Many satellite soil moisture products are today globally available in near real-time. These observations are of paramount importance for enhancing the understanding of the hydrological cycle and particularly useful for flood forecasting purposes. In recent decades, several studies assimilated satellite soil moisture observations into rainfall-runoff models to improve their flood forecasting ski...

Satellite-based precipitation estimates products, CMORPH and PERSIANN-CCS, were evaluated with a dense rain gauge network over Beijing and adjacent regions for an extremely heavy precipitation event on July 21 2012. CMORPH and PEERSIANN-CSS misplaced the region of greatest rainfall accumulation, and failed to capture the spatial pattern of precipitation, evidenced by a low spatial correlation c...

A case-crossover study compared rainfall in the 4 weeks before drinking water related outbreaks with that in the five previous control years. This included public and private drinking water related outbreaks in England and Wales from 1910 to 1999. Of 111 outbreaks, 89 met inclusion criteria and the implicated pathogens included Giardia, Cryptosporidium, E. coli, S. Typhi, S. Paratyphi, Campylob...

Summer rainfall in the Sahel region of Africa exhibits one of the largest signals of climatic variability and with a population reliant on agricultural productivity, the Sahel is particularly vulnerable to major droughts such as occurred in the 1970s and 1980s. Rainfall levels have subsequently recovered, but future projections remain uncertain. Here we show that Sahel rainfall is skilfully pre...

Rainfall and evapotranspiration are the two most popular climatic factors which have crucial function on agricultural production. Rainfall can be directly measured easily in an area but evapotranspiration is estimated from weather data. In this study reference evapotranspiration ETo was estimated using Penman–Monteith equation. Monthly rainfall and evapotarnspiration were plotted and compared i...

Changes in rainfall predicted to occur with global climate change will likely alter rates of leaf-litter decomposition through direct effects on primary decomposers. In a field experiment replicated at two sites, we show that altered rainfall may also change how cascading trophic interactions initiated by arthropod predators in the leaf litter indirectly influence litter decomposition. On the d...

Rainfall anomalies over southern China are found to be asymmetricly influenced by the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), with a far stronger influence from positive IOD (pIOD) events. A greater convection anomaly and an equivalent-barotropic Rossby wave train response occurs during pIOD events than during negative IOD (nIOD) events. Over the Bay of Bengal (BOB) and South China Sea (SCS), an associated ...

Accurate and consistent rainfall observations are vital for climatological studies in support of better planning and decision making. However, estimation of accurate spatial rainfall is limited by sparse rain gauge distributions. Satellite rainfall products can thus potentially play a role in spatial rainfall estimation but their skill and uncertainties need to be under-stood across spatialtime...

Heavy rainfall events along Australia’s eastern seaboard are often associated with the occurrence of extratropical cyclones known as East Coast Lows. Such rainfall events contribute significantly to runoff and water availability, with consequences that can be beneficial (increased water storage), but also can cause major adverse effects due to both flash floods and widespread inundation. Any tr...