Annual Index – Volume 31, 2025

Performance of CHIRPS dataset for monthly and annual rainfall-indices in Northern Argentina

Long-term variations of monthly average maximum and minimum temperature (TMAX and TMIN) and precipitation records in southern Brazil are investigated for the 1913–2006 period. These variations are carefully analyzed for seasonal and annual indices, taken as regional averages. For this purpose, the serial correlation and trend of the indices are investigated using the run and Mann–Kendall tests. The significant trends are obtained from linear least-square fits. The annual and seasonal TMIN indices show significant warming trends with magnitudes (1.7°C per 100 years for annual index) comparable to those reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but lower than those found for the southern Brazil in another previous work. Regarding the two other variables, the indices show significant trends only for summer, being a cooling trend of 0.6°C per 100 years for the TMAX and an increasing trend of 93 mm per 100 years over an average summer precipitation of 367 mm. Concerning the decadal analysis, the 1920s present the lowest annual, autumn, and spring TMIN and the 1990s, the highest ones. The 1970s is the decade with the lowest summer TMAX, and the 1940s the decade with the highest one. The driest decade is the 1940s and the wettest, the 1980s.

Precipitation and temperature climate indices are calculated using the National Centers for Environmental Prediction/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP/NCAR) reanalysis and validated against observational data from some stations over Brazil and other data sources. The spatial patterns of the climate indices trends are analyzed for the period 1961-1990 over South America. In addition, the correlation and linear regression coefficients for some specific stations were also obtained in order to compare with the reanalysis data. In general, the results suggest that NCEP/NCAR reanalysis can provide useful information about minimum temperature and consecutive dry days indices at individual grid cells in Brazil. However, some regional differences in the climate indices trends are observed when different data sets are compared. For instance, the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis shows a reversal signal for all rainfall annual indices and the cold night index over Argentina. Despite these differences, maps of the trends for most of the annual climate indices obtained from the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis and BRANT analysis are generally in good agreement with other available data sources and previous findings in the literature for large areas of southern South America. The pattern of trends for the precipitation annual indices over the 30 years analyzed indicates a change to wetter conditions over southern and southeastern parts of Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, central and northern Argentina, and parts of Chile and a decrease over southwestern South America. All over South America, the climate indices related to the minimum temperature (warm or cold nights) have clearly shown a warming tendency; however, no consistent changes in maximum temperature extremes (warm and cold days) have been observed. Therefore, one must be careful before suggesting any trends for warm or cold days.

There are several annual rail rate indices commonly used to depict changes in the prices paid for rail service. While accurate for general analyses, each of these indices falls short in capturing the three major components of total railroad grain rates – tariff rates, fuel surcharges, and secondary railcar market costs. Grain is a rail commodity whereby bids in the secondary railcar market can affect whether the actual rate paid by shippers is above or below the published tariff rate. The seasonality of rates inherent in grain transportation is captured through the secondary market but is neither contained in other grain rail rate indices nor apparent in annualized data. In addition, most grain rate indices do not include fuel surcharges, which have become a major component of the total rate paid for any rail commodity movement. In this paper, we develop new rail rate indices for unit trains and shuttle trains and compare them against a rail cost index. The new indices are an improvement upon past grain rail rate indices by including information from the secondary rail market, fuel surcharges, and tariff rates into a weekly index between the years 1997 and 2011. The improved indices show a higher level of detail when compared to other annualized indices, allowing for a more thorough analysis of grain rates. These indices show grain rail rates generally higher than do other indices with a notable departure from rail costs at the beginning of the economic recession in 2009. A comparison of the rail indices with rail costs calls into question whether earlier conclusions about rail market power still hold.

