Recent estimates of the global carbon budget, or allowable cumulative CO2 emissions consistent with a given level of climate warming, have the potential to inform climate mitigation policy discussions aimed at maintaining global temperatures below 2 °C. This raises difficult questions, however, about how best to share this carbon budget amongst nations in a way that both respects the need for a finite cap on total allowable emissions, and also addresses the fundamental disparities amongst nations with respect to their historical and potential future emissions.

Plantation-associated drainage of Southeast Asian peatlands has accelerated in recent years. Draining exposes the upper peat layer to oxygen, leading to elevated decomposition rates and net soil carbon losses. Empirical studies indicate positive relationships between long-term water table (WT) depth and soil carbon loss rate in peatlands. These correlations potentially enable using WT depth as a proxy for soil carbon losses from peatland plantations. Here, we compile data from published research assessing WT depth and carbon balance in tropical plantations on peat.

Congenital heart defects are the most prevalent type of birth defects. The association of air pollution with congenital heart defects is not well understood. We investigated a cohort of 8969 singleton live births in Lanzhou, China during 2010–2012. Using inverse distance weighting, maternal exposures to particulate matter with diameters ≤10 μm (PM10), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and sulfur dioxide (SO2) were estimated as a combination of monitoring station levels for time spent at home and in a work location.

Tropical forests provide global climate regulation ecosystem services and their clearing is a significant source of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and resultant radiative forcing of climate change. However, consensus on pan-tropical forest carbon dynamics is lacking. The researchers present a new estimate that employs recommended good practices to quantify gross tropical forest aboveground carbon (AGC) loss from 2000 to 2012 through the integration of Landsat-derived tree canopy cover, height, intactness and forest cover loss and GLAS-lidar derived forest biomass.

This study aims to determine the variability and trends of tropical biomass burning, tropospheric ozone levels from 2005–2012 in Thailand and the ozone transport from the surrounding regions. Intense biomass burning and tropospheric ozone in this area have a seasonal variability with the maximum generally occurring during the dry season. The northern part of Thailand was observed to have high tropospheric ozone during the dry peak season in April.

Extreme heat events are associated with spikes in mortality, yet death rates are on average highest during the coldest months of the year. Under the assumption that most winter excess mortality is due to cold temperature, many previous studies have concluded that winter mortality will substantially decline in a warming climate.

Water use by plant communities across years of varying water availability indicates how terrestrial water balances will respond to climate change and variability as well as to land cover change. Perennial biofuel crops, likely grown mainly on marginal lands of limited water availability, provide an example of a potentially extensive future land cover conversion.

Observations show that the global mean surface temperature has increased steadily since the 1950s and this warming trend is particularly strong and linear over land after 1979. This paper analyzes the relationship between surface temperature trends observed over land for the period 1979–2012 and enhanced vegetation index (EVI), a satellite measured vegetation greenness index, by large-scale ecoregion. The land areas between 50°S and 50°N are classified into various large-scale ecoregions

Effects of climate change on the worst case scenario of a storm surge induced by a super typhoon in the present climate are investigated through the case study of Typhoon Haiyan. We present the results of our investigation on super-typhoon Haiyan by using a super high resolution (1 km grid) regional model that explicitly handles cloud microphysical processes.

A potential decline in irrigation due to groundwater depletion or insufficient surface water would not only directly affect agriculture, but also could alter surface climate. In this study we investigated how loss of irrigation affects heat wave frequency, duration, and intensity across fifteen heat wave indices (HINs) using a regional climate model that incorporated dynamic crop growth. Averaged across all indices, loss of irrigation increased heat wave frequency, duration, and intensity.