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The present paper aims to compute climatological zones apt for the cultivation of pitaya based on trends in the occurrence of climate change events from the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panels on Climate Change) in Brazil. We used temperature and precipitation data from 4942 cities collected on the NASA/POWER platform (National Aeronautics and Space Administration/Prediction of Worldwide Energy Resources) from 1990 to 2020 to elaborate on the current scenario. The climate change scenarios were obtained using the CHELSA platform (Climatologies at high resolution for the earth's land surface areas) and corresponded to the periods 2041–2060 and 2061–2080 associated with four IPCC climate change scenarios. The spatialization of the data occurred according to the bioclimatic classes designed to meet the thermal and water needs of the crop. In the current scenario, class B5 has a predominance of 37.07% of the country, characterizing the Midwest, Southeast, and Northeast regions, as well as the state of Paraná, as suitable for the cultivation of pitaya. Projections of temperature increase and reduction of accumulated rainfall were found throughout Brazil, but with greater impact in the North and Northeast regions, which had the greatest reduction of areas suitable for the cultivation of pitaya with a greater predominance of classes B8 and B9. In the South and Southeast regions, class B5 makes up a large part of the areas that remained suitable for the production of this fruit until 2080. The results suggest that climate change does not benefit the cultivation of pitaya in some regions of Brazil because the dimensions of the areas suitable for economic production are restricted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, 16 cities representing four major architectural climate zones of China were selected, and the heating and cooling loads of office building during the period of 1961–2017 were simulated by using TRNSYS software. Daily extreme heating and cooling loads were determined by percentile methods, and the climate change impact on extreme loads was analyzed. The results showed that the days of extreme heating load of office building significantly decreased in almost all the selected cities, whereas there were no significant changes in the days of extreme cooling load. The daily extreme heating load was dominantly affected by the temperature (R2 = 0.43–0.79), but the daily extreme cooling load was related to multiple climate factors, including temperature, relative humidity, and solar radiation. Single temperature can only explain 3–37% of the changes of daily extreme cooling load, and the combination of multiple climate factors can explain 58–85%. Importantly, the effect of temperature on extreme cooling load showed decrease from the cold to hot climate zones, but the impacts of relative humidity and solar radiation gradually increased. These results suggest that the maximum design capacity of heating systems can properly decrease, and the design capacity of cooling systems may not largely increase with the climate warming. In addition, the combined effect of multiple climate factors rather than the single temperature, as well as the different responses of extreme cooling energy consumption to climate change in different climate zones, should be considered when making measures for improving operating efficiency of air-conditioning system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses two fundamental questions on climate change and variability: to what extent has climate changed and/or varied over years in two districts of different agro-ecological regions or zones and how do any changes differ between the zones or districts? Given the rural-rural migration pattern observed between the districts, understanding climate change risk to rural livelihoods cannot be overemphasised. To assess change and variability, we utilise rainfall data-records over a 36-year period from 1980 to 2016. Results show that there are wide variations and differences within and between the districts. Evidence suggests a general reduction in both annual rainfall and wet days. There is also ground to suggest that the rainy season duration is becoming shorter, given that rainfall onset is increasingly starting late, while cessation is increasingly coming early. Dry spells frequency and duration trends within rainy season show an increase over the period examined. We conclude that local climate in both areas has changed over the period investigated. However, while Livingstone seems to have experienced more droughts and unreliable rainfall, Kabwe experienced a bigger change in both rainfall and rainy season duration. We further conclude that migrants into Kabwe and other inhabitants are not any safer from climate change risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses temporal changes in the configuration of vertical climatic belts in the Tatra Mountains as a result of current climate change. Meteorological stations are scarce in the Tatra Mountains; therefore, we modelled decadal air temperatures using existing data from 20 meteorological stations and the relationship between air temperature and altitude. Air temperature was modelled separately for northern and southern slopes and for convex and concave landforms. Decadal air temperatures were additionally used to delineate five climatic belts previously distinguished by Hess on the basis of threshold values of annual air temperature. The spatial extent and location of the