We have observed that the dry-season length (DSL) has increased over southern Amazonia since 1979, primarily owing to a delay of its ending dates (dry-season end, DSE), and is accompanied by a prolonged fire season. A poleward shift of the subtropical jet over South America and an increase of local convective inhibition energy in austral winter (June-August) seem to cause the delay of the DSE i...

The application of microbial inoculants (biofertilizers) is a promising technology for future sustainable farming systems in view of rapidly decreasing phosphorus stocks and the need to more efficiently use available nitrogen (N). Various microbial taxa are currently used as biofertilizers, based on their capacity to access nutrients from fertilizers and soil stocks, to fix atmospheric nitrogen...

Using 1km grid datasets representing monthly mean precipitation, monthly mean temperature, and dry matter production (DMP), we considered the regional plant production ability in Southeast and South Asia, and also employed pixel-by-pixel correlation analysis to assess the intensity of relation between climate factors and plant production. While annual DMP in South Asia was approximately less th...

Zonal-mean storm-track shifts in response to perturbations in climate occur even in idealized simulations of dry atmospheres with axisymmetric forcing. Nonetheless, a generally accepted theory of the mechanisms controlling the storm-track shifts is still lacking. Here, mean available potential energy (MAPE), a general measure of baroclinicity that is proportional to the square of the Eady growt...

This study investigates the relationship between tree growth and air mass type variability, using the spatial synoptic classification (SSC) in a bottomland slash pine forest in coastal Alabama (USA). The use of an air mass approach in dendroclimatology is somewhat unconventional and has not been fully explored. However, we believe that it may be useful because the air mass approach represents a...

A discrete warming event (December 21, 2001–January 12, 2002) in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica, enhanced glacier melt, stream flow, and melting of permafrost. Effects of this warming included a rapid rise in lake levels and widespread increases in soil water availability resulting from melting of subsurface ice. These increases in liquid water offset hydrologic responses to a cooling tren...

[1] We investigate simulated changes of seasonal precipitation maxima and means in a future, warmer climate. We use data from the ESSENCE project, in which a 17-member ensemble of climate change simulations in response to the SRES A1b scenario has been carried out using the ECHAM5/MPI-OM climate model. The large size of the data set gives the opportunity to detect the changes of climate extreme...

Irrigated agriculture consumes the largest share of available fresh water, and awareness of the spatial distribution and application rates is paramount to a functional and sustainable communal consumptive water use. This remote sensing study leverages surface energy balance fluxes and vegetation indices to classify and map the spatial distribution of irrigated and non-irrigated croplands. The p...

Coccidiodomycosis (valley fever) is a systemic infection caused by inhalation of airborne spores from Coccidioides immitis, a soil-dwelling fungus found in the southwestern United States, parts of Mexico, and Central and South America. Dust storms help disperse C. immitis so risk factors for valley fever include conditions favorable for fungal growth (moist, warm soil) and for aeolian soil eros...