BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Adjusted for inflation, household income has been relatively flat since the mid-1990s, but the inflation rate of employer-sponsored health insurance has been greater than both household income growth and general inflation for 50 years. We estimated the effect on average family income if health insurance inflation matched the general inflation rate since 1996, and those...

The rainfall seasonality index is the measure of precipitation distribution throughout the seasonal cycle. The aim of this study is to compare the effect of different multi-model averaging methods on the rainfall seasonality index at each 1/16 latitude-longitude cells covering the Columbia River Basin. In accordance with the same, ten different climate model outputs are selected from 45 availab...

Droughts are one of the most damaging climatic phenomena, and the most complex natural hazard  which affects the economy, agriculture, public health and environment in large areas. The aim of this study is to compare drought indicators derived from tropical rainfall measuring mission (TRMM) data in the south of Iran. Also the TRMM rainfall was considered, so as to investigate changes in the rai...

The hydroclimatic association between the monthly Indian summer monsoon rainfall and a proposed monthly composite index (MCI) of large-scale atmospheric circulations from the Pacific Ocean and Indian Ocean regions is established. The spatial variability of this association is also checked. The predictability of the monthly Indian summer monsoon rainfall using the MCI is also investigated and is...

Areas affected by land degradation in Sub-Saharan West Africa between 1982 and 2012 are identified using time-series analysis of vegetation index data derived from satellites. The residual trend (RESTREND) of a Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) time-series is defined as the fraction of the difference between the observed NDVI and the NDVI predicted from climate data. It has been wid...

This paper presents an Artificial Intelligence approach for regional rainfall forecasting for Orissa state, India on monthly and seasonal time scales. The possible relation between regional rainfall over Orissa and the large scale climate indices like El-Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), EQUitorial INdian Ocean Oscillation (EQUINOO) and a local climate index of Ocean-Land Temperature Contrast (...