I compared the C(4) grass flora and climatic records for 32 sites in the United States. Consistent with previous studies, I found that the proportion of the grass flora that uses the NADP malic enzyme (NADP-ME) variant of C(4) photosynthesis greatly increases with increasing annual precipitation, while the proportion using the NAD malic enzyme (NAD-ME) variant (and also the less common phosphoe...

Throughout the past decade, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) has given an unprecedented view on global variations in terrestrial water storage. While an increasing number of case studies have provided a rich overview on regional analyses, a global assessment on the dominant features of GRACE variability is still lacking. To address this, we survey key features of temporal var...

abstract recent global warming has led to a change in the global hydrological cycle and an increase in extreme events such as flood and drought at the global and continental scales. however, at the regional scale, the magnitude of warming and the resulting changes in water resources are different from one region to another. unlike air temperature whose increase is evident throughout the world, ...

In this paper an attempt is made to investigate the possible temporal correlation between heavy precipitation episodes and cosmic rays’ activity, on various time scales. Cosmic rays measurements are sparse and cover less extended periods than those of precipitation. Precipitation is largely influenced by local climatic and even physiographic conditions, while cosmic rays’ distribution is far mo...

Terrestrial ecosystems of northern Eurasia are demonstrating an increasing gross primary productivity (GPP), yet few studies have provided definitive attribution for the changes. While prior studies point to increasing temperatures as the principle environmental control, influences from moisture and other factors are less clear. We assess how changes in temperature, precipitation, cloudiness, a...

We studied discharges of organic carbon from eight contiguous small watersheds on the Atlantic Coastal Plain in Maryland for up to 24 yr. Six of these watersheds were second or third order with mixed-land-use, while two were first order (one completely forested and one highly dominated by cropland). These watersheds have perched aquifers, so all groundwater discharges as well as surface runoff ...

In arid ecosystems, current-year precipitation often explains only a small proportion of annual aboveground net primary production (ANPP). We hypothesized that lags in the response of ecosystems to changes in water availability explain this low explanatory power, and that lags result from legacies from transitions from dry to wet years or the reverse. We explored five hypotheses regarding the m...

The distribution of evaporation minus precipitation over the globe and its seasonal variations are estimated from global atmospheric circulation statistics for the period May 1963 to April 1973. Meridional profiles of evaporation minus precipitation over the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans, over all oceans combined, and over all continents combined, as well as the total evaporation minus p...

[1] Controls on interannual variations in water and energy balances of large river basins (10,000 km and greater) are evaluated in the framework of the semiempirical relation E=P 1⁄4 1⁄21þ ðR=PÞ n 1/n in which and E, P, and R are basin mean values of annual evaporation, precipitation, and surface net radiation, respectively, expressed as equivalent evaporative water flux, overbars denote long-t...

The interannual variation of the Bowen ratio, through its effect on the warming extent of available energy to the ecosystem land surface air, heavily influences the ecosystem microclimate and affects the hydrological cycle at both regional and global scales. Although the precipitation amount in southeast China is not expected to change greatly as a result of climate change, the precipitation fr...