ABSTRACT
Climate Change (CC) includes both global warming driven by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases and the resulting large-scale shifts in weather patterns. Although there have been previous periods of CC, since the mid-20th century humans have had an unprecedented impact on Earth’s climate system and have caused changes on a global scale. One of the most important issues of the complex phenomenon of CC is the fact that the higher temperatures are increasing the rates of evaporation, causing more weather-related extreme incidents, such as intense storms and heavy rainfalls. Since the frequency, duration and intensity of the rainfalls are related to the instability and/or the erosion of a natural or an artificial soil slope, it becomes evident that the integrity of any structure or infrastructure located on a mountainous or a hilly region may be directly or indirectly affected by the CC during its lifetime. Under this perspective, the current paper focuses on the potential impact of CC on the instability and/or the erosion of natural and artificial soil slopes at mountainous or hilly areas, and subsequently on the integrity of the structures and infrastructure in these areas. The results illustrate that in these specific problems of geotechnical engineering (i.e., slope instability and erosion) the impact of CC may be either detrimental or beneficial, depending on the prevailing circumstances and local site conditions. Accordingly, geo-scientists and especially geotechnical engineers should collect all the required data (i.e., topographical, geological, hydro-geological, geotechnical, and seismological), assess their potential variation over time, and examine each potentially unstable area on a case-by-case basis.
