ABSTRACT: Droughts—major natural disasters with a complex development and evolution process—cause enormous losses for society, especially in the agriculture sector. We analyzed the spatiotemporal evolution of drought frequency in China at grid level during 1981-2019 with the nonparametric Mann-Kendall trend method, using a high temporal resolution vegetation health index dataset at week-scale. Results

ABSTRACT: Precipitation and temperature over the Lake Maggiore watershed greatly influence its water balance. Local communities from both Italy and Switzerland rely on the watershed for agriculture, tourism and hydropower production. Accurate climate projections in this area are vital in dealing with their impacts and yet are still lacking. Future climate was assessed by applying the Statistical DownScaling

ABSTRACT: Urban climate research is essential for sustainable development. Few review papers have focused on long-term research and planning applications in China. We conducted a bibliometric review by using CiteSpace to elaborate changes in hot spots, frontiers, development processes, and applications of urban climate research from 1963 to 2018. The identified research could be categorized into 4

ABSTRACT: A substantial increase in food production is needed for global food security. Europe is the largest wheat producer, delivering 35% of wheat globally, but its future genetic yield potential is yet unknown. We estimated the genetic yield potential of wheat in Europe under 2050 climate by designing in silico wheat ideotypes based on genetic variation in wheat germplasm. To evaluate the importance

ABSTRACT: In the present study, we examined the exposure of the Tamil Nadu region, India, to droughts and extreme rainfall events using the Standardised Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) and a classification scheme based on daily rainfall. We used high-resolution temperature and rainfall observations from the India Meteorological Department for the period 1951-2016. The robustness of the

ABSTRACT: Studies regarding species distribution, resilience and adaptability of different ecosystems as well as the response of human society are linked with our ability to identify past and predict future changes. Climate change, together with other changes like land use, land cover and invasive alien species, are important to establish the background for further modelling approaches (e.g. species

ABSTRACT: Adaptation will be essential in many sectors, including agriculture, as a certain level of warming is anticipated even after substantial climate mitigation. However, global adaptation costs and adaptation limits in agriculture are understudied. Here, we estimate the global adaptation cost and residual damage (climate change impacts after adaptation) for maize, rice, wheat and soybean using

ABSTRACT: Historical temperature reconstructions at high altitudes are still insufficient in southwestern China, which is considered one of the most sensitive areas to climate change in the world. Here we developed a tree ring-width chronology of Faxon fir Abies fargesii var. faxoniana at the upper timber line on Zhegu Mountain, Miyaluo Scenic Area, western Sichuan, China. The climate-tree growth relationship

ABSTRACT: Large-scale agricultural production in North China makes the study of precipitation in this area vital. The performance of the Integrated Merged Multisatellite Retrievals for the Global Precipitation Measurement (IMERG) and the Climate Prediction Center morphing technique (CMORPH) precipitation products for 2015 was evaluated against daily precipitation data from 404 rain gauges in North

ABSTRACT: Changes in extreme climate have caused widespread concern, and it is important to understand how climate extremes will link to global warming intensity at the regional scale. Based on the daily minimum and maximum temperature and precipitation outputs from 25 Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) climate models under the Representative Concentration Pathways 8.5 (RCP8.5) scenario

ABSTRACT: Projections of Köppen-Geiger climate classifications under future climate change for the Iberian Peninsula are investigated using a 7-ensemble mean of regional climate models obtained from EURO-CORDEX. Maps with predicted future scenarios for temperature, precipitation and Köppen-Geiger classification are analyzed for RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 in Iberia. Widespread statistically significant shifts

ABSTRACT: The regional climate model RegCM version 4.6, developed by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Reanalysis, was used to simulate the radiation budget over China. Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) satellite data were utilized to evaluate the simulation results based on 4 radiative components: net shortwave (NSW) radiation at the surface of the earth and

