Most of the population and economic growth in the United States occurs in megaregions as the clustered metropolitan areas, whereas climate change may amplify negative impacts on water and natural resources. This study assesses shifts in regional hydroclimatology of fourteen US megaregions in response to climate change over the 21st century. Hydroclimatic projections were simulated using the Variable

One of the major barriers to climate communication is that climate change is often presented to the public in such a way that impacts seem distant in time. To improve how climate change resonates with people, we propose a simple indicator: how many extreme events (hot days and heavy precipitation days) are grandchildren projected to experience that their grandparents will not experience in their lives

Snow is a crucial component of the cryosphere and its has been experiencing a significant decline for the Northern Hemisphere (NH) (35–90N) snow cover extent (SCE) in March-April over the 1948–2012 period. However, the causes of this historical snow cover decline are still uncertain. Here, based on the Global Land Data Assimilation System version 2.0 (GLDAS) reanalysis reanalyzed snow cover extent

In response to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, policymakers worldwide adopted unprecedented measures to limit disease spread, with major repercussions on economic activities and the environment. Here we provide empirical evidence of the impact of a lockdown policy on satellite-measured agricultural land greenness in Badung, a highly populated regency of Bali, Indonesia. Using machine learning and satellite

Climate modelling groups usually work with a handful of model versions (parameter combinations) that reproduce certain targeted aspects of observed climate within a certain validity range and apply them for studying future climate change. What is of concern is whether these retained model versions, with respect to their de-selected counterparts, continue being optimal for future climate that is supposed

The diurnal cycle of precipitation (DCP) is a core mode of precipitation variability in regions and seasons where the dominant precipitation type is convective. The occurrence of extreme precipitation is often closely linked to the DCP. Future changes in extreme precipitation may furthermore, in certain regions, exhibit a strong diurnal signal. Here we investigate the present and future diurnal cycle

Surface ozone (O3) pollution events are becoming more frequent and have recently emerged as a severe air pollution problem in China. However, the spatial–temporal distribution of surface O3, as well as its primary synoptic and meteorological drivers, remains poorly understood. The purpose of this study was to identify the key synoptic and meteorological drivers of O3 pollution in different regions

Nitrogen oxides detected in urban regions are primarily emitted by transportation methods and are crucial precursors for air pollutants and climate forcers such as ozone and fine particulate matter. We investigate the trends of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) obtained from a satellite instrument and surface monitors over the megacity, Seoul, South Korea, from 2005 to 2019. Both satellite Ozone Monitoring Instrument

Gaseous elemental mercury (GEM) concentrations and emissions at legacy contaminated sites represent poorly characterised components of global mercury (Hg) inventories. Here we apply both active (Tekran 2537A) and passive (MerPAS) sampling methods to comprehensively assess GEM concentrations and emissions across four dimensions (three spatial, one temporal) at a legacy contaminated site with elevated

Excess N application on agricultural land greatly impacts the environment in multiple ways, driven by population growth and improving quality of human diets. Therefore, it is essential to quantify the sources of the emissions of N compounds and their determinants (e.g. biological N fixation (BNF), mineral fertilizer, manure N and N deposition) to develop adequate mitigation measures. Here we aim at

The dynamics of a seasonal snow cover in the temperate cryosphere are critical for discussing climate change and understanding Earth systems. The most basic information is the previously unknown surface energy balance of snow and ice that can describe the snow dynamics in Japanese Alps. We show the surface energy balance properties of seasonal snow cover in the Northern Japanese Alps: one is the net

Total columns of C2H2, C2H6, CH4, CH3OH, CO, H2CO, HCl, HCN, HCOOH, HF, HNO3, N2O, NH3 and O3 were retrieved from 2002-2019 using a Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometer at the University of Toronto Atmospheric Observatory (TAO). Trends and enhancement events were determined by fitting trended Fourier series, and bootstrapping was used to identify the statistical significance. Trends from

Rain-induced cold pools are one mechanism by which transitions in cloud fraction in marine stratocumulus over the southeast Pacific occur. We use CloudSat/CALIPSO to identify raining patches within stratocumulus over the southeast Pacific, and then calculate the cloud fraction surrounding each raining patch, nearest-neighbor distance (spacing), mean rain rate, and raining patch size (extent). The spatial

Increasing air pollution in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) may be contributing to worsening respiratory health, yet to date most relevant studies have been conducted in industrialized nations. Particularly, there are few studies for India, the world’s second most populated country, and on this country’s poorest populations, who may be at the highest risk. We investigated the influence of

We test whether providing quantitative real-time feedback relating design decisions to system objectives improves group solutions in an interdependent energy-water design task. While prior research suggests an important role of real-time feedback on task performance, few studies have examined the role of real-time feedback in the design of complex environmental systems. We tested a real-time feedback

