Deforestation in Amazonia seems likely to continue in the 21st century, and fire risk could increase as a result of global climate change. With deforestation activities providing a source of ignition, the combination of this with increased fire risk could lead to widespread impacts on Amazonian ecosystems. This would also contribute further to climate change through feedbacks on the global carbon cycle. This study uses the McArthur Forest Fire Danger Index and an ensemble of variants of the HadCM3 climate model to simulate potential changes to fire risk in Amazonia over the 21st century. Significant increases in central and eastern Amazonia are simulated by 2020, and high fire danger for over 50% of the forest is simulated in all model runs by 2080. By 2080, as much as 25% of Amazonia shows high levels of agreement in projections of combined fire risk and deforestation. The areas simulated with high fire danger are also those projected to be impacted most significantly by deforestation. If the regional climate changes simulated for Amazonia by HadCM3 are realistic, the risk of significant forest damage could become high, and deforestation activities could, therefore, have a greater potential for impacting on wider areas of forest.

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We investigate the relationship between the western Pacific subtropical high (WPSH) and tropical cyclone (TC) landfall in the ERA-Interim reanalysis and two configurations of the UK Met Office Global Seasonal forecasting system version 5 (GloSea5): Global Atmosphere 3.0 (GA3) and Global Coupled configuration 2 (GC2). Both model configurations have the same horizontal and vertical resolution in the ocean and the atmosphere, but differ in terms of model physics. The WPSH strongly modulates TC activity over the subtropical western North Pacific (WNP) and TC landfall over East Asia (Japan, Korea and East China). Here we show that both model configurations GA3 and GC2 show significant skill for predictions of the WPSH and TC variability over the subtropical WNP, as well as TC frequency along the coast of East Asia, during the boreal summer (June-August). An extension of the analysis to include the full WNP typhoon season (June-November) is also examined; however, only a weak significant relationship between the WPSH index and the observed TC frequency over East Asia is found during this period, and no significant relationship is present in either GloSea5 GA3 or GC2. Results highlight the potential for operational seasonal forecasts of TC landfall risk for Japan, Korea and East China over the June-August period using predictions of the WPSH indices from GloSea5. 1This article is published with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland.

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Abstract.A new generation of an Earth system model now includes a number of land-surface processes directly relevant to analyzing potential impacts of climate change. This model, HadGEM2-ES, allows us to assess the impacts of climate change, multiple interactions, and feedbacks as the model is run. This paper discusses the results of centuryscale HadGEM2-ES simulations from an impacts perspective -specifically, terrestrial ecosystems and water resources -for four different scenarios following the representative concentration pathways (RCPs), used in the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2013(IPCC, , 2014. Over the 21st century, simulated changes in global and continental-scale terrestrial ecosystems due to climate change appear to be very similar in all 4 RCPs, even though the level of global warming by the end of the 21st century ranges from 2 • C in the lowest scenario to 5.5 • in the highest. A warming climate generally favours broadleaf trees over needleleaf, needleleaf trees over shrubs, and shrubs over herbaceous vegetation, resulting in a poleward shift of temperate and boreal forests and woody tundra in all scenarios. Although climate related changes are slightly larger in scenarios of greater warming, the largest differences between scenarios arise at regional scales as a consequence of different patterns of anthropogenic land cover change. In the model, the scenario with the lowest global warming results in the most extensive decline in tropical forest cover due to a large expansion of agriculture. Under all four RCPs, fire potential could increase across extensive land areas, particularly tropical and sub-tropical latitudes. River outflows are simulated to increase with higher levels of CO 2 and global warming in all projections, with outflow increasing with mean temperature at the end of the 21st century at the global scale and in North America, Asia, and Africa. In South America, Europe, and Australia, the relationship with climate warming and CO 2 rise is less clear, probably as a result of land cover change exerting a dominant effect in those regions.