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Every year, like clockwork, India is caught between the spectre of months of crippling water shortages and drought and months of devastating floods.

This paper presents a quantitative assessment of adaptation options in the context of forest fires in Europe under projected climate change. A standalone fire model (SFM) based on a state-of-the-art large-scale forest fire modelling algorithm is used to explore fuel removal through prescribed burnings and improved fire suppression as adaptation options. The climate change projections are provided by three climate models reflecting the SRES A2 scenario.

The frequency of intense natural disasters (defined here as events triggered by hazards of nature and causing at least 100 deaths or affecting the survival needs of at least 1,000 people) increased notably from the 1970s to the 2000s. Intense hydrometeorological disasters (related to floods and storms), and climatological disasters (related to droughts and heat waves) to a lesser extent, accounted for most of the worldwide increase in natural disasters.

Snowfall is an important element of the climate system, and one that is expected to change in a warming climate. Both mean snowfall and the intensity distribution of snowfall are important, with heavy snowfall events having particularly large economic and human impacts. Simulations with climate models indicate that annual mean snowfall declines with warming in most regions but increases in regions with very low surface temperatures. The response of heavy snowfall events to a changing climate, however, is unclear.

Current climate change projections anticipate that global warming trends will lead to changes in the distribution and intensity of precipitation at a global level. However, few studies have corroborated these model-based results using historical precipitation records at a regional level, especially in our study region, California. In our analyses of 14 long-term precipitation records representing multiple climates throughout the state, we find northern and central regions increasing in precipitation while southern regions are drying.

The unprecedented Uttarakhand floods of June 2013 generated a large volume of scientific literature. They offered clear technical explaination to the media reported sequence of events ofen in a historical perspective. Some ambiguities, however, remained in some of the works. For example. Dobhal et al. described that starting from 06:45 on 17 June 2013, the Chorabari lake catastrophically emptied within 5-10 min. (Correspondence)

Factors involved in the recent pause in the rise of global mean temperatures are examined seasonally. For 1999 to 2012, the hiatus in surface warming is mainly evident in the central and eastern Pacific. It is manifested as strong anomalous easterly trade winds, distinctive sea-level pressure patterns, and large rainfall anomalies in the Pacific, which resemble the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). These features are accompanied by upper tropospheric teleconnection wave patterns that extend throughout the Pacific, to polar regions, and into the Atlantic.

In a warming world, species distribution models have become a useful tool for predicting plausible shifts of a species occurrence enforced by climate change. Using maximum entropy (Mexent) model, we analysed present and future distribution patterns of rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis) in two distinct bio-greographical regions of India: the Western Ghats having a good distribution of rubber plantations at present and the Brahmaputra Valley, where rubber trees are recently being cultivated.

Madden–Julian oscillation plays an important role in the formation of extreme rainfall events over the Meghalaya Hills during extreme monsoon years says this research paper by Paweł Prokop, Adam Walanus published in Theoretical and Applied Climatology.

Over the course of six years (2006–2011), equivalent black carbon (eqBC), coarse aerosol mass (PM 1–10), and surface ozone (O 3), observed during the monsoon onset period at the Nepal Climate Observatory–Pyramid WMO/GAW Global Station (NCO-P, 5079 m a.s.l.), were analyzed to investigate events characterized by a significant increase in these short-lived climate forcers/pollutants (SLCF/P).

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