The majority of climate change impact assessments focus on potential impacts at the local ⁄ regional scale. Climate change scenarios with a fine spatial resolution are essential components of these assessments. Scenarios must be designed with the goals of the assessment in mind. Often the scientists and stakeholders leading, or participating in, impact assessments are unaware of the challenging and time-consuming nature of climate scenario development. The intent of this review, presented in two parts, is to strengthen the communication between the developers and users of climate scenarios and ultimately to improve the utility of climate impact assessments. In Part I, approaches to climate downscaling are grouped into three broad categoriesdynamic downscaling, empirical-dynamic downscaling and disaggregation downscaling methods -and the fundamental considerations of the different methods are highlighted and explained for non-climatologists. Part II focuses on the application of climate change scenarios.

Forest fires do not only destroy the forests, it endangers public health, disrupt socio-economic activities, and contribute to greenhouse gas emission but do more harm than good to the ecosystem. A greater percent of forest fires occurring in the world, especially developing countries have been identified to have human causes. Land use was identified as number one cause while others like conflicts and human errors follow as reasons for which people burn the forest. Governments and cooperate bodies have invested much in solutions that largely control these fires rather than preventing them. This approach has yielded results that do not match the investments. It is in view of this worrying situation that this review was carried out to reassess the prospects of Community Based Fire Management (CBFiM) system as a critical component for achieving an effective integrated forest fire management. The work is structured into four sections, section one introduces forest fires and discusses general causes, and prevailing management tactics, section two discusses CBFiM and its potentials, section three follows up with case-studies from USA, Vietnam, and Ghana, the fourth section concludes with ways of enhancing the CBFiM system to make it more effective.

Climate change is a fundamental aspect of the Anthropocene. Climate assessments are frequently undertaken to evaluate climate change impacts, vulnerability, and adaptive capacity. Assessments are complex endeavors with numerous challenges. Five aspects of a climate assessment that can be particularly challenging are highlighted: choice of assessment strategy, incorporation of spatial linkages and interactions, the constraints of climate observations, interpretation of a climate projection ensemble, uncertainty associated with weather/climate dependency models, and consideration of landscape-climate influences. In addition, a climate assessment strategy that incorporates both traditional "top-down" and "bottom-up" methods is proposed for assessments of adaptation options at the local/regional scale. Uncertainties associated with climate observations and projections and with weather/climate dependency (i.e., response) models are incorporated into the assessment through the "top-down" component, and stakeholder knowledge and experience are included through the "bottom-up" component. Considerable further research is required to improve assessment strategies and the usefulness and usability of assessment findings. In particular, new methods are needed which better incorporate spatial linkages and interactions, yet maintain the fine grain detail needed for decision making at the local and regional scales. Also, new methods are needed which go beyond sensitivity analyses of the relative contribution of land use and land cover changes on local/regional climate to more explicitly consider landscape-climate interactions in the context of uncertain future climates. Assessment teams must clearly communicate the choices made when designing an assessment and recognize the implications of these choices on the interpretation and application of the assessment findings.

Indonesian Maritime Continent has the second longest coastline in the world, but the characteristics of offshore rainfall and its relation to coastline type are not clearly understood. As a region with eighty percent being an ocean, knowledge of offshore rainfall is important to support activity over oceans. This study investigates the climatology of offshore rainfall based on TRMM 3B42 composite during 1998-2015 and its dynamical atmosphere which induces high rainfall intensity using WRF-ARW. The result shows that concave coastline drives the increasing rainfall over ocean with Cenderawasih Bay (widest concave coastline) having the highest rainfall offshore intensity (16.5 mm per day) over Indonesian Maritime Continent. Monthly peak offshore rainfall over concave coastline is related to direction of concave coastline and peak of diurnal cycle influenced by the shifting of low level convergence. Concave coastline facing the north has peak during northwesterly monsoonal flow (March), while concave coastline facing the east has peak during easterly monsoonal flow (July). Low level convergence zone shifts from inland during daytime to ocean during nighttime. Due to shape of concave coastline, land breeze strengthens low level convergence and supports merging rainfall over ocean during nighttime. Rainfall propagating from the area around inland to ocean is approximately 5.4 m/s over Cenderawasih Bay and 4.1 m/s over Tolo Bay. Merger rainfall and low level convergence are playing role in increasing offshore rainfall over concave coastline.