This study analyses the diurnal seasonal mean and the seasonal and annual variation in the radiation budget at the Ali Meteorological Bureau observation station in the northern Tibetan Plateau for 2019. The results indicate that the daily average variation in incidental shortwave and reflected radiation across all seasons in the Ali area had typical unimodal symmetry. The average daily variation in

In order to evaluate the pollution and ecological risks of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the soil around the Qinghai Lake, 89 surface soil samples were collected in May 2019. After ultrasonic extraction and purification of silica gel-alumina-anhydrous Na2SO4 chromatographic column, GC-MS was used to test and analyze 16 kinds of monomer PAHs under priority control of USEPA in the samples

Farmers use irrigation to mitigate drought risk and reduce yield uncertainty. A clear understanding of the monetary value of irrigation water and how it varies across time and space can help to inform farmers and policymakers about the potential impacts of water shortages and reduce uncertainty in decision making. Here, we introduce a framework for understanding the economic value of water used to

Ongoing water quality degradation tied to nitrogen and phosphorus pollution results in significant economic damages by diminishing the recreational value of surface water and compromising fisheries. Progress in decreasing nitrogen and phosphorus pollution to surface water over the past two decades has been slow. Limited resources need to be leveraged efficiently and effectively to prioritize watersheds

Cyclone Kelvin made landfall in northwest Australia as a category 1 storm on 18 February 2018. After landfall, tropical cyclones typically weaken due to the exhaustion of a moisture supply. Cyclone Kelvin continued to intensify with winds gusting to 100 knots and significant flooding well inland. A distinct eye feature also formed well after landfall. An analysis of meteorological satellite, MERRA2

Coastal power stations use sea water as a coolant, releasing it back into coastal environments at a higher-than-ambient temperature. Due to the possible ecological impacts on sensitive coastal zones, thermal plume formed by warmer coolant waters needs to be monitored, which is typically done through field campaigns. This paper assesses the use of simulations and remotely sensed observations as complimentary

Woodland creation sequesters carbon and contributes to climate change mitigation. Most previous assessments of the carbon sequestration of new UK woodlands have focused on tree planting, little is known about the scale of the potential contribution from natural regeneration. We used a Potential for Native Woodland Model to make the first estimate of carbon sequestration by large-scale native woodland

Throughout recent decades, the excessive use of animal manure and fertiliser put a threat on the quality of ground and surface waters in main agricultural production areas in Europe and other parts of the world. Finding a balance between agricultural production and environmental protection is a prerequisite for sustainable development of ground and surface waters and soil quality. To protect groundwater

A research agenda is currently developing around predicting the functional response of ecosystems to local alterations of biodiversity associated with anthropogenic activity, but existing conceptual and empirical frameworks do not serve this area well as most lack ecological realism. Here, in order to advance credible projections of future ecosystems, we use a trait-based model for marine benthic communities

Competition for freshwater resources is intensifying water scarcity and its impacts on people, economies, and the environment, posing a growing challenge for sustainable development. Meeting these challenges will require incentives to encourage sustainable water use. Prior calls to shift from supply-driven solutions to a soft path of demand management (pricing, markets, behavioral changes) have encountered

Rapid intensification (RI; ≥30 knots within 24 h) is an essential characteristic of a CAT 4–5 hurricane (≥115 knots). Between 1980 and 2018, interannual variability in CAT 4–5 hurricanes was strongly correlated with RI, both globally and in individual basins. The annual number of tropical cyclone RI events is a useful measure of global intense CAT 4–5 hurricanes. Here, singular value decomposition

The phase-locking behavior of El Nio-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in models from Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) phase 5 to phase 6 is assessed in terms of the locking-month of ENSO peak and the sharpness of locking tendency. Overall, a robust improvement exists in CMIP6. Compared to CMIP5, more CMIP6 models truly reproduce the locking-month in November-January. Meanwhile, the sharpness

In recent years, climate change has caused wildfires across the globe to generally become larger and more severe, creating new challenges for public health, housing and infrastructure, and natural resource management. As the characteristics of wildfires change, it is critical to understand where emerging risks for human and natural systems are most profound. We assess how future wildfire potential

Deep learning has shown recent key breakthroughs in enabling particulate identification directly from scattering patterns. However, moving such a detector from a laboratory to a real-world environment means developing techniques for improving the neural network robustness. Here, a methodology for training data augmentation is proposed that is shown to ensure neural network accuracy, despite occlusion

The 2020 response to the coronavirus pandemic has had a profound and rapid effect on social behavior, the economy, and consumption. Associated declines in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have prompted calls to action to use the pandemic experience to accelerate decarbonization. Such action depends on understanding how GHG emissions reductions were achieved and whether they can be sustained. In this