ABSTRACT: Grain maize production exceeds the demand for grain maize in China. Methods for harvesting good-quality silage maize urgently need a theoretical basis and reference data in order to ensure its benefits to farmers. However, research on silage maize is limited, and very few studies have focused on its energetic value and quality. Here, we calibrated the CERES-Maize model for 24 cultivars with

ABSTRACT: Long-term changes in the soil freezing-thawing depth are an important indicator of climate change. Based on data from 764 meteorological stations across China, we analysed the climatology and variability in the seasonal freezing depth (SFD) during 1965-2013 and investigated the connections among changes in the SFD, meteorological factors (temperature, precipitation, snow depth, freezing index

ABSTRACT: We used climate models to assess the effects of 2 distinct anthropogenic forcings on the water budget in the Amazon basin: (1) increasing global greenhouse gases under the RCP8.5 scenario, and (2) land cover change caused by deforestation. The Eta regional climate model, driven by the Brazilian Earth System Model version 2.5 (BESM 2.5), was used to simulate the climate response under the

ABSTRACT: The purpose of this article was to explore the impacts of climate change on human health in Australia in general, and the state of Queensland in particular. We evaluated health-related services and adaptation challenges in the health sector and indicate possible remedies. The scientific consensus on the evidence for anthropogenic climate change is convincing. Climate change will have potentially

ABSTRACT: Mesoscale convective complexes (MCCs) are meteorological events that result in severe storms, hail, flood, and tornadoes, but they are difficult to forecast. In South America (SA), MCCs are usually larger and last longer than those in the USA. Southern Brazil (SB) is one of their preferred regions of occurrence. This study’s objective was to contribute to the identification of the main physical

ABSTRACT: Within the context of analyzing daily heavy precipitation events in the Mediterranean under enhanced greenhouse gas forcing in the 21st century, a new method considering non-stationarities in the relationships of large-scale circulation predictors and regional precipitation extremes was applied. The Mediterranean area was split into up to 22 precipitation regions, and analyses were performed

ABSTRACT: Low streamflows caused by natural and anthropogenic forcings affect ecosystems and societies, especially on large timescales. We analysed the main basins of central-north Argentina (CNA) using centennial streamflow data. This study is focussed on describing spatial and temporal variability of hydrological drought events, and evaluating the atmospheric and oceanic drivers under hydrological

ABSTRACT: Hydroelectric sources are a major contributor to power generation in Brazil. The constant evaluation of climate change impacts is relevant for guiding Brazilian energy policy. This research presents a methodological framework composed of the calibration of a hydrological model and verification of a climate model in the ‘present’ climate (1961-1990), in addition to future scenarios (2011-2100)

ABSTRACT: Mid-latitude mesoscale weather during the climatological summer is strongly influenced by fluctuations in synoptic-scale circulation patterns. Previous research has linked Arctic amplification to alterations in summer synoptic climatology, leading to more extreme weather events in the mid-latitudes. In this study, seasonal (JJA) upper-level (500 hPa) atmospheric flow is reconstructed in the

ABSTRACT: Previous investigations have documented relationships between global-scale forcings and Northeast United States moisture conditions, yet the physical pathways from global-scale forcing to sub-regional moisture deficit or surplus are not well understood. This research uses eigenvector-based regionalization to confirm the existence of sub-regional moisture environments within the Northeast

ABSTRACT: Vulnerability assessment frameworks are used in many countries to provide a primary assessment status of marine fish stocks and their susceptibility to change in response to external factors. With increasing evidence that the marine fisheries of India are likely to face major impacts of changing climate along with other natural and anthropogenic factors, a study was carried out to determine

ABSTRACT: Variation in the onset, cessation, and length of the rainy season (ORS, CRS, and LRS, respectively) influences crop growth and food security. In this study, we used the cumulative precipitation anomaly method, spline interpolation, Mann-Kendall trend test, and linear regression to investigate the ORS, CRS, LRS, and rainfall amount during the rainy season (ARS), and their temporal trends,

