BACKGROUND In the tropics, rainfall data are seldom accurately recorded, and are often discontinuous in time. In the scope of plague-research in northeast Tanzania, we adapted previous research to reconstruct rainfall patterns at a suitable resolution (1 km), based on time series of NDVI: more accurate satellite imagery was used, in the form of MODIS NDVI, and rainfall data were collected from ...

The influence of environmental variables on the planktonic growth, pelagic larval duration and settlement magnitude was examined for the coral reef surgeonfish Acanthurus chirurgus. Newly settled fish were collected daily from patch reefs in the San Blas Archipelago, Caribbean Panama for 3.5 years. Environmental influences on growth were examined at three different life history stages: from 0 t...

Title of Document: INTERANNUAL VARIABILITY OF SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE IN THE EASTERN TROPICAL PACIFIC OCEAN AND CENTRAL AMERICAN RAINFALL Kristopher B. Karnauskas, Ph.D., 2007 Directed By: Professor Antonio J. Busalacchi Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Sea surface temperature (SST) in the east Pacific warm pool (EPWP) plays a potentially important role in Central American rainfall...

The contribution of rainfall forcing errors relative to model (structural and parameter) uncertainty in the prediction of soil moisture is investigated by integrating the NASA Catchment Land Surface Model (CLSM), forced with hydro-meteorological data, in the Oklahoma region. Rainfall-forcing uncertainty is introduced using a stochastic error model that generates ensemble rainfall fields from sa...

In recent decades, the impact of climate change on urban flooding has increased, along with an increase in population and areas. Hence, historical design storms require revisions based robust intensity–duration–frequency (IDF) relationships. To this end, development rain-gauge network is essential to yield spatiotemporal attributes rainfall. The present study addresses two objectives: (a) recon...

The African Sahel has been a very controversial region in the climatic change debate during the last decades. From the studies that announced a dramatic advance of the desert in the 1970s [Lamprey 1975] and lead to the first conference about desertification [Nairobi, 1977] to the hopeful articles assuming a global recovery from the great droughts of the 70s and 80s [Prince et al., 1998; Hermann...

Throughfall volumes and incident rainfall were measured between 23 August and 2 December 2004 as well as from 6 January to 15 April 2005 for individual rain events of differing intensities and magnitudes in an open tropical rainforest in Rondônia, Brazil. Temporal patterns of throughfall spatial variability were examined. Estimated interception was compared to modeled interception obtained by a...

Socio-economic and environmental changes are well known causes of demographic collapse of agrarian cultures. The collapse of human societies is a complex phenomenon where historical and cultural dimensions play a key role, and they may interact with the environmental context. However, the importance of the interaction between socio-economic and climatic factors in explaining possible breakdowns...