Global warming–induced changes in extreme orographic precipitation are investigated using a hierarchy of models: a global climate model, a limited-area weather forecast model, and a linear mountain wave model. The authors consider precipitation changes over an idealized north–southmidlatitudemountain barrier at the western margin of an otherwise flat continent. The intensities of the extreme ev...

Some of Earth’s greatest relief occurs where glacial processes act on mountain topography1,2. This dramatic landscape is thought to be an imprint of Pleistocene glaciations3,4. However, whether the net effect of glacial erosion on mountains is to increase5–7 or decrease8–10 relief remains disputed. It has been suggested that in the European Alps, the onset of widespread glaciation since the mid...

M. C. Fitzpatrick ([email protected]), Univ. of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Appalachian Lab, Frostburg, MD 21532, USA. ! N. J. Sanders, Dept of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, 569 Dabney Hall, Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37918, USA, and Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, Dept of Biology, Univ. of Copenhagen, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark. ! S. Ferrier, CSI...

Over the last decade, mountain areas have been receiving more concern about organic pollution due to atmospheric transport and deposition processes. Similar to the polar regions these areas are considered some of the most pristine and remote ecosystems worldwide. However, mountains and associated highlands are subject to the atmospheric deposition of Persistent Toxic Substances (PTS) that inclu...

The Lake Maggiore catchment is the area of Italy most affected by acid deposition. Trend analysis was performed on long-term (15-30 years) series of chemical analyses of atmospheric deposition, four small rivers draining forested catchments and four high mountain lakes. An improvement in the quality of atmospheric deposition was detected, due to decreasing sulphate concentration and increasing ...

BACKGROUND Forest resources supply a wide range of environmental services like mitigation of increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). As climate is changing, forest managers have added pressure to obtain forest resources by following stand management alternatives that are biologically sustainable and economically profitable. The goal of this study is to project the effect of typic...

Overwhelming evidence shows that climate change presents growing threats to public health security - from extreme weather-related disasters to wider spread of such vector-borne diseases as malaria and dengue. The impacts of climate on human health will not be evenly distributed around the world. The Third Assessment Report (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change-2001) concluded that vulnerab...

Regional Climate Models (RCMs) are practical downscaling tools to yield regional climate information for assessing the impacts of climate variability and change. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) RCM, based on the Penn State/NCAR Mesoscale Model (MM5), features a novel subgrid treatment of orographic precipitation for coupling climate, hydrologic, and ecologic processes at the wa...