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The article discusses a research about the use of tree rings in providing information about the amount of snow or rainfall. It references a study by Kerstin Treydte and colleagues published within the issue. They concluded that the latter part of the twentieth century was by far the wettest period, suggesting that humans may play a role in the climate of the world.

Ongoing global warming not only involves changes in temperature and the global mean; it affects more or less every part of the climate. Regional temperature changes are often greater or smaller than corresponding changes in the global mean. In some cases the direction of change may also be different. For example, temperature changes are higher over land than over the ocean. Precipitation increases in some regions but decreases in others. Changes in extreme events may differ from changes in the corresponding mean. Present scientific knowledge clearly indicates that the already observed global trend towards warmer conditions will continue and that it will be accompanied by changes in yet other aspects of climate. This paper highlights, as a brief review, aspects of our changing climate from the available scientific knowledge with a bearing on the energy sector. Its focus is on temperature and precipitation, with some consideration of wind and sea level, among others. While uncertainties remain as far as the magnitude of future global-scale changes is concerned, and even more so their many regional patterns, significant changes are foreseen in, for example, global and regional temperature and precipitation, sea level rise, and in the characteristics of various extreme events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary ¶Trends and low frequency fluctuations relying on 14 observed temperature and precipitation series 1901?1998 from Hungarian sites are presented. The statistical significances of systematic changes are calculated by the t-test for the linear trends and the Mann-Kendall test. Characteristics of long-term fluctuations are investigated by spectrum analysis (Fisher-test), fitting optimum-ranked polynomials as well as illustrated by smoothed curves of 15-point Gauss-filter application. While the increase of mean temperature in Hungary during the 20 th century is not significant, the annual precipitation totals have substantially decreased. In the first half of the century mainly the precipitation totals in the transitional seasons decreased. By the second half of the century the seasonal structure of the precipitation trends has altered significantly: there was practically no systematic change in the transitional seasons, but winter precipitation decreased dramatically. The paper makes some comparisons with the same type climatic characteristics of the surrounding geographical regions, the temperature changes of the Northern Hemisphere, as well as discusses the relationship between winter precipitation in Hungary and the North Atlantic oscillation. A significant 50-year oscillation was found in the summer mean temperatures and the annual sums of extreme positive daily temperature anomalies in Hungary. This oscillation seems to be in tune with other processes over the Euro-Atlantic region. A cycle of 3.6 years in the annual precipitation totals was found to be significant at the 0.10 level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of climate change and projected increase in global temperature, the atmosphere's water holding capacity is expected to increase at the Clausius-Clapeyron (C-C) rate by about 7% per 1 °C warming. Such an increase may lead to more intense extreme precipitation events and thus directly affect the probable maximum precipitation (PMP), a parameter that is often used for dam safety and civil engineering purposes. We therefore use a statistically motivated approach that quantifies uncertainty and accounts for nonstationarity, which allows us to determine the rate of change of PMP per 1 °C warming. This approach, which is based on a bivariate extreme value model of precipitable water (PW) and precipitation efficiency (PE), provides interpretation of how PW and PE may evolve in a warming climate. Nonstationarity is accounted for in this approach by including temperature as a covariate in the bivariate extreme value model. The approach is demonstrated by evaluating and comparing projected changes to 6-hourly PMP from two Canadian regional climate models (RCMs), CanRCM4 and CRCM5, over North America. The main results suggest that, on the continental scale, PMP increases in these models at a rate of approximately 4% per 1 °C warming, which is somewhat lower than the C-C rate. At the continental scale, PW extremes increase on average at the rate of 5% per 1 °C near surface warming for both RCMs. Most of the PMP increase is caused by the increase in PW extremes with only a minor contribution from changes in PE extremes. Nevertheless, substantial deviations from the average rate of change in PMP rates occur in some areas, and these are mostly caused by sensitivity of PE extremes to near surface warming in these regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the monthly mean values of 10 meteorological elements from 53 surface weather stations in the Yangtze Delta and its adjacent areas during 1961–1997, the part played by linear climate trends has been analyzed to explore the characteristics of the regional climate change. The results show that the annual air temperature, and maximum and minimum air temperatures, have all increased rapidly in the Yangtze Delta, but there has been a reverse trend in its adjacent areas, i.e., the air temperatures have gradually decreased. Thus the Yangtze Delta emerges as a regional heat island in relation to its adjacent areas. The regional heat island consists of several urban heat sub-islands in southern Jiangsu Province and northern Zhejiang Province, including Shanghai, Wuxi, Changshu, Nanjing, Hangzhou and Ningbo. It appears most obvious in winter and least obvious in summer. An intensity of the regional heat island is defined, and it is shown that the variation of the heat island is positively correlated to the economic development of the region, and is assumed to be related with the increased consumption of energy due to economic development. The results of a climatological analysis of the other annual meteorological elements have indicated the tendency that the soil temperature of the Yangtze Delta has a weak cooling process, its precipitation has evidently increased, sunshine duration and visibility have apparently decreased, and the trend centers appear mainly in the cities. All these phenomena imply that air pollution and aerosols increase with economic development, leading to a cooling mechanism, which in turn suppresses the enhancement of the heat island caused by increasing consumption of energy. On the other hand, an intensified heat island also makes convection and precipitation increase. For the adjacent areas whose economic development is less intense than the Yangtze Delta, a weak cooling appeared there because their heat island caused by increasing consumption of energy resources could not offset the cooling due to aerosols. It can be seen from satellite images that the increase of aerosols in the Yangtze Delta is more obvious than its adjacent areas. By use of a three-region nested mesoscale model, a series of simulations are made with no-forcing and forcing of the optical depth of aerosol and the heating due to energy consumption by human activities. The results of the analysis and the simulation coincide very well. The simulations support the above-mentioned mechanisms of the regional heat island in the Yangtze Delta of China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The precipitation variability over South America south of 20° S (5A205) has been investigated at a decadal (DD) and non-DD time scales. The results suggest that the space-time particularities of the ENSO-related precipitation anomalous patterns depend on the time scales considered. The precipitation patterns in the 5A205 associated with the non-DD episodes exhibit a space-time coherent characteristics during ONDJ (0)-JJAS (+1) period such that a prominent area of positive (negative) anomalies is observed in the central 5A205 and displaced northeastward with the time for the non-DD El Niños (La Niñas). On the other hand, the precipitation anomalous patterns associated with the DD episodes feature more complex horizontal structures and larger anomalies than those of the non-decadal episodes. It is also worthwhile noting that the 5A205 climate experiences the strongest and more extensive effects of the DD episode during the austral summer of the year following the onset of the DD episodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]