[1] The global climate models for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC AR4) predict very different changes of rainfall over the Amazon under the SRES A1B scenario for global climate change. Five of the eleven models predict an increase of annual rainfall, three models predict a decrease of rainfall, and the other three models predict no significant change...

Switchgrass, Indiangrass, and big bluestem are warmseason grasses that are a suitable alternative for summer pasture in Iowa. Their advantage over cool-season grasses such as bluegrass, bromegrass, and orchardgrass is their ability to produce during midsummer. These warm-season perennial grasses start growing in late spring as air and soil temperatures increase. Leaf growth often occurs in earl...

[1] A quantitative definition of and ability to predict the onset and duration of the dominant rainfall season in a region are important for agricultural and natural resources management. In this paper, a methodology based on an analysis of daily rainfall occurrence is proposed and applied to define the onset and end of the rainfall season in northeast Brazil. Multiple rainfall gauges are consi...

Agricultural intensification in America has replaced native warm-season grasses (NWSG) with introduced forages causing wildlife habitat loss and population declines for the northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus) and similar ground-nesting birds. Reintroducing NWSGs onto managed grasslands to reverse grassland bird population declines lacks information about appropriate multi-purpose management...

[1] We analyze the response of the North American Monsoon (NAM) to increased greenhouse gas (GHG) forcing (emissions scenario RCP 8.5) using new simulations available through the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project version 5 (CMIP5). Changes in total monsoon season rainfall with GHG warming are small and insignificant. The models do, however, show significant declines in early monsoon season ...

The importance of rainfall for the development of Aedes vexans arabiensis populations, one of the potential vectors of Rift Valley Fever in West Africa, was demonstrated in a two-year follow-up study conducted in the Ferlo region of Senegal. In 2003, the rainy season began with heavy rains and, as a result, temporary ponds, the breeding places for mosquitoes, were flooded at their maximum level...

Although it is well established that transpiration contributes much of the water for rainfall over Amazonia, it remains unclear whether transpiration helps to drive or merely responds to the seasonal cycle of rainfall. Here, we use multiple independent satellite datasets to show that rainforest transpiration enables an increase of shallow convection that moistens and destabilizes the atmosphere...

Studies over the last decade into Australian rainfall have often noted the presence of long-term and shortterm trends but have rarely identified any statistically significant trends, mainly because the data are characterised by high interannual variability. The only exception is the southwest region of Western Australia (SWWA) where a relatively sudden decrease in winter season (and annual) rai...

A k-means cluster analysis is used to summarize unfiltered daily atmospheric variability at regional-scale over the western Sahel and eastern tropical North Atlantic during the boreal summer season (July—September, JAS) 1961—1998. It employs zonal and meridional regional wind fields at 925, 700 and 200 hPa from the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecast Reanalyses. An 8-cluster solut...

In this study a new conceptual model for partial duration series analysis was applied to determine the likely rainfall of the monsoon season and the pattern of rainfall events distribution. Example case study was carried out with rainfall data of semiarid area, Agra, India, experiencing extremes of yearly rainfall; ranging between high (1200 mm) to low (300 mm). The coefficient values for the e...