Starting from a few topical astrophysical questions which require the knowledge of the age of Pop I stars, we discuss the needed precision on the age in order to make progresses in these areas of research. Then we review the effects of various inputs of the stellar models on the age determination and try to identify those affecting the most the lifetimes of stars.

Climate change is causing shifts in the amount and frequency of precipitation in many regions, which is expected to have implications for plant performance. Most research has examined the impacts of the amount of precipitation on plants rather than the effects of both the amount and frequency of precipitation. To understand how climate-driven changes in precipitation can affect grassland plants...

hurricane-force ocean-surface wind speed in the presence of precipitation encountered in the inner core of hurricanes.

Precipitation changes can affect society more directly than variations in most other meteorological observables1–3, but precipitation is difficult to characterize because of fluctuations on nearly all temporal and spatial scales. In addition, the intensity of extreme precipitation rises markedly at higher temperature4–9, faster than the rate of increase in the atmosphere’s water-holding capacit...

Global mean temperature is predicted to increase by 2–7 1C and precipitation to change across the globe by the end of this century. To quantify climate effects on ecosystem processes, a number of climate change experiments have been established around the world in various ecosystems. Despite these efforts, general responses of terrestrial ecosystems to changes in temperature and precipitation, ...

Secular trends of daily precipitation characteristics are considered in the transient climate change experiment with a coupled atmosphere–ocean general circulation model ECHAM4/OPYC3 for 1900–2099. The climate forcing is due to increasing concentrations of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Mean daily precipitation, precipitation intensity, probability of wet days and parameters of the gam...

Hourly precipitation data from 1963 to 1993 of the contiguous United States were analyzed for secular trends in the diurnal cycle of precipitation. During the period the winter daytime and nighttime precipitation frequencies and the diurnal amplitude of precipitation frequency increased by ∼30−47% over the Southwest, while the winter precipitation frequencies and the diurnal amplitude of precip...

seasonal and annual precipitation increased, except in the summer; the annual precipitation increased by about one millimeter pre year over the last 52 years. The spring precipitation significantly increased at the 99 % confidence level, while the mean summer precipitation insignificantly decreased at the 95 % confidence level. The extreme precipitation, including the maxima and minima, also ex...

The importance of satellite datasets as alternative sources of precipitation information has been argued in numerous studies. Future developments in satellite precipitation algorithms as well as utilization of satellite data in operational applications rely on a more in-depth understanding of satellite errors and biases across different spatial and temporal scales. This paper investigates the c...

The correlation between light precipitation events and visibility at Mt. Hua, (Shannxi Province, China) and at the surrounding plains stations was analyzed. Trends and changes in visibility, precipitation, the precipitation difference between Mt. Hua and the plains stations (De) and wind speed over the study area during the years 1980–2009 were also investigated. The significant positive correl...