1 Leaf life span (LL) and leaf mass per area (LMA) are fundamental traits in the carbon economy of plants, representing the investment required per unit leaf area (LMA) and the duration of the resulting benefit (LL). Species on dry and infertile soils converge towards higher LMA. It has been generally assumed that this allows species from low-resource habitats to achieve longer average leaf lif...

[1] Observations of 408 monsoon low-pressure systems (MLPSs) including 196 monsoon depressions (MDs) that formed in the Bay of Bengal during the 1951–2007 period, and the gridded analysis of daily rainfall fields for the same period, were used to identify the association of antecedent rainfall (1 week average rainfall prior to the genesis of MLPS) with the genesis of MLPS and length of inland p...

Vertical wind shear and storm motion are two of the most important factors contributing to rainfall asymmetries in tropical cyclones (TCs). Global TC rainfall structure, in terms of azimuthal distribution and asymmetries relative to storm motion, has been previously described using the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission Microwave Imager rainfall estimates. The mean TC rainfall distribution and...

Large-scale fires occur frequently across Indonesia, particularly in the southern region of Kalimantan and eastern Sumatra. They have considerable impacts on carbon emissions, haze production, biodiversity, health, and economic activities. In this study, we demonstrate that severe fire and haze events in Indonesia can generally be predicted months in advance using predictions of seasonal rainfa...

Savanna ecosystems are water limited and responsive to rainfall on short time scales, characteristics that can be exploited to estimate fractional cover of trees, grass, and bare soil over large-scale areas from synthesis of remote sensing and rainfall measurements. A method is presented to estimate fractional cover based upon the differing ways in which grasses and trees respond to rainfall, a...

Drop size distributions (DSD) associated with tropical rainfall at Cuddalore in the south-eastern part of India have been measured by a JossWaldvogel disdrometer (RD–80 model) during September to November 2002. The rainfall data corrected for instrumental error, matches very well with rainfall rates measured by a self recording raingauge, at the same site. For further analysis of the DSD, the r...

The purpose of the study was to determine the role of land use, seasonality, and hydrometeorological conditions on the relationship between stream water potassium (K+) concentration and discharge during different types of floods-short- and long-duration rainfall floods as well as snowmelt floods on frozen and thawed soils. The research was conducted in small catchments (agricultural, woodland, ...

Concerns about the potential effects of anthropogenic climate change have led to a closer examination of how climate varies in the long run, and how such variations may impact rainfall variations at daily to seasonal time scales. For South Florida in particular, the influences of the low-frequency climate phenomena, such as the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Atlantic Multi-decadal ...