ABSTRACT: Reviewing the results of environmental epidemiology, post-volcanic climatology, and environmental history, we focused exclusively on volcanic eruption-ENSO and ENSO-cholera connections in order to establish a hypothesis that large tropical and Northern Hemisphere volcanic eruptions trigger an environmentally driven cascade process via post-volcanic ENSO anomalies. This cascade process has

ABSTRACT: Projecting land-use changes can help with identifying potential threats to biodiversity and ecosystem function, thus mitigating impacts on human livelihoods. We examined changes in 6 land-use categories in Japan: paddy fields, croplands, forests, wastelands, built-up areas, and other artificial land cover. Land-use changes were projected to the year 2100 while considering effects from climate

ABSTRACT: Cloud amounts, their spatial distribution, and the sky view factor (SVF) all have effects on the nocturnal upwelling longwave radiation and result in different degrees of urban-rural radiation cooling, which are widely investigated in studies of the urban heat island phenomenon. Currently, most research studies discuss the influence of synoptic conditions and urban geometric morphology on

ABSTRACT: The impacts of climate change on the heat budget of the eastern China seas (ECSs) are estimated under the historical representative concentration pathway (RCP) 4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios using an atmosphere-ocean coupled regional climate model system (REMO/MPIOM). The results suggest that recent and future ocean warming over the ECSs is linked overall to increased oceanic heat transport by

ABSTRACT: Variation in the amount and intensity of precipitation is one of the most important factors determining how biological systems respond to anthropogenic climate change. Moreover, given the importance of climate projections for influencing (inter)national policy, there is a pressing need to contextualise contemporary projections with observed trends to better inform environmental strategy and

ABSTRACT: Summer heat wave (HW) events have disastrous consequences for human health, economies, and ecosystems. The present study investigates the variability of HWs and estimates the recurrence probabilities of the severe 2003 and 2013 hot summers in Zhejiang Province, southeast China. We define a HW event as ≥3 consecutive days having a daily maximum temperature ≥35°C. Considering this definition

ABSTRACT: This paper deals with the analysis of time trends for European average temperature anomalies for the period from 1655 to 2017 using a dataset based on the Central England Temperatures (CET) and other meteorological stations. The reason for this study is to determine first if long memory is present in the data, and then to estimate the time trends in a more rigorous way. The results indicate

ABSTRACT: This study evaluates possible spatial and temporal changes in precipitation extremes over China under Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios using the regional climate model system ‘Provide Regional Climates for Impacts Studies’ (PRECIS), driven with HadGEM2-ES. The extreme precipitation indices applied are consecutive dry days (CDDs), simple daily precipitation intensity index

ABSTRACT: Most of the studies that investigate the impacts of climate change on agriculture have concentrated on the effects of changes in mean temperature and precipitation even though the importance of volatility and risk on farmers’ decision making is well documented. This study examines the empirical importance of the effects of risk associated with the impacts of climate change on farm land allocations

ABSTRACT: Ecological studies based on gridded climate data are increasingly common, but the effect of the uncertainty of climate data on ecological estimations is rarely assessed. Here, we assessed the effect of the uncertainty of local and global climate data (LCD and GCD, respectively) on ecological land classifications, using the Holdridge life zones and the country of Argentina as a case study

ABSTRACT: We present a new method for identifying historic tropical cyclone activity utilizing frequencies of intra-annual density fluctuations in longleaf pine in western Florida. In addition, in this work we provide information about the causal factors that determine the formation of intra-annual density fluctuations (IADFs) in longleaf pine latewood. Specifically, we test the viability of using

ABSTRACT: Common perception holds that tropical cyclones occur exclusively within the latitudinal range of 5° to 20°S. However, a few storms have been recorded poleward of this range each decade over the past half century. This study explores tropical cyclone occurrence south of the Tropic of Capricorn in the southwest Indian Ocean (SWIO; defined as 0°-30°S; African East coast up to 110°E). Using observational

