The atmospheric and oceanic causes of North American droughts are examined using observations and ensemble climate simulations. The models indicate that oceanic forcing of annual mean precipitation variability accounts for up to 40% of total variance in northeastern Mexico, the southern Great Plains, and the Gulf Coast states but less than 10% in central and eastern Canada. Observations and mod...

Drought is an inevitable part of the world’s climate. It occurs in wet as well as in dry regions. Therefore, planning for drought and mitigating its impacts is essential. In this study, a hedging rule is developed using the zero/one mixed integer-programming approach. Furthermore, some procedures are introduced to ease the computational burden inherent in integer programming. Hedging rules are ...

It is proposed here that basic Farsi intonation structure consists of three levels, in increasing hierarchical order: the Accentual Phrase (AP), the intermediate phrase (ip), and the Intonation Phrase (IP). The end of the AP is often marked by a high tone, Ha, and rarely a low tone, La (La occurs vacuously utterance finally, marked by L-L%. In this paper, this type of La is not labeled). An AP ...

Two studies documented the American English usage frequencies for ninety-seven nouns that occur with sentence complements (e.g., "rumor," "The rumor that the student cheated..."). An established usage preference methodology was used (see Connine, Ferreira, Jones, Clifton, & Frazier, 1984; Kennison, 1999). In Study 1, participants completed short fragments that did not contain the overt compleme...

Recent Amazonian droughts have drawn attention to the vulnerability of tropical forests to climate perturbations. Satellite and in situ observations have shown an increase in fire occurrence during drought years and tree mortality following severe droughts, but to date there has been no assessment of long-term impacts of these droughts across landscapes in Amazonia. Here, we use satellite micro...

Diatom assemblages preserved in sediment cores from closed-basin lakes can provide high-resolution records of past hydrologic and climatic conditions, including long-term patterns in the intensity, duration, and frequency of droughts. At Moon Lake, a closed-basin lake in eastern North Dakota, a comparison of diatom-inferred salinity and the precipitation-based Bhalme-Mooley Drought Index (BMDI)...

Drought is a global phenomenon that occurs virtually in all landscapes causing significant damage both in natural environment and in human lives. Due to the random nature of contributing factors, occurrence and severity of droughts can be treated as stochastic in nature. Early indication of possible drought can help to set out drought mitigation strategies and measures in advance. Therefore dro...