Historical records of precipitation, streamflow and drought indices all show increased aridity since 1950 over many land areas1,2. Analyses of model-simulated soil moisture3,4, drought indices1,5,6 and precipitation-minus-evaporation7 suggest increased risk of drought in the twenty-first century. There are, however, large differences in the observed and modelsimulated drying patterns1,2,6. Reco...

aridity and drought are two inevitable occurrences of the climate change in the region. so, any kinds of planning and futurism, without regard to them, lead to failure. climate change cause drought phenomenon. the anomalies and irregularities in the precipitation mainly cause drought. fars province, one of the important centers of agriculture, population and industry in the country, with specif...

Understanding woolly mammoth ecology is key to understanding Pleistocene community dynamics and evaluating the roles of human hunting and climate change in late Quaternary megafaunal extinctions. Previous isotopic studies of mammoths' diet and physiology have been hampered by the 'mammoth conundrum': woolly mammoths have anomalously high collagen δ(15)N values, which are more similar to coeval ...

The evolution of elongated body shapes in vertebrates has intrigued biologists for decades and is particularly recurrent among squamates. Several aspects might explain how the environment influences the evolution of body elongation, but climate needs to be incorporated in this scenario to evaluate how it contributes to morphological evolution. Climatic parameters include temperature and precipi...

Climate model simulations uniformly show drier and warmer summers in the Eurasian midcontinent during the mid-Holocene, which is not consistent with paleoenvironmental observations. The simulated climate results from a reduction in the zonal temperature gradient, which weakens westerly flow and reduces moisture flux and precipitation in the midcontinent. As a result, sensible heating is favored...

Desertification in north China is ongoing despite the endeavours to mitigate it over the past 50 years. Overall examination of the context of desertification and defects of desertification-combating programmes is a prerequisite for desertification control, which is now attracting general concern in China. The physiographic circumstances of north China, including the dry, continental, mid-latitu...

Accurate detection and quantification of vegetation dynamics and drivers of observed climatic and anthropogenic change in space and time is fundamental for our understanding of the atmosphere–biosphere interactions at local and global scales. This case study examined the coupled spatial patterns of vegetation dynamics and climatic variabilities during the past three decades in the Upper Heihe R...

Central to the debate surrounding global climate change and Plio-Pleistocene hominin evolution is the degree to which orbital-scale climate patterns influence low-latitude continental ecosystems and how these influences can be distinguished from regional volcano-tectonic events and local environmental effects. The Pliocene Hadar Formation of Ethiopia preserves a record of hominin paleoenvironme...

For the instantaneous dryness mapping, the satellite derived aridity index is proposed. The proposed index is derived from the day/night surface temperature and the maximum solar flux, also it is proved that the index corresponds to the thermal admittance from the theoretical analysis of the surface energy balance. From the MODIS LST and reflectance product during 10 years, daily/monthly global...

The extent to which species' life histories evolve to match climatic conditions is a critical question in evolutionary biology and ecology and as human activities rapidly modify global climate. GIS-based climatic data offer new opportunities to rigorously test this question. Superficially, the spadefoot toads of North America (Scaphiopodidae) seem to offer a classic example of adaptive life-his...