ABSTRACT: The assessment of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions performance is crucial to make policies for abatement. This study applies the parameterized quadratic directional output distance function to estimate the technical inefficiency, abatement potential and shadow price of CO2 emissions from fuel combustion in China’s secondary industry during 2001-2015. The CO2 emissions performances in 3 major

ABSTRACT: Robust statistical techniques are required to estimate the trend in meteorological data, where data are available only for a limited period with too many missing observations. We examined the application of a dynamic linear model (DLM) for estimating changes in time series meteorological data. For this purpose, we used maximum and minimum monthly temperatures recorded over 36 yr at 6 meteorological

ABSTRACT: The Arctic Oscillation (AO) is commonly recognized as a dominant large-scale mode influencing climate over the Northern Hemisphere. Here, the influences of May AO on summer (JJA) extreme precipitation events and summer extreme warm days over the middle reaches of Yangtze River Valley for the period 1961-2014 are investigated. Following a positive May AO, there are usually fewer summer extreme

ABSTRACT: The increase in the number of tropical nights (TN; minimum temperature ‡20°C) constitutes important evidence of the global warming process throughout the Mediterranean region. A significant increase in the number of these events has been recorded since the second half of the 20th century. From the meteorological observations in the period 1950-2014 in the regions of Valencia and Murcia, in

ABSTRACT: Sugar and acid accumulation dynamics in grapes Vitis vinifera L. play a key role in the production of high-quality wines, and changes in mean climate and variability, expected in the coming decades, may affect these dynamics and result in poor grape yield and quality. Simulation models may be useful tools for predicting grape quality changes under warmer conditions and thus provide fundamental

ABSTRACT: The response of small rodents to rainfall is largely species-specific. There is a need to widely survey the effects of rainfall among varied rodent species, particularly arboreal rodents to accurately understand their response to rainfall. Therefore, in this study, we examined changes in the activity patterns of Japanese dormice Glirulus japonicus in relation to rainfall. We undertook extensive

ABSTRACT: Climate analogues are a comprehensive approach for learning how to deal with the expected climatic future from current examples. Existing literature on climate analogues struggles with 2 methodological challenges: how to deal with the unavoidable uncertainty of climate projections and how to define reasonable lower limits of similarity for climate analogues. Here, we suggest a new method

ABSTRACT: Droughts are one of the multifaceted meteorological disasters affecting agriculture, livestock and water resources worldwide. Pakistan has a semiarid climate system with a high degree of interannual rainfall variability. This study evaluates the applicability and comparison of 3 drought indices (deciles index [DI], standardized precipitation index [SPI] and reconnaissance drought index [RDI])

ABSTRACT: The sensitivity of tropical rainfall to sea surface temperature (SST) fluctuations was investigated using a multi-scale analysis framework, covering time scales between a few days and 1 decade. The analysis includes an intercomparison between a satellite-based observational dataset and two twentieth century general circulation model (GCM)-based products: the ERA-20CM ensemble of atmospheric

ABSTRACT: Normalized anomalies in air temperature and precipitation patterns derived from monthly data series collected at 28 in situ meteorological stations in the Adriatic-Ionian region between 1961 and 2015 were mapped by using the self-organizing map (SOM) method—an unsupervised neural network method—and connected with hemispheric indices in the atmosphere. Four indices were used: North Atlantic

ABSTRACT: Russia has become the foremost wheat exporting country worldwide. Episodic production breakdowns caused by extreme weather during sensitive stages of crop development are hence of concern not only for the domestic but also for the global wheat market. In this study, we examine heat stress occurrence and availability of rainwater during the flowering period, and investigate their impacts on

ABSTRACT: We investigated 3 summer atmospheric circulation patterns over the mid-latitudes of East Asia—the monopole (MOP), East Asia-Pacific (EAP) and southeast-northwest out-of-phase dipole (EWD)—and their impacts on precipitation in eastern China. Our results show that an increase in the frequency of the positive MOP pattern enhances precipitation in northeastern China, while a longer persistence