The present study compares the contributions of seasonal, intraseasonal, and synoptic variations of environmental factors, i.e., mid-level moisture, vertical instability, and lower-level relative vorticity, to the interannual variation of tropical cyclone (TC) genesis over the western North Pacific (WNP) during July-August-September-October (JASO) of 1979–2015. It is found that the TC genesis frequency

Many long-term air pollution and climate monitoring stations face the issue of increasing anthropogenic activities in their vicinity. Furthermore, the spatial representativeness of the sites is often not entirely understood especially in mountainous terrain with complex topographic features. This study presents a 5-year comparison of parallel aerosol measurements (total particle number concentration

The distribution of fire on Earth has been monitored from space for several decades, yet the geography of global fire regimes has proven difficult to reproduce from interactions of climate, vegetation, terrain, land use and other human activities by empirical and process-based fire models. Here, we propose a simple, yet robust, model for the global distribution of fire potential based on fundamental

Despite pressures to improve performance and reduce costs, innovation in the municipal wastewater sector in the United States has been notoriously slow. Previous research has suggested that wastewater utility managers may see regulation as a barrier to developing and deploying new technologies. To better understand how environmental regulation may fuel or hinder innovation in this sector, we conducted

This paper studies socioeconomic and environmental changes in the neighboring areas Bangladesh-Myanmar border from 2012 to 2019, thus covering the period before and after the 2017 Rakhine conflict in Myanmar and outflux of refugees across the border to Bangladesh. Given the scarcity and costliness of traditional data collection methods in such conflict areas, the paper uses a novel methodological model

The convectively coupled equatorial waves (CCEWs), including the Kelvin, mixed-Rossby gravity (MRG), eastward inertio-gravity (EIG), and westward inertio-gravity (WIG) waves, are dominant synoptic-scale waves in the tropics. In this study, the modulation of the CCEWs by the MJO is examined with observational data from 1985–2005 over the Indian Ocean (IO), Maritime Continent (MC), and Western Pacific

Aridity regulates the terrestrial ecosystem productivity in water-limited regions. The aridity index (AI) is often defined as the ratio of annual precipitation to annual potential evapotranspiration. However, how the drying and wetting influence the vegetation response and its characteristic along aridity gradient remains unclear. Here, we examined trends of the AI and normalized difference vegetation

Elevated atmospheric reactive nitrogen (NR) deposition is considered one of the key components of human induced global change, threatening biodiversity and possibly altering carbon sequestration, one of the forest’s key ecosystem services. Carbon sequestration is the net result of plant production and of soil organic matter (SOM) decomposition. Ignoring the impact of N deposition on plant growth, decomposition

Recent studies show that behaviour changes can provide an essential contribution to achieving the Paris climate targets. Existing climate change mitigation scenarios primarily focus on technological change and underrepresent the possible contribution of behaviour change. This paper presents and applies a methodology to decompose the factors contributing to changes in per capita emissions in scenarios

Most studies evaluating future changes in climate extremes over Australia have examined events that occur once or more each year. However, it is extremes that occur less frequently than this that generally have the largest impacts on sectors such as infrastructure, health and finance. Here we use an ensemble of high resolution (∼10 km) climate projections from the NSW and ACT Regional Climate Modelling

China has a large volume of inter-provincial migrants, accounting for more than 11% of the total population. The economic benefits of inter-provincial migration have been well studied, whereas the health impacts related to environmental factors are generally ignored. In this study, the exposure-response function was used to estimate the health effects and the corresponding economic value was calculated

Around the Persian (Arabian) Gulf, a considerable volume of freshwater is obtained by desalination of seawater with the residual brine dumped back into the Gulf. This discharge of saltier waters impacts the marine ecosystem and may also affect dynamic and thermodynamic processes. Here, a fully non-linear, high-resolution numerical model is used to investigate the physical impacts of brine discharge

The scale and extent of global urbanization are unprecedented and increasing. As urbanization generally encroaches on natural habitats and the urban ecological footprint reaches far beyond the city limits, how urbanization affects biodiversity has received increasing attention from the scientific community. Nonetheless, the comprehensive syntheses of urbanization consequences for biodiversity, including

Local and state governments have made significant advances in creating, implementing, and evaluating energy efficiency programs in the buildings sector. Evaluations commonly use ex-post statistical models to complement ex-ante engineering estimates when determining program impacts. A critical assumption of data-driven evaluations is that reductions would not occur in the absence of the program. This

This study depicts changes in the warm season (May to September) Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) quantifying outdoor thermal comfort over the Loess Plateau from 1982 to 2015 and examines its relationship with large-scale climate changes and local vegetation restoration under the Grain for Green Program (GGP) after 1999. The results show that the UTCI experienced an increasing trend of 0.074/a

