tree-ring cellulose was examined in ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa Dougl.) trees in the western USA to study seasonal patterns of precipitation inputs. Two sites (California and Oregon) had minimal summer rainfall inputs, whereas a third site (Arizona) received as much as 70% of its annual precipitation during the summer months (North American monsoon). For the Arizona site, both the δO and δC...

5 The sensitivity of stratiform mid-latitude orographic precipitation to global mean temper6 ature is investigated through numerical simulations with a general circulation model. The 7 individual terrain elements are idealizations of the Earth’s major north-south mountain 8 chains and occupy four islands equally spaced around the northern hemisphere of a planet 9 otherwise covered by ocean. Pre...

The impact of interannual variability of precipitation and potential evaporation on the long-term mean annual evapotranspiration as well as on the interannual variability of evapotranspiration is studied using a stochastic soil moisture model within the Budyko framework. Results indicate that given the same long-term mean annual precipitation and potential evaporation, including interannual var...

The relationship between vegetation and precipitation has been studied extensively, but little is known about its mechanistic linkage to agro-ecosystem sustainability. In this study, we used 250 m MODIS NDVI 16-day composite data and precipitation data for the period 2001–2005 to evaluate the connection between vegetation and precipitation in the Jinghe River watershed of the central Loess Plat...

Stream¯ow simulations for 23 major river basins from the third-generation general circulation model (GCM) of the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis are assessed. Precipitation and runo€ data are used from the AMIP II simulation in which the GCM is integrated for a 17-yr period with speci®c sea surface temperatures and sea-ice concentrations. Compared to the observations, the com...

The Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for Global Precipitation Measurement Final Run (IMERGF) product has now been upgraded to Version 4 (V4), which has been available since March 2017. Therefore, it is desirable to evaluate the characteristic differences between the V4 and the previous V3 products. A comprehensive performance evaluation of the errors of the successive V3 and V4 IMERGF prod...

We analyzed soil bacterial communities with terminal restriction fragment length polymorphisms (TRFLP) along a precipitation gradient on the Hawaiian island Maui where mean annual rainfall increases from 2200 to 5050mm. Principal component and cluster analysis of TRFLP patterns indicated there were only small differences in bacterial communities in soils receiving 2200–2750mm of rain annually b...

There have been debates on the driving factors of C4 plant expansion, such as PCO2 decline in the late Micocene and warmer climate and precipitation at large-scale modern ecosystems. These disputes are mainly due to the lack of direct evidence and extensive data analysis. Here we use mass flora data to explore the driving factors of C4 distribution and divergent patterns for different C4 taxa a...