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Based on the government’s historical records and personal documents of the pre-modern Chosŏn Dynasty, this paper examines the socio-economic impacts in Korea in response to climatic variability from 1809 until 1819 that may have been influenced to some degree by the eruption of the “unknown volcano” (1809) and the Tambora eruption (1815). In the early 1800s, when volcanic eruptions occurred successively, the Korean Peninsula experienced a temporal precipitation variation—drought, abundant rainfall, and normalcy—twice. The precipitation variation in this period had a heavy impact on the yields of rice, major crop on the peninsula. In the phase of drought in 1809 and extreme climatic anomalies in 1814, the country suffered record poor harvests, and in the abundant rainfall phase in 1810 and 1816–1817, it had bumper crops. For this reason, 1816–1817 were the halcyon years for Korea, unlike the case of Europe and the northeastern USA which suffered from extreme climatic anomalies in those years. This case of the Korean Peninsula indicates that the climate change and natural disasters of the 1810s were influenced by not only of the single event of the Tambora eruption but of the successive eruptions of volcanoes in the 7 years from 1809 to 1815, which also affected other areas on the globe for 11 years (1809–1819).

From a global perspective, the stable isotope altitude effect is crucial for understanding climate information. However, the intensity of this effect can be influenced by the source of moisture, particularly in inland mountainous regions where the moisture sources are complex. Different combinations of moisture sources might affect the altitude effect. Focusing on the upper Shiyang River in the northern part of the Qilian Mountains in China, this study calculated the proportion of recycled moisture in precipitation and utilized the HYSPLIT model to determine the source of advective moisture. It explored the characteristics and mechanisms by which moisture sources affect the spatiotemporal variations in precipitation isotope effects within the study area. The findings indicated that: (a) The altitude effect follows a seasonal pattern: winter < autumn < spring < summer, with a reverse effect in winter. (b) As the contribution of recycled moisture to precipitation increases, the altitude effect of stable isotopes weakens, primarily due to the disruptive influence of recycled moisture on this effect. (c) The altitude effect of stable isotopes in precipitation is determined by the direction of the moisture source and its attributes. When the primary source of advective moisture runs perpendicular to the mountain range and the moisture migration speed is slow, the altitude effect is pronounced. Thus, although temperature directly causes the altitude effect, water vapor sources significantly influence it in inland mountainous regions. Key Points The altitude effect has significant seasonal variation, being strong in summer and weakest in winter The contribution of recirculating water vapor to precipitation is large, weakening the altitude effect The source of water vapor and the nature of the air masses contribute to the differences in elevation effects

Global precipitation variations over the satellite era are reviewed using the Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) monthly, globally complete analyses, which integrate satellite and surface gauge information. Mean planetary values are examined and compared, over ocean, with information from recent satellite programs and related estimates, with generally positive agreements, but with some indication of small underestimates for GPCP over the global ocean. Variations during the satellite era in global precipitation are tied to ENSO events, with small increases during El Ninos, and very noticeable decreases after major volcanic eruptions. No overall significant trend is noted in the global precipitation mean value, unlike that for surface temperature and atmospheric water vapor. However, there is a pattern of positive and negative trends across the planet with increases over tropical oceans and decreases over some middle latitude regions. These observed patterns are a result of a combination of inter-decadal variations and the effect of the global warming during the period. The results reviewed here indicate the value of such analyses as GPCP and the possible improvement in the information as the record lengthens and as new, more sophisticated and more accurate observations are included.

Since Shi et al. proposed that the climate in the drylands of Northwest China experienced a significant transition from a “warming and drying” trend to a “warming and wetting” trend in the 1980s, researchers have conducted numerous studies on the variations in precipitation and humidity in the region and even in arid Central Asia. In particular, the process of the “warming and wetting” trend by using obtained measurement data received much attention. However, there remain uncertainties about whether the “warming and wetting” trend has paused and what its future variations may be. In this study, we examined the spatiotemporal variations in temperature, precipitation, the aridity index (AI), vegetation, and runoff during 1950–2019. The results showed that the climate in the drylands of Northwest China and the northern Tibetan Plateau is persistently warming and wetting since the 1980s, with an acceleration since the 1990s. The precipitation/humidity variations in North China, which are mainly influenced by summer monsoon, are generally opposite to those in the drylands of Northwest China. This reverse change is mainly controlled by an anomalous anticyclone over Mongolia, which leads to an anomalous easterly wind, reduced water vapor output, and increased precipitation in the drylands of Northwest China. While it also causes an anomalous descending motion, increased water vapor divergence, and decreased precipitation in North China. Precipitation is the primary controlling factor of humidity, which ultimately forms the spatiotemporal pattern of the “westerlies-dominated climatic regime” of antiphase precipitation/humidity variations between the drylands of Northwest China and monsoonal region of North China. The primary reasons behind the debate of the “warming and wetting” trend in Northwest China were due to the use of different time series lengths, regional ranges, and humidity indices in previous analyses. Since the EC-Earth3 has a good performance for simulating precipitation and humidity in Northwest and North China. By using its simulated results, we found a wetting trend in the drylands of Northwest China under low emission scenarios, but the climate will gradually transition to a “warming and drying” trend as emissions increase. This study suggests that moderate warming can be beneficial for improving the ecological environment in the drylands of Northwest China, while precipitation and humidity in monsoon-dominated North China will persistently increase under scenarios of increased emissions.

