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High‐resolution regional reanalysis datasets have the potential to provide valuable guidance to emergency management agencies, highlighting areas at risk of severe weather, including estimates of return periods of various hazardous weather phenomena. The BARRA regional reanalysis for Australia comprises a reanalysis for a broad region around Australia at moderately high spatial and temporal resolution (12 km/hourly), together with four subdomains at high resolution (1.5 km/1 h). Here, we document four applications of BARRA developed for emergency management: optimal placement of portable automatic weather stations for fire weather monitoring; climatology of low‐level wind shear conducive to cool‐season tornadogenesis; development of rainfall intensity–frequency–duration curves based on the gridded reanalysis data; and development of a climatology across Australia of parameters associated with severe thunderstorm occurrence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecosystems provide vital services to humans, which are regulated by the underlying ecological processes. Because of rapid population growth and urbanization, land‐use and land‐cover (LULC) changes ultimately impact the services an ecosystem can offer. The LULC of the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal have been altered due to urbanization, which is further expected to change in the future. However, a quantitative assessment of LULC impact on ecosystem services has not been undertaken. The purpose of this study is to assess the impacts affecting the ecosystem services values (ESV) in the Kathmandu Valley due to historical and projected LULC changes. We used satellite‐based datasets to assess LULC changes in the past, and Dyna‐CLUE to model future LULC changes. The benefit transfer approach was used to estimate ESV and their changes across time. Results confirmed the increase in urban area of 3.4% per year. This led to declining ESV from 1990 (US$ 231 million) to 2010 (US$ 205 million), which is predicted to decline further (US$ 157 million in 2050); on average US$ 12.3–13.2 million every decade u 1990 2050. This loss in ESV was dominated by the decline in agricultural land (40%, US$ 46.9 million), followed by deforestation (11%, US$ 11.1 million). Development (like urbanization) often overlooks the values from ecosystem services (ES), but ES quantification serves as a tool to make appropriate decisions during those changes. As shown in this study, ESV can be effectively quantified via application of a parsimonious approach by utilizing globally available datasets. This is especially more important for the data scarce regions of developing countries that are undergoing rapid changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The spatial climatic characteristics of the Himalayas are complex and a challenge for regional climate models ( RCMs). There is no doubt that some form of correction before any application of RCM simulations is a must. In recent years, simple bias correction techniques have been overshadowed by more popular and complex bias correction techniques. In this study an attempt is made to compare the performance of a simple and of a comparatively complex correction technique for hydrological analysis at a monthly resolution in the Kaligandaki River Basin of Nepal. The research workflow consists of bias correction of temperature and precipitation using a simple technique (linear scaling) and a comparatively complex one (quantile mapping). The performance at monthly resolution is evaluated against observed meteorological data while a combined evaluation is made via hydrological model response analysis. The wetter and colder RCM estimates were significantly improved after bias correction. The hydrological modelling response also shows the importance of the bias correction of the RCMs. However, no significant difference was observed between the outputs of linear scaling and quantile mapping which exhibited almost identical performances. Hence, this study has a novel conclusion that a simple method, such as linear scaling, is sufficient for hydrological analysis at monthly resolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]