Sub-daily rainfall extremes may be associated with flash flooding, particularly in urban areas but, compared with extremes on daily timescales, have been relatively little studied in many regions. This paper describes a new, hourly rainfall dataset for the UK based on ∼1600 rain gauges from three different data sources. This includes tipping bucket rain gauge data from the UK Environment Agency...

BACKGROUND Previously, we showed the inverse association between lithium in drinking water and male suicide in Kyushu Island. The narrow variation in meteorological factors of Kyushu Island and a considerable amount of evidence regarding the role of the factors on suicide provoked the necessities of adjusting the association by the wide variation in sunshine, temperature, rain fall, and snow fa...

Streamflow in the Himalayan rivers is generated from rainfall, snow and ice. The distribution of runoff produced from these sources is such that the streamflow may be observed in these rivers throughout the year, i.e. they are perennial in nature. Snow and glacier melt runoff contributes substantially to the annual flows of these rivers and its estimation is required for the planning, developme...

Rain over the oceans causes attenuation of communication and radar signals for satellites and backscatter to satellite radars. To determine the attenuation and backscatter, one must know the height of the rain in a storm, and must be able to find it from a satellite measurement likely to be available. Microwave radiometers on satellites can provide estimates of rain rates, and therefore relatin...

Since many years Doppler radar profilers are known as valuable tools to retrieve profiles of rain rate and further rain parameters (e.g. Wakasugi et al. (1986)). Applying well established relations for terminal fall velocity, shape and backscatter cross section of rain drops allows to derive rain rate without empirical assumptions. For calculating the backscatter cross section, the flattening o...

BACKGROUND Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) is an emerging infectious disease discovered in rural areas of Central China in 2009, caused by a novel bunyavirus, SFTS virus (SFTSV). The disease usually presents as fever, thrombocytopenia, and leukocytopenia, with case-fatality rates ranging from 2.5% to 30%. Haemaphysalis longicornis was suspected to be the most likely vector of...

The Atacama along the Pacific Coast of Chile and Peru is one of the driest and possibly oldest deserts in the world. It represents an extreme habitat for life on Earth and is an analog for life in dry conditions on Mars. We report on four years (September 1994-October 1998) of climate and moisture data from the extreme arid region of the Atacama. Our data are focused on understanding moisture s...

Growth performance was assessed for a diverse suite of canopy and emergent tree species in a lowland neotropical rain forest (the La Selva Biological Station, northeastern Costa Rica). Species were evaluated based on annual diameter measurements of large samples of individuals in all post-seedling size classes, over a 12-yr period. The study species were seven non-pioneers (Minquartia guianensi...

In ecology much attention has been paid towards seed dispersal of fleshy-fruited plants, however, knowledge is lacking about the long-term demographic consequences of variation in dispersal distance and fruit removal rate, particularly given the natural variability of the environment the organism lives in. In this study we used a spatially explicit, two-level stochastic computer model to simula...

The multiple cropping practice is essential to agriculture because it has been shown to significantly increase the grain yield and promote agricultural economic development. In this study, potential multiple cropping systems in China are calculated based on meteorological observation data by using the Agricultural Ecology Zone (AEZ) model. Following this, the changes in the potential cropping s...