Spatial and temporal patterns of rainfall are governed by complex interactions between climate and landscape perturbations including deforestation, fire, and drought. Previous research demonstrated that rainfall in portions of the Amazon Basin has intensified, resulting in more extreme droughts and floods. The basin has global impacts on climate and hydrologic cycles; thus, it is critical to understand how precipitation patterns and intensity are changing. Due to insufficient precipitation gauges, we analyzed the variability and seasonality of rainfall over the Amazon Basin from 1982 to 2018 using high-resolution gridded precipitation products. We developed several precipitation indices and analyzed their trends using the Mann–Kendall test (Mann 1945; Kendall, 1975) to identify significant changes in rainfall patterns over time and space. Our results show landscape scale changes in the timing and intensity of rainfall events. Specifically, wet areas of the western Basin have become significantly wetter since 1982, with an increase of 182 mm of rainfall per year. In the eastern and southern regions, where deforestation is widespread, a significant drying trend is evident. Additionally, local alterations to precipitation patterns were also observed. For example, the Tocantins region has had a significant increase in the number of dry days during both wet and dry seasons, increasing by about 1 day per year. Surprisingly, changes in rainfall amount and number of dry days do not consistently align. Broadly, over this 37-year period, wet areas are trending wetter and dry areas are trending drier, while spatial anomalies show structure at the scale of hundreds of kilometers.

Precipitation patterns and their variations over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) are mainly dominated by the Asian summer monsoon, westerlies, and their interactions. The exact extent of the Asian summer monsoon’s influence, however, remains undetermined. Referencing the climatological northern boundary index of the East Asian summer monsoon, we demonstrate that the 300 mm precipitation isoline from May to September can be utilized as an indicator of the northern boundary of the Asian summer monsoon over the TP, allowing for an analysis of the spatial distribution characteristics of the climatological and interannual northern boundary. Our results indicate that the climatological northern boundary of the Asian summer monsoon over the TP lies along the eastern Qilian Mountains-Tanggula Mountains-Qiangtang Plateau-Gangdise Mountains-Western Himalayas during 2001–2020. This position corresponds well with the position of the convergence of westerly (westerlies) and southerly wind (monsoon) in the lower troposphere, representing the interface between dry and wet regions in the rainy season over the TP. There is a significant positive correlation between changes in the zonal/meridional water vapor budget and variations in precipitation to the north/south of the climatological northern boundary, respectively. Additionally, a close relationship exists between the interannual fluctuation range of the northern boundary and the distribution of vegetation across the TP. Compared to the northern boundary of the summer monsoon defined by meteorological criteria, which is established based on 5-day (pentad) mean precipitation (exceeding 4 mm day −1 ), our climatological northern boundary offers a more objective portrayal of the region that experiences persistent influence from the summer monsoon. These indicate that climatological northern boundary has a clear significance for natural geographical distribution such as the westerlies-monsoon circulation, ecology, and climate. Based on the interannual fluctuation range of the northern boundary, we divided the TP into domains of westerlies, monsoon, and westerlies-monsoon transition. This study could serve as a foundation for further investigation into the interactions between westerlies and monsoon, variations in precipitation patterns and hydrological-ecological systems over the TP.

Climate change is altering the dynamics, structure and function of the Amazon, a biome deeply connected to the Earth’s carbon cycle. Climate factors that control the spatial and temporal variations in forest photosynthesis have been well studied, but the influence of forest height and age on this controlling effect has rarely been considered. Here, we present remote sensing observations of solar-induced fluorescence (a proxy for photosynthesis), precipitation, vapour-pressure deficit and canopy height, together with estimates of forest age and aboveground biomass. We show that photosynthesis in tall Amazonian forests, that is, forests above 30 m, is three times less sensitive to precipitation variability than in shorter (less than 20 m) forests. Taller Amazonian forests are also found to be older, have more biomass and deeper rooting systems1, which enable them to access deeper soil moisture and make them more resilient to drought. We suggest that forest height and age are an important control of photosynthesis in response to interannual precipitation fluctuations. Although older and taller trees show less sensitivity to precipitation variations, they are more susceptible to fluctuations in vapour-pressure deficit. Our findings illuminate the response of Amazonian forests to water stress, droughts and climate change.

