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Ecuador is a country with several climate zones. However, their behaviour is similar throughout the year, with no peaks of extreme temperatures in the various seasons. This paper is a first approach to study the adaptive comfort behaviour in several areas and populations of the country. Considering the ASHRAE 55-2020 model, energy simulation programmes are applied not just to the current climate scenario but also to the climate change scenarios of 2050 and 2100. The results of locations are analysed and compared to determine their performance. Thanks to their climate characteristics, adaptive comfort models could be applied as a passive strategy, using natural ventilation for building indoor comfort improvement, particularly social dwellings. According to previous studies, some prototypes have not considered the climate determinants in each region. Given the geographic situation of the study areas, the adaptive comfort model could be applied in all cases. Percentages of application of natural ventilation and heating and cooling degree hours have similar behaviours according to the climatic region, with a variation greater than 30% among them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drought monitoring and early detection have improved greatly in recent decades through the development and refinement of numerous indices and indicators. However, a lack of guidance, based on user experience, exists as to which drought-monitoring tools are most appropriate in a given location. This review paper summarizes the results of targeted user engagement and the published literature to improve the understanding of drought across North America and to enhance the utility of drought-monitoring tools. Workshops and surveys were used to assess and make general conclusions about the perceived performance of drought indicators, indices and impact information used for monitoring drought in the five main Köppen climate types (Tropical, Temperate, Continental, Polar Tundra, Dry) found across Canada, Mexico, and the United States. In Tropical, humid Temperate, and southerly Continental climates, droughts are perceived to be more short-term (less than 6 months) in duration rather than long-term (more than 6 months). In Polar Tundra climates, Dry climates, Temperate climates with dry warm seasons, and northerly Continental climates, droughts are perceived to be more long-term than short-term. In general, agricultural and hydrological droughts were considered to be the most important drought types. Drought impacts related to agriculture, water supply, ecosystem, and human health were rated to be of greatest importance. Users identified the most effective indices and indicators for monitoring drought across North America to be the U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM) and Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) (or another measure of precipitation anomaly), followed by the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) (or another satellite-observed vegetation index), temperature anomalies, crop status, soil moisture, streamflow, reservoir storage, water use (demand), and reported drought impacts. Users also noted the importance of indices that measure evapotranspiration, evaporative demand, and snow water content. Drought indices and indicators were generally thought to perform equally well across seasons in Tropical and colder Continental climates, but their performance was perceived to vary seasonally in Dry, Temperate, Polar Tundra, and warmer Continental climates, with improved performance during warm and wet times of the year. The drought indices and indicators, in general, were not perceived to perform equally well across geographies. This review paper provides guidance on when (time of year) and where (climate zone) the more popular drought indices and indicators should be used. The paper concludes by noting the importance of understanding how drought, its impacts, and its indicators are changing over time as the climate warms and by recommending ways to strengthen the use of indices and indicators in drought decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paleontological studies of the distant past and historical chronicles of the last millennia indicate that warming and cooling of the climate on our planet, replacing each other, have taken place in a continuous series. An important role in this process has been and is played by cosmic factors: variations in solar activity and parameters of the Earth's orbital motion in the gravitational field of the Sun and the planets of the Solar System. It is suggested that the currently observed climate change is associated with a decrease in the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit and the inclination of the axis of its rotation relative to the plane of the ecliptic, which has been going on for almost 30 thousand years. Both processes lead to changes in the boundaries of climatic zones. In the foreseeable future, these processes will proceed in the same direction. Therefore, the current trend towards climate change will continue. Despite the importance of addressing the problem of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions as soon as possible, this paper expresses doubts about the possibility of fending off climate warming in this way. It is proposed to focus on the development of mathematical climate models taking into account space factors and on finding the best ways to adapt industry, transport systems, and the environment to the conditions of expected climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

