Determining the factors that influence the distribution of woody vegetation cover and resolving the sensitivity of woody vegetation cover to shifts in environmental forcing are critical steps necessary to predict continental-scale responses of dryland ecosystems to climate change. We use a 6-year satellite data record of fractional woody vegetation cover and an 11-year daily precipitation recor...

One of the multiple approaches currently explored to mitigate the effects of hydro-meteorological hazardous events aims at improving the numerical weather forecasts. Under an ever increasing societal demand for cost cuts and more precise forecasts, targeted observations are currently receiving great attention within the operational weather community. The MEDEX project (http://medex.inm.uib.es) ...

The structure of the wind-driven circulation in the subtropical South Pacific is studied using simple diagnostic and analytical models. The diagnostic calculation is based on the Levitus climatology. The analytical model is forced by observed winter mixed layer density and depth calculated from the Levitus climatology and by the surface wind stress data from the Hellerman and Rosenstein climato...

A new objective method to determine the height of the planetary boundary layer (PBL) is presented here. PBL heights are computed using the statistical variance and kurtosis of dewpoint and virtual potential temperature differences measured from radio soundings at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program at the Southern Great Plains (SGP) site. These height...

FAMOUS is an ocean-atmosphere general circulation model of low resolution, based on version 4.5 of the UK MetOffice Unified Model. Here we update the model description to account for changes in the model as it is used in the CMIP5 EMIC model intercomparison project (EMICmip) and a number of other studies. Most of these changes correct errors found in the code. The EMICmip version of the model (...