ABSTRACT: Extreme droughts have affected the Caribbean over recent decades. Although the connections of droughts with climate variability and change have been examined, the spatiotemporal and areal extent characteristics of rainfall anomalies during drier than normal periods have not been analyzed thoroughly. Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station (CHIRPS) data were used to extract

ABSTRACT: For many decades, meteorological stations in the Czech Republic used the Campbell-Stokes (CS) sunshine recorder to measure sunshine duration. However, automatic devices have progressively replaced it since the mid-1990s, first with the Vaisala DSU12 sensor and then with the SD4, SD5 and SD6 sensors produced by Meteoservis. The technical specifications and modes of function of these instruments

ABSTRACT: Recent research suggests that the characteristics of precipitation, particularly extremes and variability, are changing with a warming global climate. This study demonstrates a budding approach to analyzing the temporal uniformity of precipitation using daily data for the Mid-Atlantic region of the eastern United States over the period 1950 to 2017. The Gini coefficient (GC) assesses the

ABSTRACT: Using monthly precipitation data and the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis dataset, the salient differences in Chinese summer rainfall in response to moderate eastern/central Pacific El Niño (MEPE/MCPE), extreme strong El Niño (SE), and moderate eastern/central Pacific La Niña (MEPL/MCPL) events are investigated. The distribution of Chinese summer rainfall anomalies varies with the phases, intensities

ABSTRACT: In this paper, we have reconstructed and analysed snowfall events on the coast of the natural region of south-eastern Iberia (Spain) over the period 1900 to 2017. Due to the lack of continuous reliable meteorological information, we supplemented our analysis of official sources by consulting the daily newspapers for the days when snow was most likely. We selected 3 cities which are spatially

ABSTRACT: The main aim of the study was to determine the seasonal and long-term variability of strong high occurrence in the Arctic. The research was based on average daily air pressure values at sea level for the period 1965-2014 at grid points (2.5° x 2.5° grid) derived from NCEP/NCAR reanalyses. The Arctic was defined as an area north of 60°N. The main characteristic defining the occurrence of high

ABSTRACT: Due to global warming, Northeast China has been affected by droughts in recent decades, potentially leading to disastrous effects during the 21st century. Knowledge of drought characteristics, such as drought duration and severity, is very important to be able to mitigate natural hazards and manage water resources. Here, drought characteristics were assessed based on multiple meteorological

ABSTRACT: We systematically examined past spatiotemporal changes in climate variability to gain some cross-regional insights into South Asia’s vulnerability to extreme conditions. Gridded Asian Precipitation-Highly-Resolved Observational Data Integration Towards Evaluation (APHRODITE) precipitation and Princeton Global Meteorological Forcing Dataset (PRINCETON) temperature data from 1975-2004 were

ABSTRACT: Climate change has extensive impacts on abundance, distribution, and conservation of species and ecosystems. The purpose of this study was to investigate impacts of future climate change on the species richness of land vertebrates, and to assess critical areas that might be continuously threatened by climate change in order to maintain high species richness in South Korea. The Climate Change

ABSTRACT: Climate change is expected to have strong effects on river systems and their biota. It is unlikely that a changing climate will be the only stressor on river systems to increase in the future. Human population growth will necessitate increased resource use including agricultural intensification. Understanding how climate change will interact with agricultural intensification to affect river

ABSTRACT: Ecological and evolutionary factors, together with abiotic conditions, affect biogeographic patterns of genetic entities. The spatial and temporal variability of chromosomal inversions of Drosophila subobscura suggests that this species can serve as a good model for studying the effects of environmental change on the genetic structure of natural populations. A comprehensive meta-analysis

ABSTRACT: Long-term and high quality instrumental air temperature data are important for reducing the uncertainty of past temperature trends at local and global scales, and for the projection of future expected changes. Currently this type of data is limited in the Mediterranean, which is particularly important since this region is considered a hot spot for climate change. To cover the data gap for