borderline isotherms of 6, 4, 2, 0, and − 2 °C for four decades, including 1951–1960, 1981–1990, 1991–2000, and 2001–2010, were compared. Significant warming in the Tatra Mountains, uniform in the vertical profile, started at the beginning of the 1980s and led to clear changes in the extent and location of the vertical climatic belts delineated on the basis of annual air temperature. The uphill shift of the borderline isotherms was more prominent on southern than on northern slopes. The highest rate of changes in the extent of the climatic belts was found above the isotherm of 0 °C (moderately cold and cold belts). The cold belt dramatically diminished in extent over the research period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The most practical methods to predict climate change are global climate models (GCMs). This research set out to evaluate the ability of 19 GCMs from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 6 (CMIP6) to reproduce the historical precipitation, maximum, and minimum temperature (Pr, Tmx, and Tmn) of climate prediction center data for the Amu Darya river basin (ADRB), as well as to project the climate of the basin using the chosen GCMs. The Kling-Gupta efficiency (KGE) metric was used to assess the effectiveness of GCMs to simulate the annual geographic variability of Pr, Tmx, and Tmn. A multi-criteria decision-making approach (MCDMA) was used to integrate the KGE values to rank GCMs. The findings showed that AWI-CM-1–1-MR, CMCC-ESM2, INM-CM4-8, and MPI-ESM1-2-LR best replicate observed Pr, Tmx, and Tmn in ADRB. Projection of climate employing the selected GCMs indicated an increase in precipitation (9.9–12.4%), Tmx (1.3–4.9 °C), and Tmn (1.3–5.5 °C) in the basin for all the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs), particularly for the far future (2060–2099). A significant variation can be seen in Tmx and Tmn over the different climatic zone. However, the intercomparison of selected GCM projected revealed high uncertainty in the projected climate. The projection uncertainty is noticed highest for Tmx. The uncertainty is also noticed higher in the far future and higher SSPs compared to the near future and lower SSPs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies revealed that building climatic zoning has largely changed in China due to the influence of climate change. However, the possible impacts of changing building climatic zoning on energy consumption for cooling or heating are not clear. In this study, eight representative cities were selected from changed climate zones, and the heating and cooling energy consumption of office and residential buildings of the representative cities under the conditions of the current and new climate zones was simulated to reveal the effect of the climate zone change on building energy consumption. The results showed that there was no heating or cooling energy consumption with the climates changing from hot summer and cold winter (HSCW) and cold (C) to mild (M). Also, no heating energy consumption occurred with the climate zones changing from HSCM to hot summer and warm winter (HSWW), whereas the cooling energy consumption showed a weak decrease. For the climate zones that shifted from severe cold (SC) to C, decreasing heating energy consumption and increasing cooling energy consumption trends were observed, and the total energy use exhibited a decreasing trend. However, in the climate zones changing from C to HSCW, the heating and cooling energy consumption increased, especially for residential buildings (e.g., the heating energy consumption of Zhengzhou and Baoji increased 78.7% and 77.7%, respectively). This study suggests that new climate zones should be fully considered and the new design standard according to the changes of climate zones should be adopted to improve building energy efficiency. The design of residential buildings in the climate zones changing from C to HSCW may not consider the changes of climate zone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional climate is particularly important for different activities such as forestry, agriculture, transport, coastal areas, and wildlife. In New Brunswick (NB), ten climate types were classified by combining climate and geographical data from 45 national meteorological stations for the period 1981–2010. A multiple regression technique/model was used for the interpolation of climatic parameters then clustering was done based on the three main parameters from a principal component analysis. Our results indicate a strong correlation between most climate variables with latitude and altitude while longitude and distance to the sea plays a more marginal role in climate spatial distribution. Furthermore, the climate map produced coincides with a map produced from a previous study of the NB province based on 1954–1979 data. However, the boundaries between most climate zones in those two maps changed slightly due to inconsistent period variation (1954–1979 vs 1981–2010), the methods used as well as the number and location of the weather stations (76 vs 45). Many climate type limits changes observed in the study area were probably connected with the climate change since mid-1950s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the extra-tropical eddies carry a huge amount of moisture, heat, and momentum from their source regions to remote places, the long-term changes in their properties can lead to substantial changes in the Earth's major climatic zones with huge socio-economic consequences. We present the long-term variability and trends in