This paper reviews the existing research on Sideroxylon mascatense, and provides an argument for being considered a fruit crop in cultivated production systems in the Sultanate of Oman and elsewhere. Climate change due to global warming has adverse effects on the agro-ecosystems of mountain regions in marginal climate zones. For example, in the Western Hajar Mountains of Oman, yields of the temperate fruit crops have decreased in recent years as temperature and other climate anomalies have increased. Other fruit-bearing wild plants have also been impacted by extreme weather fluctuations, particularly those that occupy a narrow altitudinal range. One such plant is S. mascatense, a currently underutilized fruiting plant found growing in the wild all through the Middle East and other arid mountainous regions. Two fruiting types of S. mascatense are found in Oman, both of which are seasonally wild harvested by mountain inhabitants and sold in markets as well as along the roadsides. While some specimens exist in cultivated areas, propagation and new plantings are non-existent. Regeneration in the wild is also in decline in Oman, possibly due to climate change. Increasing S. mascatense populations could be achieved via propagation, as well as commercial cultivation, although further research is needed into cropping systems and best practice methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agriculture in low latitude countries such as Sri Lanka is already operating at the maximum temperature limits for crop growth and faces increased production risk from expected climate change. Sri Lanka is a developing country with limited economic and technological capacity to develop adaptation strategies; hence more vu lnerable to climate change than developed countries. Coconut (Cocos nucifera L) is a rain fed perennial crop important in Sri Lankan culture, food consumption and the economy. It is the second most important food in the Sri Lankan diet after rice. Several studies have examined the impact of climate change on Sri Lankan agriculture, but none were conducted to simulate the impact of future climate change and future adaptation strategies on coconut production, or to calculate the economic welfare effects for different stakeholders in the coconut value chain. In this paper we report the development of an economic model of the coconut value chain that allows prediction of welfare impacts, and a quantitative representation of coconut yield that allows prediction of the impact of changing climatic conditions. The average outcome of 16 climate models was used to generate future climatic conditions, with two future climatic scenarios for 2020, 2030 and 2050 considered for three production regions. The most important yield estimate was a yield decline of more than 10 percent in the wet climatic zone due to the expected increase of maximum temperature. Without extra adaptation measures this is predicted to result in a loss to the industry of 4,795 Rs. Million annually by 2020, which is nearly 4.7 percent of the total value of the industry at equilibrium prices and quantities. The negative impact of climate change has the potential to be reduced with the implementation of additional adaptation practices. However, the cost effectiveness of these practices needs to be considered. Wider adoption of fertilizer application at specific times and moisture conservation practices are estimated to be economically beneficial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Tree ring is an ideal indicator of annual total grain production parameters. • Tree growth synchronized with grain production, and concurrent response to climate. • Reconstruction of total grain productivity based on dendrochronology. • To explore the relationship between total grain sown area and climate change. Climate change affects the growth of regional vegetation; both trees and grain crops often change concurrently, such that the annual radial growth of trees shows consistent inter-annual variations with the total grain crop productivity. However, it remains unclear whether they exhibit concurrent responses to climate factors, and that there lacks of the study on long-term high-resolution variations of grain crops productivity. This paper employs a Pinus massoniana tree-ring series from the Tongbai Mountains to analyze the correlations between tree-ring chronology, local climate data and grain productivity indicators (i.e., total sown grain areas (TSA), total grain outputs (TGO), and average grain yield per hectare (YPH)) of Henan Province in central China. The results indicate that temperature in March and August was the main limiting factor on tree growth, and the best concurrent relationship with tree growth was TSA, which has a correlation of 0.747 (p < 0.001) during 1959–2020. Therefore, a 124-year TSA series in Henan Province was reconstructed using tree-ring data from the Tongbai Mountains, which reveals there were two distinct low periods of total grain sown area in the 1920 s-1930 s and 1980 s-2000 s. There are significant cycles of about 2.57a (p < 0.01), 2.89a (p < 0.05), and 10.95a (p < 0.1), indicating that vegetation growth might be affected by large-scale climate forcing, such as ENSO (2-7a cycle) and sunspot activity (11a