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Heat stress, resulting from elevated heat and absolute humidity associated with climate change, will increasingly occur in the tropics and parts of the mid-latitudes and could threaten the liveability and viability of many regions. Concomitant with predictions of increased heat stress in northern Australia, the Australian Government seeks to boost the population in northern Australia substantially. This paper assesses the heat stress-related wet-bulb temperatures the largest northern centres could experience under Representative Concentration Pathways 4.5 and 8.5 by 2080. The paper finds that substantial population growth could place significant future urban populations at risk from heat stress-related health issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collections care in temperate zones of the world, including Scotland, is generally well served by a system of heating control known as conservation heating or humidistat-controlled heating. This system adjusts temperature in a building in order to maintain relative humidity at desired levels. An alternative control method is through the use of dehumidification, although airtightness of the building influences the effectiveness of this. This paper assesses three sites where these methods of control have been used: the Great Hall at Edinburgh Castle, Abbots House at Arbroath Abbey in eastern Scotland and Skelmorlie Aisle in western Scotland. The benefits of each system are discussed, together with consideration of the effect of climate change on the efficacy of each. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hyper-arid climate of Ouargla area (Northern Sahara of Algeria) is important in the field of the paleoenvironmental reconstitution. This paper investigates the importance of palaeolake sediments as significant terrestrial archives for studying Quaternary climate changes. Through morphological and mainly micromorphological investigations of the studied sites (Sabkha of Ouargla and palaeolake of Mellala), we noted the fluctuation of climate between arid and more humid conditions during Quaternary. Some pedofeatures have recorded these environmental changes. The studied calcareous crusting has a lacustrine origin when precipitations were more important. The clay coatings around the quartz grains indicate an old origin and different geochemical conditions that led to their dissolution. Lenticular gypsum crystals were formed from groundwater saturated with Ca2+andions. Calcite pseudomorphs after lenticular gypsum crystals indicate changes in local climatic parameters. Gypsum crusts can be explained by formation under wet climatic conditions in a lagoonal environment. Black and gray layers indicate evolution of organic matter at a wetter period. This paper highlights an unknown palaeolake which can be useful for the comprehension of the ecological past of the Sahara. The comparison between this palaeolake and other Saharan palaeolakes has allowed us to assign it to a probable active period between 10000 and 4000 years B.P. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Thornthwaite Moisture Index (TMI) is a climate classification used in biophysical and biological studies. A TMI mapping of Victoria/Australia over the century indicated its applicability to assess climate change induced patterns of moisture variability. This paper progresses upon this, developing analytical procedures to assess the quality of the climate data used as input, and to select suitable spatial resolution for the output map. It is argued here that these are interrelated issues, and that the selection of a certain data quality level or a spatial resolution for TMI mapping needs to consider a trade-off between precision and scale. Results indicated that different trade-off options affect the climate classification and, therefore, a proposed framework can be used for non-arbitrary decisions on TMI mapping. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Impact models investigating climate change effects on food safety often need detailed climate data. The aim of this study was to select climate change projection data for selected crop phenology and mycotoxin impact models. Using the ENSEMBLES database of climate model output, this study illustrates how the projected climate change signal of important variables as temperature, precipitation and relative humidity depends on the choice of the climate model. Using climate change projections from at least two different climate models is recommended to account for model uncertainty. To make the climate projections suitable for impact analysis at the local scale a weather generator approach was adopted. As the weather generator did not treat all the necessary variables, an ad-hoc statistical method was developed to synthesise realistic values of missing variables. The method is presented in this paper, applied to relative humidity, but it could be adopted to other variables if needed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]