Precipitation over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) has major societal impacts in South and East Asia, but its spatiotemporal variations are not well understood, mainly because of the sparsely distributed in situ observation sites. With the help of the Global Precipitation Measurement satellite product IMERG and the ERA5 dataset, distinct precipitation seasonality features over the TP were objectively classified using a self-organizing map algorithm fed with 10-day averaged precipitation from 2000 to 2019. The classification reveals three main precipitation regimes with distinct seasonality of precipitation: the winter peak, centered at the western plateau; the early summer peak, found on the eastern plateau; and the late summer peak, mainly located on the southwestern plateau. On a year-to-year basis, the winter peak regime is relatively robust, whereas the early summer and late summer peak regimes tend to shift mainly between the central and northern TP but are robust in the eastern and southwestern TP. A composite analysis shows that the winter peak regime experiences larger amounts of precipitation in winter and early spring when the westerly jet is anomalously strong to the north of the TP. Precipitation variations in the late summer peak regime are associated with intensity changes in the South Asian high and Indian summer monsoon. The precipitation in the early summer peak regime is correlated with the Indian summer monsoon together with anticyclonic circulation over the western North Pacific. The results provide a basic understanding of precipitation seasonality variations over the TP and associated large-scale conditions.

Land snails exhibit the potential for capturing synoptic‐scale precipitation events through the δ18O records of their shells (δ18Oshell), but the application is hindered by the absence of a practical methodology for tracking these events. Here, we developed a statistical methodology to track the synoptic‐scale precipitation events from daily resolved snail body fluid δ18O (δ18OBF) record. We further tested and verified our approach using daily resolved δ18Oshell records of modern Cathaica fasciola from the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP). The reconstructed 3‐day‐timescale precipitation events frequencies using first derivations of δ18OBF and δ18Oshell shows strong agreement with instrumental data (>85% detection accuracy). The strong correlation between precipitation days in snail‐growing‐season and annual precipitation amounts across the CLP also permits the reconstruction of synoptical precipitation frequency for investigating the interannual variability of precipitation. Our study paves the avenue in paleoweather study, enabling quantitative reconstructions of past synoptic‐scale precipitation events. Plain Language Summary Reconstructing past weather variations from paleoclimate archives can expand instrumental record and reveal weather variability not apparent in current data. Land snails are highly responsive to environmental changes, and the oxygen isotopic composition of their shells (δ18Oshell) can provide valuable clues about the precipitations occurred on daily to weekly timescale. However, no method for quantitatively tracking precipitation events using these snail shells is developed yet, which has greatly restricted the past synoptic‐scale precipitation variation reconstructions. To address this, in situ secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) determination was conducted on the modern land snail shells collected on the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP), yielding daily resolved δ18Oshell records. Combining these with long‐term observations of snail body fluid δ18O (δ18OBF), we developed a novel statistical method to track the synoptic precipitation events in the SIMS δ18Oshell records. Our approach, which reconstructs the precipitation frequency on a 3‐day timescale, closely matches instrumental data, achieving over 85% detection rate. This method also enables the investigation of interannual precipitation variability, since the strong correlation between precipitation frequency in snail‐growing‐season and annual precipitation amounts across CLP. This work paths a new way in the paleoweather study, enabling quantitative reconstructions of past synoptic‐scale precipitation events using fossil snail shells. Key Points Daily δ18O variations in snail body fluids and shells are mainly driven by precipitation Synoptic‐precipitation frequency can be quantitively reconstructed by daily resolved snail shell δ18O Reconstructed synoptic‐precipitation frequency can reveal the interannual precipitation variability in the past

Recent studies show variations in precipitation‐gridded data set accuracy with changing geographical parameters. Ensemble precipitation products, combining diverse data sets, offer global‐scale effectiveness, but applying them to regional studies, particularly in small to medium‐sized sub‐basins, presents challenges in addressing precipitation dependence on specific geographical conditions. Here, we present a newly developed Clusters Based‐Minimum Error approach to assimilate different open‐source gridded precipitation data sets for forming an accurate precipitation product over small to medium‐sized hilly terrain basins, with limited precipitation gauges. This methodology generates the New Gridded Precipitation Data Set (NGPD) from 1991 to 2022 for the Upper Ganga Basin in the western Himalaya, covering approximately 22,292 km2. The study utilizes nine open‐source gridded precipitation data sets and 11 observed precipitation gauges, NGPD is evaluated through station‐wise, grid‐wise, and elevation‐wise analyses using statistical parameters, quantile‐quantile plots, daily coefficient of determination, Rainfall Anomaly Index, and seasonality/precipitation pattern analyses. Results demonstrate the superior performance of NGPD compared to other gridded precipitation sources across various evaluation metrics. Nash‐Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE), Coefficient of determination (R2), and Root mean squared error (RMSE) range from 0.67 to 0.90, 0.73–0.93, and 4.4–10.69 mm/day, respectively, w.r.t 11 observed precipitation gauges. NGPD outperforms the widely used IMD data set in India, exhibiting a monthly scale improvement of 18.47% and 17.7% in average NSE and R2 values, respectively. Additionally, the methodology is also successfully applied to the Tamor Basin in Nepal, proving its reliability for various Himalayan regions. This approach reliably creates accurate gridded precipitation data sets for hilly sub‐basins, especially in Himalayan regions with limited station data. Key Points A cluster‐based data assimilation approach to develop accurate gridded precipitation data in the Himalayan basins Consideration of topographic and climatic parameters to identify homogenous rainfall clusters to incorporate precipitation change Multi‐level evaluation of the newly developed gridded precipitation w.r.t. observed and open sources global gridded precipitation data sets