the spatial properties of the Rossby wave packets (RWPs) in the Northern Hemisphere in all seasons for the period of 1980–2013 using NCEP reanalysis for the three major storm track regions: Eurasian, North Pacific, and North Atlantic. A region of high-amplitude meandering flow in the upper troposphere that in the mid-latitudes travel in coherent wave train structures or wave packets is often referred to as a RWP. We found that the activity volume of the RWPs is largest during winter in all storm track basins. Our results suggest that the highest variability of the activity volume is in the North Atlantic region, while the minimum variability of this quantity is found during summer in the Eurasian basin. The largest relative frequency of significant wave packets is found in winter in the North Atlantic basin; however, the largest variability of this quantity is found in the North Pacific region during spring. The largest variability of the long-term daily maximum of WPA is found in the Eurasian region in winter and the minimum variability of this quantity is found in summer in the North Pacific region. The long-term northernmost point of the Rossby wave packets (which is an indicator of the meridional extent of the RWPs) shows that during autumn in the North Atlantic basin, the Rossby wave packets meander more than other seasons and regions. The minimum value of this quantity is found in the summer season in the Eurasian region. The largest variability of the northernmost edge of the RWPs is found in the autumn season in the Eurasian basin, while the minimum variability of this quantity is found in the autumn season in the North Atlantic region. We employ the non-parametric Mann-Kendall test to identify the statistically significant trends in the spatial properties of the Rossby wave packets. No significant trend is found for any diagnostic tools in any region and any season. This suggests that the global mean temperature rise or other climatic changes (over the 34-year period of this study) do not have a detectable impact on the Rossby wave packets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shifts in precipitation regimes have been given increased attention along with climate trends in the arid and semiarid Mongolian Plateau (MP), because precipitation is the dominant factor that controls vegetation growth and land-use practices in the region. However, the temporal variability and spatial heterogeneity of decadal trends in summer precipitation fraction have not been well understood. In this study, the temporal variability and spatial heterogeneity of annual and summer precipitation change were investigated with the major focus on the summer precipitation fraction across the entire MP, using monthly precipitation data from 141 meteorological stations and the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) precipitation data. The Mann–Kendall trend test, Sen's regression, and Spatial Analyst methods were used for time series analysis. Results show that the regional summer precipitation fraction declined significantly at a rate of − 1.0%/decade (p < 0.05) during 1961–2010, which was supported by TRMM satellite data with a rate of − 2.86%/decade over 1998–2016. Interestingly, rates of decrease in the summer precipitation fraction varied by ecoregion. Spatially, trend in summer precipitation fraction was very heterogeneous, with significant decreasing trends in the eastern typical steppe and southeastern agro-pastoral ecotone, but increasing trends in the southwestern desert and Gobi desert region. In conclusion, the summer precipitation fraction declined because of the asymmetric decreasing or increasing rates in summer and non-summer precipitation during both 1961–2010 and 1998–2010. This implies a major shift of precipitation regime in the region. This is likely driven by decadal changes of the East Asia monsoon system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies analyze the temperature variations in the Mediterranean area due to the anticipated impact of climate change in this part of the world. A number of studies examined the temperature climate in Greece, but few are based on a large number of synoptic stations covering all regions and climatic zones and even fewer are based on homogenized data set series, despite the fact that climatological studies must use high-quality homogeneous data series. The present work reviews previous studies dealing with climatic changes in Greece and addresses changes of mean air temperature, based on a large set of homogenized data from 52 synoptic stations. A statistically significant negative trend during 1960-1976 and a positive one during 1977-2004 were revealed. During 1960-1976, the lowest negative annual temperature trend is observed in Crete. During 1977-2004, the northern region of Greece was characterized by prominent annual warming, whereas the north and central Aegean Sea and the semi-mountainous area were characterized by the lowest warming. All stations are characterized by high seasonal trends in summer; the most extreme trends are observed in the northern and eastern regions and in the Attica area. Positive temperature trends occur from May to October, while negative trends dominate from November to February. The most pronounced warming is recorded in June and July, and the most strongly decreasing trend occurs in November. Annual temperature trends in northern Greece follow the hemispheric pattern, and the overall summer warming in Greece is greater than the hemisphere's. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]