cycle). Overall, this study outlines a new approach to understand long-term changes in grain production, which is conducive to grain management and socioeconomic sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Incidence of windows design on energy and visual comfort is studied under climate change. • The case study is an office building located in representative European climates. • Triple low-emissive windows, in oceanic and continental climates achieves energy saving of −35 %. • Double selective windows assures savings from −27 % to −57 % in the warm and oceanic climate. • The primary energy will increase until 27 % in for warn climates considering the 2080 scenario. The design of the glazed elements of the building envelope is a critical issue for both new and refurbished building when the effect of climate changes and expected overheating conditions are considered. Indeed, the windows affect the building energy balance and also the natural lighting that impacts both on visual comfort and illuminance consumptions. This paper develops a methodological approach for performing a parametric analysis aimed at quantifying the effects of different window's designs on the total primary energy and visual comfort of an office in the most representative European climatic zones. The considered parameters are: windows' orientation, window to wall ratio, glass and frame type and the installation of shading system. A new approach for evaluating the resilience of the optimal solution selected for the current climates is introduced by taking into account medium and long-term emissions scenarios. This analysis suggests that in the warm-summer humid continental climate, a double selective window may be resilient. Indeed, in the worst emission scenario, the achievable annual energy saving will be around −26 % if compared with a clear double window. Meanwhile it will be lower than −10 % if compared with the same optimal solution but simulated in the short-term emission scenario. For the humid subtropical climates and hot-summer Mediterranean climates, the scientific community should be focused the development of new solutions because also a dynamic system as the electrochromic one, is not able to guaranteed energy saving in the future scenario. Indeed, also the optimal configuration selected under the current conditions would be characterized by higher primary energy request (between 16 % and 27 %) under the future emissions scenarios. [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]

Abstract: This paper aims to present the more recent advances regarding the climatic zoning based on the Climate Severity Index and its relation with the building energy requirements. Three are the major contributions in this paper, the first one is the comparison of the energy performance requirements in different European Union Member States; secondly the definition of the global Climate Severity Index, and finally the definition of the Climate Severity Index for tertiary buildings. Regulators and building designers are the most interested in these results. The comparison of the energy requirements, gives to the regulators, valuable information in order to establish a consistent requirement in their own country. Thanks to the definition of the Global Climate Severity Index, the previous can be done in terms of global-heating plus cooling-energy needs, allowing a homogeneous comparison along Europe or Worldwide. Also, these results allow comparing the energy requirements in one country to those with similar climate. From the designer point of view, the results of this paper could be used to estimate the thermal properties –U values – of the building envelope, and the solar shading factor of the windows of a tertiary building assimilating it to a residential building in an equivalent climatic zone. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In order to better understand the effect associated with global climate change on Iran's climate condition, it is important to quantify possible shifts in different climatic types in the future. To this end, monthly mean minimum and maximum temperature, and precipitation from 181 synoptic meteorological stations (average 1970-2005) have been collected from the meteorological organization of Iran. In this paper, to study spatial changes of Iran's climatic zones affected by climate changes, Extended De Martonne's classification (originally formulated by De Martonne and extended by Khalili ()) was used. Climate change scenarios were simulated in two future climates (average conditions during the 2050s and the 2080s) under each of the SRES A1B and A2, for the CSIRO-MK3, HadCM3, and CGCM3 climate models. Coarse outputs of GCMs were downscaled by delta method. We produced all maps for three time periods (one for the current and two for the future) according to Extended De Martonne's classification. Finally, for each climatic zone, changes between the current and the future were compared. As the main result, simulated changes indicate shifts to warmer and drier zones. For example, in the current, extra arid-cold ( A1.1m2) climate is covering the largest area of the country (21.4 %), whereas in both A1B and A2 scenarios in the 2050s and the 2080s, extra arid-moderate ( A1.1m3) and extra arid-warm ( A1.1m4) will be the climate and will occupy the largest area of the country, about 21 and 38 %, respectively. This analysis suggests that the global climate change will have a profound effect on the future distribution of severe aridity in Iran. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In variable humidity conditions, wood absorbs or desorbs moisture from the air. Unless the change in humidity is very slow, this will develop moisture gradients in the wood sections. These gradients will develop stresses due to constrained swelling or shrinkage strains. These stresses are named moisture-induced stresses. The present paper investigates the main parameters affecting such moisture-induced stresses, including the type of climate, the size of the timber cross-section, and the type of protective coating. A first attempt to identify moisture-induced stresses in different European climatic regions was made. For each climatic region, relative humidity and temperature histories were identified, and characteristic and mean values of yearly and daily variations were calculated. Using a finite element model implemented in Abaqus, the moisture content and stress distribution were computed on different timber cross-sections exposed to the climatic regions and protected with different types of coating. A Fickian moisture transfer model was used to compute the moisture distribution, and a mechanical model for time-dependent behaviour of wood was implemented to calculate the corresponding stress distribution. The variation of moisture was found to result in stresses of magnitudes that would probably cause cracking of wood in the perimeter of any uncoated cross-section size. The use of a protective coating, however, reduced considerably the moisture-induced stresses, and can be regarded as an effective protective measure to avoid cracking due to humidity variations. Considering European climates, Northern climates were found to result in higher surface tensile stresses than Southern climates. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The low-frequency response to changes in external forcing for the climate system is a fundamental issue. In two recent papers the authors developed a new blended response algorithm for predicting the response of a nonlinear chaotic forced-dissipative system to small changes in external forcing. This new algorithm is based on the fluctuation–dissipation theorem and combines the geometrically exact general response formula using integration of a linear tangent model at short response times and the classical quasi-Gaussian response algorithm at longer response times. This algorithm overcomes the inherent numerical instability in the geometric formula arising because of positive Lyapunov exponents at longer times while removing potentially large systematic errors from the classical quasi-Gaussian approximation at moderate times. Here the new blended method is tested on the low-frequency response for a T21 barotropic truncation on the sphere with realistic topography in two dynamical regimes corresponding to the mean climate behavior at 300- and 500-hPa geopotential height. The 300-hPa regime has robust strongly mixing behavior with a nearly Gaussian equilibrium state distribution, whereas the 500-hPa regime is weakly chaotic with slowly decaying time autocorrelation functions and strongly non-Gaussian climatology. It is found that the blended response algorithm has significant skill beyond the classical quasi-Gaussian algorithm for the response of the climate mean state and its variance. Additionally, the predicted response of the T21 barotropic model in the lowfrequency regime for these functionals does not seem to be affected by the model's structural instability. Thus, the results here suggest the use of the fluctuation–dissipation theorem–based blended response algorithm for more complex nonlinear geophysical models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change and climate-sensitive disasters caused by climatic hazards have a significant and increasing direct and indirect impact on human health. Due to its vast area, complex geographical environment and various climatic conditions, Russia is one of the countries that suffers significantly from frequent climate hazards. This paper provides information about temperature extremes in Russia in the beginning of the 21st century, and their impact on human health. A literature search was conducted using the electronic databases Web of Science, Science Direct, Scopus, and e-Library, focusing on peer-reviewed journal articles published in English and in Russian from 2000 to 2021. The results are summarized in 16 studies, which are divided into location-based groups, including Moscow, Saint Petersburg and other large cities located in various climatic zones: in the Arctic, in Siberia and in the southern regions, in ultra-continental and monsoon climate. Heat waves in cities with a temperate continental climate lead to a significant increase in all-cause mortality than cold waves, compared with cities in other climatic zones. At the same time, in northern cities, in contrast to the southern regions and central Siberia, the influence of cold waves is more pronounced on mortality than heat waves. To adequately protect the population from the effects of temperature waves and to carry out preventive measures, it is necessary to know specific threshold values of air temperature in each city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaluation of effects of climate change on climate variable extremes is a key topic in civil and structural engineering, strongly affecting adaptation