Productivity change is generally measured in index form as ratio of output quantity index over input quantity index. Several statistical agencies publish quarterly as well as annual productivity index numbers or growth percentages, constructed from what appear to be basically the same sources. This raises the question whether, apart from measurement errors, consistency between quarterly and annual indices can be expected. This chapter explores, from a theoretical perspective, the options for obtaining consistency between annual and quarterly (or more general: between period and subperiod) measures of productivity change.KeywordsProductivity indexAnnualQuarterlyConsistency

During the twentieth century, the intensity and frequency of extreme events (e.g., storms and floods) have significantly altered globally due to human-induced climate change. Recently, it has been recognized that some regions in Egypt have exposed to extreme rainfall events which led in some cases to severe flash floods. In this work, the variability of rainfall characteristics in Egypt was investigated based on a detailed statistical analysis of historical rainfall records at 31 stations. Both parametric (Pearson) and non-parametric (Mann-Kendall and Spearman) tests were applied on annual and seasonal precipitation indices to examine temporal trends. A classification of significant trends was introduced to assess the degrees of their likelihood. The results detected significant trends in annual indices: maximum precipitation, total precipitation, simple daily intensity index, and number of rainy days at 29, 19, 19, and 13% of stations, respectively. Significant trends in seasonal indices were also found at a few stations. For all indices, 77% of the detected significant trends are negative concluding a decrease in the amount of precipitation in Egypt. Additionally, only 6% of the detected trends are classified as less likely, while the rest is likely and extremely likely, indicating a high probability of most detected trends. Generally, the detected trends do not form any spatial pattern in all cases. The results also provided a preliminary impression on the likely impacts of climate change on rainfall characteristics in Egypt.

: This index is a cumulation of the annual subject indexes to five volumes of the Bibliography on Cold Regions Science and Technology (43-47). In anticipation of this cumulation (and the companion Author index) the annual indexes have been bound separately rather than with the bibliography volumes, so they now may be discarded. The index is arranged alphabetically by subject. Two kinds of subject terms are included: those contained in an authority list, and free terms used as needed, without vocabulary control. This duality of indexing principle results in a somewhat uneven frequency distribution of terms. Geographic terms are also included, generally by country. The subject (or geographic) terms are followed by the title of each pertinent article (original, translated, or modified for conciseness or detail), listed by accession number. The title is followed by the principal author's name, the year of publication, the pagination, and the language in which the paper is written (in the case of translations, English is given as the language). The accession numbers listed after each index entry refer to the Bibliography section of the Bibliography on Cold Regions Science and Technology. The first two digits represent the volume number; these are followed by a hyphen and the sequential number within the volume.

An annual index measuring past national losses and capable of measuring future loss from weather and climate extremes was developed to help measure future shifts in climate, a subject of great concern to the global warming issue and the insurance industry. Results from climate models indicate that a changed climate owing to global warming would alter and increase many extremes, and the objective of this study was to develop a national-scale index to monitor change in monetary losses and costs from weather and climate extremes. Forty-four historical variables addressing various aspects of weather and climate extremes and their effects on the U.S. economy since the late 1940s were assessed as potential input to such an index. Frequencies of most severe weather conditions from 1950 to 1997 did not correspond well with their financial impacts. However, hurricane losses did correspond with the frequency of intense hurricanes, and tornado losses corresponded well with the number of violent tornadic storms. Quality insurance loss data for several major storm types (thunder, hail, winter, and wind storms) were available, plus quality data on flood and hurricane losses, and all were adjusted to 1997 dollars. Techniques were developed to assess the effect of seasonal climate extremes on major crop yields and costs for electricity and natural gas consumed. Trends were upward for certain key variables between 1950 and 1997, including the incidence and losses associated with winter storms, flood losses, crop losses, and incidence of heavy rains. Trends were downward for other weather-driven loss variables including hurricane losses, energy costs, thunderstorm losses, wind storm losses, and hail losses. Nine loss variables were selected to develop the U.S. annual loss index, and in rank order, based on their average annual loss values, were energy costs, followed by losses from hurricanes, floods, severe convective storms, crops, tornadoes, winter storms, hail, and wind storms. The variables chosen also will be available in future years to allow a continuing assessment using the index. The 1950–1997 average annual index value was $17.47 billion (1997 dollars), with annual values ranging from a high of $54.4 billion in 1972 to a low of $2.4 billion in 1963. The 48-year trend of the index was unchanging with three notable high loss periods: 1950–1954, 1970–1974, and 1990–1994. [Key words: climate change, storms, natural hazards, weather extremes.]

