The Romans were perhaps the most impressive exponents of water resource management in preindustrial times with irrigation and virtual water trade facilitating unprecedented urbanization and socioeconomic stability for hundreds of years in a region of highly variable climate. To understand Roman water resource management in response to urbanization and climate variability, a Virtual Water Networ...

A new and distinctly interdecadal signal in the climate of the Pacific Ocean has been uncovered by examining the coupled behavior of sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and Northern Hemisphere atmospheric circulation. This interdecadal Pacific signal (IPS) of ocean–atmosphere interaction exhibits a highly statistically significant interdecadal component yet contains little to no interannual (El Niñ...

Smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are not only dealing with decreased production from land degradation, but are also impacted heavily by climate variability. Farmers perceive decreased rainfall or shortened rainy seasons throughout SSA; however, the link between perceptions and climate variability is complex, especially in areas with increasing land degradation. Moreover, little i...

Insect outbreaks are expected to increase in frequency and intensity with projected changes in global climate through direct effects of climate change on insect populations and through disruption of community interactions. Although there is much concern about mean changes in global climate, the impact of climatic variability itself on species interactions has been little explored. Here, we comp...

Land surface phenology (LSP) characterizes episodes of greening and browning of the vegetated land surface from remote sensing imagery. LSP is of interest for quantification and monitoring of crop yield, wildfire fuel accumulation, vegetation condition, ecosystem response and resilience to climate variability and change. Deriving LSP represents an effort for end users and existing global produc...

Crop productivity in India varies greatly with inter-annual climate variability and is highly dependent on monsoon rainfall and temperature. The sensitivity of yields to future climate variability varies with crop type, access to irrigation and other biophysical and socio-economic factors. To better understand sensitivities to future climate, this study focuses on agro-ecological subregions in ...

The last quarter century spans the publication of the first assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1990 and the latest report published in 2013–2014. The five assessment reports appearing over that interval reveal a marked increase in the number of paleoclimate studies addressing the climate of the last 2000 years (the Common Era). An important focus of this work ...