The main driver for the large research effort devoted to developing and improving seasonal climate prediction models is the fact that El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events (quasiperiodic fluctuations in Indo-Pacific Ocean sea surface temperatures and mean sea level pressure) represent, on a global scale, the greatest source of interannual climate variability and are, to some extent, predic...

English settlers to the New World believed that the climate of Newfoundland would be moderate, New England would be warm, and Virginia would be like southern Spain. They based these beliefs on the seemingly commonsense view that climate is much the same at any given latitude around the globe. What is striking is that these views persisted despite mounting evidence to the contrary. As late as 16...

This paper discusses the state of the art in geovisualization supporting climate change adaptation. We reviewed twenty selected map-based web tools, classified by their content and functionality, and assessed them by visual representations, interactive functions, information type, target audience, and how vulnerability and adaptation to climate change are addressed. Our study concludes that the...

In recent decades, there has been a tendency toward increased summer floods in south China, increased drought in north China, and moderate cooling in China and India while most of the world has been warming. We used a global climate model to investigate possible aerosol contributions to these trends. We found precipitation and temperature changes in the model that were comparable to those obser...

Recent historic observed lows in Arctic sea ice extent, together with climate model projections of additional ice reductions in the future, have fueled speculations of potential new trans-Arctic shipping routes linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. However, numerical studies of how projected geophysical changes in sea ice will realistically impact ship navigation are lacking. To address this...

Myxoma virus in European rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) is one of the best documented examples of host-virus co-evolution. In the natural hosts (Sylvilagus brasiliensis or S. bachmani rabbits in the Americas), myxoma virus causes a benign cutaneous fibroma. In European rabbits, however, myxoma virus causes the fulminant disease, myxomatosis. When introduced into wild European rabbit population...

In this study, the net primary productivity (NPP) in China from 2001 to 2012 was estimated based on the Carnegie-Ames-Stanford Approach (CASA) model using Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and meteorological datasets, and the accuracy was verified by a ChinaFLUX dataset. It was found that the spatiotemporal variations in NPP present a downward trend with the increase of lati...

We analyze phylogenetic relationships among temperate, subtropical highland, and subtropical lowland species of the Drosophila takahashii and montium species subgroups based on sequence data of COI and Gpdh genes and discuss the evolution of temperate species in these subgroups with reference to their climatic adaptations. In the takahashii subgroup, D. lutescens (the temperate species) branche...