk management decisions and corresponding measures can constrain exposure and vulnerability and enable future climate change adaption.

There is evidence from observations gathered since 1950 of changes in some weather and climate extremes. It is likely that anthropogenic influences have led to increase of extreme daily minimum and maximum temperatures on the global scale. It is likely that there has been an anthropogenic influence on increasing extreme coastal high water due to increase in mean sea level. There is medium confidence that anthropogenic influences have contributed to intensification of extreme precipitation on the global scale. The uncertainties in the historical tropical cyclone records, the incomplete understanding of the physical mechanisms linking tropical cyclone metrics to climate change, and the degree of tropical cyclone variability provide only low confidence for the attribution of any detectable changes in tropical cyclone activity to anthropogenic influences. Attribution of single extreme events to anthropogenic climate change is challenging. Confidence in projecting changes in the direction and magnitude of weather and climate extremes depends on many factors, including the type of extreme, the region and season, the amount and quality of observational data, the level of understanding of the underlying processes, and the reliability of their simulation in models.

IPCC launched the special report of “Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation” (SREX), of which impacts on human systems is one of the most important contents. This paper introduces the main assessment results. Extreme impacts can result from extreme weather and climate events, but can also occur without extreme events. The severity of the impacts of extreme and non-extreme weather and climate events depends strongly on the level of exposure and vulnerability to these events. Settlement patterns, urbanization, and changes in socioeconomic status have all influenced observed trends in vulnerability and exposure to climate extremes. Coastal settlements are exposed and vulnerable to climate extremes in both developed and developing countries, such as in small island states and Asian megadeltas. Vulnerable populations also include refugees, internally displaced people, and those living in marginal areas. Extreme events will have greater impacts on sectors with close links to climate, such as water, agriculture and food security, health, and tourism.

A special report of Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX) was launched by IPCC in November 2011. As SREX indicated with high confidence that, “The severity of the impacts of climate extremes depends strongly on the level of the exposure and vulnerability to these extremes.” And “Development practice, policy, and outcomes are critical to shaping disaster risk, which may be increased by shortcomings in development.” SREX suggested that “Social, economic and environmental sustainability can be enhanced by disaster risk management and climate change adaptation approaches”. This paper debriefed the key messages of SREX from three topics, first, the interaction of extremes and development; second, how local, national and international systems strength disaster risk management and climate change adaptation; third, how to achieve for sustainable development with a changing climate. SREX suggested for decision makers and the public to plan for the future, to improve awareness for the future increasing exposure and vulnerability driven by population and wealth; to integrate with of adaptation, disaster reduction and development policies in national and sectoral agencies; to strengthen scientific and flexible decision making with multiple tools; to encourage different actors playing roles in adaptation governance and disaster risk management, and so on.

Using the temperature and precipitation data of 1951-2010 at 13 representative weather observation stations on the southern and northern slopes of the Himalayas, climate trends, decadal variation characteristics and abrupt changes were analyzed. Remarkable increasing trends of annual temperatures were detected and the linear warming trend over 1961-2010 was 0.38℃/10a. The decadal temperature increasing rate accelerated from the 1970s to 1990s, but slowed down in the 2000s. A noteworthy abrupt climatic warming appeared in the central Himalayas around 2000, and an abrupt warming change also occurred in the western and eastern sections of the Himalayas but in the 1980s and 1990s, respectively. The precipitation exhibited a slight decline trend in the western section of the Himalayas but a weak rise trend in the central and eastern sections in 1971-2010, and on the whole, there was no obvious trend in precipitation. The decadal precipitation increased a little bit from the 1970s to 1990s but decreased slightly over the 2000s. The decadal precipitation showed an abrupt decline change mainly in western Himalayas, and an abrupt rise change mainly in the central and eastern sections although those abrupt changes occurred in different decades.

Using the observation data of solar global radiation at 4 stations and sunshine percentages at 56 stations during 1961-2010 in the circum-Bohai Sea region, the spatial-temporal distribution and variations of solar global radiation in the recent 50 years were studied. In addition, evaluation of potential solar energy resource in the region was made by calculating the solar global radiation in the recent 20 years. The results showed that monthly solar global radiation showed a single peak pattern with the peak in May, and April to August being the period of abundant solar energy resource in a year. Solar global radiation generally shows a decreasing trend from 1961 to 2010. However, there was a clear turning point around 1990, with significant decrease before 1990 and no evident trend after 1990. For the whole circum-Bohai Sea region, there were large spatial differences in the interannual variation of solar global radiation. The largest decrease of solar global radiation from 1961 to 2010 occurred in Beijing, Tianjin, Tanggu and their surrounding areas as well as in the central and southern areas of Shandong Province, which may be related to the changes in aerosols as a result of industrial development. Interannual variations of solar global radiation in four seasons showed a similar significant decreasing trend, with higher decreasing rates in spring and summer compared with autumn and winter. Average solar global radiation during 1991-2010 was high in the northwest part of the region, decreasing gradually southwards and eastwards.

The development of SilviScan-3TM, measurements of cell characteristics, wood density and wood microfibril angle, and boundary marking of ring with the SilviScan-3TM were introduced. Relationships between six wood properties (ring cell diameter, cell wall thickness, width, density, microfibril angle and modulus of elasticity) of Picea crassifolia and temperature and precipitation were analyzed. The six wood properties are significantly correlated with monthly mean temperature and monthly precipitation, while the significantly correlated time is different. Moreover, ring microfibril angle and cell characteristics record more climate signals than ring width and density, which are commonly used as climate proxies. There are several advantages of SilviScan-3TM for research on climate change, e.g., high resolution measurements, multiple property parameters measurement from a same sample and precisely marking ring boundary.

Based on the data from Annual Statistical Report on Environment in China and methods recommend by IPCC, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from domestic wastewater and industrial wastewater in China from 2003 to 2009 were estimated, and emission characteristics were analyzed. GHG emissions per capita from wastewater treatment were also analyzed. The results show that the GHG emissions from wastewater treatment increased continuously from 2003 to 2009, the N2O emission from domestic wastewater was the major source of the GHG emissions from wastewater and the CH4 emissions from domestic wastewater increased fastest. The CH4 emission from manufacture of paper was the major emission source from the wastewater of the five industrial sectors. GHG emissions from the wastwater treatment per capita increased continuously from 2003 to 2009.

Based on the survey of international emission trading systems, policy suggestions on establishing carbon trading market are presented as follows. Sectors sensitive to carbon price, e.g. power generation sector, and iron and steel industry, have the priority to be chosed. Interregional carbon trading should be carried out as early as possible. The cap of carbon market should be set based on the carbon intensity reduction target of China and the floor carbon price for the market be set at beginning.

Establishing adaptation committee to promote adaptation actions under UNFCCC is one of the key issues between developing countries and developed countries during climate change negotiations. Based on reviewing the results of adaptation actions and analyzing the functions of current mechanisms under UNFCCC, the functions needed by the adaptation committee were investigated, which at least include adaptation plan, policy making, financial needs assessment, project implementation, regional centers coordination. Then, in regards to the key issues of current negotiation, the developing countries should insist that the adaptation committee come from parties and the majority of representative from developing countries, directly report and propose to COP, and directly connect with financial and technical mechanism.