Trends in extreme temperature and rainfall were analyzed for two Caribbean islands in close proximity: Tobago (Crown Point) and Trinidad (Piarco) for the most recent period 1985–2015 using daily data. Most annual extreme temperature indices at Crown Point show no significant warming. However, warming at Crown Point manifests during the wet season and strongly in September. In contrast, most extreme temperature indices at Piarco show significant warming trends on annual and seasonal scales as well as for most months. Extreme precipitation indices show few trends. For Crown Point, trends indicate an increase in annual precipitation totals and extremely wet days were observed, whereas no significant trends in annual indices were found for Piarco. The greatest 5-day rainfall amounts were found to increase during the dry season at both sites. When compared to previous regional studies, this specific territory approach highlights that most indices with no significant regional trends also do not show trends at the local scale. Furthermore, differences in trends between these two nearby sites, 80 km apart, indicate that there is a spatial variation in warming trends.

Annual freezing and thawing index of 7 meteorological stations along the Qing-hai-Xizang Railway were calculated based on daily maximum and minimum temperature records for 1966–2004. Trends of annual freezing and thawing index were analyzed using the Mann-Kendall test and a simple linear regression method. The results show that: 1) The mean annual freezing indices range from 95 to 2300°C·d and the mean annual thawing indices range from 630 to 3250°C·d. The mean annual freezing index of the 7 stations exhibited decreasing trends with decreasing rate of −16.6—−59.1°C·d /10a. The mean annual thawing index of these 7 stations showed increasing trends with the related decreasing rate is 19.83–45.6°C·d /10a. 2) The MK trend test indicated the significant decreasing trends (significant at < 0.05 significant level) in the annual freezing index for most stations except for Golmud. The significant increasing trends can be observed in the annual thawing index for 4 stations except Golmud and Tuotuohe. Golmud was the only station with no trends in both annual freezing and annual thawing index.

Cold Damage Risk Assessment of Double Cropping Rice in Hunan, China

PurposeClimatic extreme events are predicted to occur more frequently and intensely and will significantly threat the living of residents in arid and semi-arid regions. Therefore, this study aims to assess climatic extremes’ response to the emerging climate change mitigation strategy using a marine cloud brightening (MCB) scheme.Design/methodology/approachBased on Hadley Centre Global Environmental Model version 2-Earth System model simulations of a MCB scheme, this study used six climatic extreme indices [i.e. the hottest days (TXx), the coolest nights (TNn), the warm spell duration (WSDI), the cold spell duration (CSDI), the consecutive dry days (CDD) and wettest consecutive five days (RX5day)] to analyze spatiotemporal evolution of climate extreme events in the arid Sahara-Sahel-Arabian Peninsula Zone with and without MCB implementation.FindingsCompared with a Representative Concentration Pathways 4.5 scenario, from 2030 to 2059, implementation of MCB is predicted to decrease the mean annual TXx and TNn indices by 0.4–1.7 and 0.3–2.1°C, respectively, for most of the Sahara-Sahel-Arabian Peninsula zone. It would also shorten the mean annual WSDI index by 118–183 days and the mean annual CSDI index by only 1–3 days, especially in the southern Sahara-Sahel-Arabian Peninsula zone. In terms of extreme precipitation, MCB could also decrease the mean annual CDD index by 5–25 days in the whole Sahara and Sahel belt and increase the mean annual RX5day index by approximately 10 mm in the east part of the Sahel belt during 2030–2059.Originality/valueThe results provide the first insights into the impacts of MCB on extreme climate in the arid Sahara-Sahel-Arabian Peninsula zone.

The empirical mode decomposition method is applied to analyze fluctuating periods and local features of the annual drought index and the drought index in the irrigation and non-irrigation periods from 1956 to 2010 in the Yinchuan irrigation district. In order to understand the uncertainty between these variables, the set pair analysis method is used to present the identity, discrepancy, and contrary of the drought index with multi-time scales. The results reveal that the annual drought index and the drought index in the irrigation and non-irrigation periods have a complex relationship which may be related to El Niño, the air-sea intersection, and the long period of solar activity. The drought index in the irrigation and non-irrigation periods presents mainly the contrary and the discrepancy; the fluctuating shapes of the annual drought index and drought index in the irrigation period are the same on their different period levels. The original annual drought index and its intrinsic mode function components have a certain connection degree; they mainly present the discrepancy.

Annual Index – Volume 38, 2021

Annual Index Get access Social Work, Volume 44, Issue 6, November 1999, Pages 594–599, https://doi.org/10.1093/sw/44.6.594 Published: 01 November 1999