strategy for resilience. Appropriate procedures to assess the evolution over time of climatic actions are needed to deal with the inherent uncertainty of climate projections, also in view of providing more sound and robust predictions at the local scale. In this paper, an ad hoc weather generator is presented that is able to provide a quantification of climate model inherent uncertainties. Similar to other weather generators, the proposed algorithm allows the virtualization of the climatic data projection process, overcoming the usual limitations due to the restricted number of available climate model runs, requiring huge computational time. However, differently from other weather generation procedures, this new tool directly samples from the output of Regional Climate Models (RCMs), avoiding the introduction of additional hypotheses about the stochastic properties of the distributions of climate variables. Analyzing the ensemble of so-generated series, future changes of climatic actions can be assessed, and the associated uncertainties duly estimated, as a function of considered greenhouse gases emission scenarios. The efficiency of the proposed weather generator is discussed evaluating performance metrics and referring to a relevant case study: the evaluation of extremes of minimum and maximum temperature, precipitation, and ground snow load in a central Eastern region of Italy, which is part of the Mediterranean climatic zone. Starting from the model ensemble of six RCMs, factors of change uncertainty maps for the investigated region are derived concerning extreme daily temperatures, daily precipitation, and ground snow loads, underlying the potentialities of the proposed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• In-situ monitoring allows for a more reliable estimation of envelope performance of residential buildings. • Policy differences are one of the main causes for the variation in building envelope performance across regions. • Potential global warming impacts ought to be considered when pondering on the future direction of envelope development of residential buildings. • Interactive policy framework underscores the necessity of devising more comprehensive public policies pertaining to energy saving. Climatic conditions can exert significant impacts on energy demand of residential buildings. Therefore, case-based evidence is necessary for aiding local policy making on building energy performance. By designing and carrying out in-situ monitoring campaigns respectively in Cambridge, Hong Kong and Shanghai, we present in this paper a cross-regional analysis of actual building envelope performance in these three climatic regions that operate under different energy efficiency policies. Compared with conventional tabulated data, information gleaned from the method of in-situ monitoring shows lower uncertainty and higher precision, especially when the wall has good thermal properties. By comparing practices in different regions and with accurate post-occupancy thermal data, the analytical results further show that the effectiveness of building-related policies on energy performance varies across regions. This is one of the pioneering studies that make interactive policy recommendations based on the evidence obtained from cross-regional, in-situ monitoring campaigns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate is a key factor in agriculture, but we are unable to adequately predict future climates. Although some studies have addressed the short and long-run impacts of climate change on agriculture, few of them specifically focused on the analysis of its thermal component. Climatic regions with an extreme thermal range are a special case, as seasonal contrasts complicate the picture. Based on the above, the purpose of the paper is twofold. First, we review methods and indices used for the estimation of changes in the thermal component of the climate and demonstrate the usefulness of a sensitivity assessment methodology that gives some indication of the likely spatial extent of areas of high or low sensitivity to climate change and the size of the potential impact of that change, which is specifically beneficial in regions with high temperature extremes. Secondly, we constructed a composite indicator, called the Growing Degree Day Sensitivity Index (GDDSI) and defined as the percentage change in Growing Degree Day (GDD) for warming scenarios +1, +2 and +3 °C. GDDs were calculated for threshold base air temperatures of 0, 5, 10 and 15 °C, and a high-temperature limit of 30 °C. A GDD sensitivity analysis was applied to the thermally extreme climate of the Russian Far East. We analyzed the data of 50 weather stations across the study region over the period 1966–2017. The results show a strong GDDSI north-to-south gradient. In most cases, the sensitivity does not increase significantly as the warming rate increases. The higher the base threshold, the higher the sensitivity: GDDs with a threshold at 15 °C had the highest sensitivity in the far north of the study area where conditions are currently marginal for crop growth. The sensitivity analysis circumnavigates the difficulty of uncertainty in knowing what future climate to expect and informs planning decisions. The mapped results are useful for identifying areas of high sensitivity to climate change as well as the magnitude of the potential impact of that change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]