Inclusion of legume species into grass leys reduces nitrogen (N) fertilizer need but increases the risk of freeze-thaw induced N2O emissions. We investigated how liming and presence of clover affect N2O accumulation under snowpack and its emission during freeze-thaw cycles in autumn and spring under sub-boreal conditions. A field experiment was performed in southern Norway in limed and control plots

The cold chain (refrigerated supply chain) is an important application of refrigeration technologies. The capacity of the cold chain industry is growing rapidly in emerging economies such as China, leading to significant environmental impacts, especially greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. By conducting the literature review, this study begins with presenting a comprehensive overview of the cold chain

Today in transport policy it is assumed that new forms of work are producing falls in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from work-related commuting. So far, research on the effects of teleworking generally report positive environmental outcomes. However, no study has so far compared and contrasted the greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation potential of the new phenomenon of coworking spaces with regard to urban-rural

Sargassum algal blooms on ocean surfaces and landings of huge Sargassum mats on beaches is an emerging global environmental challenge with wide socio-economic and environmental implications. Literature on Sargassum growth cycles, travel patterns, species and morphotypes, and quantified impacts have tended to focus on a geographic region, or a specific event. Few, if any, publications document long

In recent decades, the rate of milk production per unit land area and per cow has increased with the intensification of the dairy system. The possible environmental risks arising from nutrients surpluses, such as nitrogen (N), are often evaluated using the N balance approach. In Hokkaido, the biggest dairy farming area in Japan, many dairy farms have started introducing a new dairy farming system called

Semiarid karst landscapes are often the source areas for regionally important groundwater supplies. Like savannas across the globe, these landscapes are experiencing an increase in woody plant cover—often referred to as woody plant encroachment. Although this phenomenon is commonly viewed as leading to increased transpiration and reduced groundwater recharge, this may not be true of all ecosystems

Nutrient pollution of surface waters is a widespread problem, calling for regional assessments of water quality conditions. In this study, we quantified long-term median nutrient concentrations of total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) in streams and rivers of Pennsylvania and explored relationships between stream nutrient concentrations and the land use of their watersheds. Our analysis is

Social-ecological resilience of freshwater systems in lower Mekong basin in southeast Asia is largely unknown. Over the recent past, the freshwater ecosystems in the region have gone through severe environmental stress. Climate change, sea level rise, over-extraction of water and eutrophication together have increased vulnerability to regime shifts of ecosystems in the region. Regime shifts can have

Studies of power system operation commonly draw from two key databases produced by the US Environmental Protection Agency: the Acid Rain Program’s Continuous Emission Monitoring System (CEMS) data, and the Emissions and Generation Resource Integrated Database (eGRID). Separate reporting requirements and heterogeneity in data aggregation between these two databases creates a barrier to systematic spatial

Climate change and global warming will increase the risk of coastal floods and storm surges, which can highly jeopardize communities and infrastructures along shorelines. There are two main drivers for this increase: surge amplification, which is caused by the projected hurricane intensification, and global sea-level rise (SLR). Although both factors can simultaneously affect storm surges, current

This paper shows that a fuller integration of the economic theory of well-being into strategies adopted to reduce the impact of climate change could help to avoid potential conflicts between the mitigation measures applied and the consumption of energy derived from fossil fuels. The paper moves along the path traced by Wood and Roelich (2019) with their Tensions Triangle Theory, but aims to develop

Many studies have investigated the role of solar variability in Holocene climate. Beyond sunspot observations, solar activity can be reconstructed from 14 C in tree rings. Due to the lack of sub-decadal resolution of 14 C records, these studies focused on long-term processes. In this study, we use an annually-resolved 14 C record to examine solar variability (e.g. 11-year Schwabe solar cycle) and its

Based on the observed dust weather occurrence (DWO), precipitation and 10 m wind speed at 23 stations over the Tarim Basin in northwest China and the National Centers for Environment Prediction/National Center for Atmospheric Research reanalysis data during 1961–2015, we have indicated the relationship between the summer DWO over the Tarim basin and South Asian summer monsoon (SASM) and revealed the

Agricultural production is often accompanied by nitrogen (N) losses causing negative environmental effects. In order to assess dairy farms N management, appropriate indicators based on robust farm data need to be addressed. This study investigated N balance and N use efficiency (NUE) as a function of grazing intensity on specialized dairy farms in northwestern Germany. For that, 30 farms were grouped

Time series of global mean surface temperature are widely used to measure the rate of climate change that results from Earth’s energy imbalance. However, studies based on climate model simulations suggest that on annual-to-decadal timescales global ocean heat content is a more reliable indicator. Here we examine the observational evidence for this, drawing together multiple datasets that span the past