Analyzing how climate change affects vegetation distribution is one of the central issues of global change ecology as this has important implications for the carbon budget of terrestrial vegetation. Mapping vegetation distribution under historical climate scenarios is essential for understanding the response of vegetation distribution to future climatic changes. The reconstructions of palaeoveg...

BACKGROUND The uptake of F-FDG in brown adipose tissue (BAT) may have important implications in understanding the pathophysiology of BAT and obesity. Because of the thermal implications of BAT uptake of F-FDG, this study aimed to contribute to existing knowledge by assessing patients scanned in a subtropical environment with particular reference to ethnicity. PATIENTS AND METHODS A retrospect...

Climate models robustly predict that the climate of southwestern North America, defined as the area from the western Great Plains to the Pacific Ocean and from the Oregon border to southern Mexico, will dry throughout the current century as a consequence of rising greenhouse gases. This regional drying is part of a general drying of the subtropics and poleward expansion of the subtropical dry z...

The South Atlantic Convergence Zone (SACZ) is the dominant summertime cloudiness feature of subtropical South America and the western South Atlantic Ocean, having a significant influence on the precipitation regime of southeastern Brazil. This paper proposes an objective criterion based mainly on precipitation, as this variable is easily obtained on general circulation models simulating past, p...

Climate change may exacerbate the impacts of plant invasions by providing opportunities for new naturalisations and for alien species to expand into regions where previously they could not survive and reproduce. Although climate change is not expected to favour invasive plants in every case, in Aotearoa-New Zealand a large pool of potential new weeds already exists and this country is predicted...

Environmental theories of African faunal evolution state that important evolutionary changes during the Pliocene^ Pleistocene interval (the last ca. 5.3 million years) were mediated by changes in African climate or shifts in climate variability. Marine sediment sequences demonstrate that subtropical African climate periodically oscillated between markedly wetter and drier conditions, paced by e...

Global climate change is already impacting species and ecosystems across the planet. Trees, although long-lived, are sensitive to changes in climate, including climate extremes. Shifts in tree species' distributions will influence biodiversity and ecosystem function at scales ranging from local to landscape; dry and hot regions will be especially vulnerable. The Australian continent has been es...

The sensitivities of the Brewer–Dobson circulation (BDC) to different distributions of tropical SST heating are investigated in an idealized aquaplanet model. It is found that an increase in tropical SSTs generally leads to an acceleration of tropical upwelling and an associated reduction in the age of air (AOA) in the polar stratosphere and that the AOA near the subtropical tropopause is corre...

Tropical cyclones spend most of their life cycle over the tropical and subtropical oceans. Because of the lack of in situ data in these regions, satellite observations are fundamental for tracking and estimating the intensity of these storms for real-time forecasting and monitoring climate trends. This chapter reviews methods for estimating tropical cyclone intensity from satellites, including ...

Tupiperla illiesi fly along the year in the coastal mountains of southeastern Brazil, with larger numbers during the warmer rainy season. In the seasonal tropical climate of Central Brazil and Serra do Cipó, MG, T oliveirai and T. gracilis, respectively, fly along the year but the pattern is still not known. In the higher elevation (ca. 1600 m a.s.l.) of Campos do Jordao, SP, species of Tupiper...