Abstract.The new idea of functional regions has been interpreted in alignment with the idea of functional urban areas in the Serbian planning discourse and practice. The new Spatial Plan of Serbia introduced the idea in compliance with the Law on Regional Development and statistical nomenclature of regions NUTS2 and districts NUTS3 in Serbia. The functional region is understood and presented as a cluster of municipalities organized flexibly around some important project(s) with a proper (sub) regional institution in charge of spurring and realizing the same. The problem is with clustering municipalities i.e. understanding the role and meaning of it for their joint interest, with some political reasons and lack of awareness as the main reasons for that. On the other hand the list of strategic priorities has been prepared for all functional regions. The list contains projects for economic, social and ecological development. Eco-services are among the high priority issues but asking for intensive horizontal coordination and clustering a group of interested municipalities. Regional landfills, waste water purification, protected nature (high mountains) use, small rivers cleaning, are among such projects with some hot spots eliminating as paramount ones. Activating all stakeholders in the implementation phase is permanent duty of planners and administration, with possible economic measures to be pursued by the state. Eco-services are under intensive surveillance of the state administration in the phase of adapting its legislative to EU membership with an expected transfer of duties and jurisdiction to local communities (municipalities and cities). Vertical coordination with regions and the state is therefore a must for municipalities in this phase of development of Serbia. The illustrations will be presented for better understanding the initial position of functional regions in Serbia and the position of eco-services in the future of local communities clustering.

The World Health Organisation estimates that the warming and precipitation trends due to anthropogenic climate change of the past 30 years already claim over 150,000 lives annually. Many prevalent human diseases are linked to climate fluctuations, from cardiovascular mortality and respiratory illnesses due to heatwaves, to altered transmission of infectious diseases and malnutrition from crop failures. Uncertainty remains in attributing the expansion or resurgence of diseases to climate change, owing to lack of long-term, high-quality data sets as well as the large influence of socio-economic factors and changes in immunity and drug resistance. Here we review the growing evidence that climate-health relationships pose increasing health risks under future projections of climate change and that the warming trend over recent decades has already contributed to increased morbidity and mortality in many regions of the world. Potentially vulnerable regions include the temperate latitudes, which are projected to warm disproportionately, the regions around the Pacific and Indian oceans that are currently subjected to large rainfall variability due to the El Niño/Southern Oscillation sub-Saharan Africa and sprawling cities where the urban heat island effect could intensify extreme climatic events.

[1] Understanding the surface O 3 response over a ''receptor'' region to emission changes over a foreign ''source'' region is key to evaluating the potential gains from an international approach to abate ozone (O 3 ) pollution. We apply an ensemble of 21 global and hemispheric chemical transport models to estimate the spatial average surface O 3 response over east Asia (EA), Europe (EU), North America (NA), and south Asia (SA) to 20% decreases in anthropogenic emissions of the O 3 precursors, NO x , NMVOC, and CO (individually and combined), from each of these regions. We find that the ensemble mean surface O 3 concentrations in the base case (year 2001) simulation matches available observations throughout the year over EU but overestimates them by >10 ppb during summer and early fall over the eastern United States and Japan. The sum of the O 3 responses to NO x , CO, and NMVOC decreases separately is approximately equal to that from a simultaneous reduction of all precursors. We define a continental-scale ''import sensitivity'' as the ratio of the O 3 response to the 20% reductions in foreign versus 1 ''domestic'' (i.e., over the source region itself) emissions. For example, the combined reduction of emissions from the three foreign regions produces an ensemble spatial mean decrease of 0.6 ppb over EU (0.4 ppb from NA), less than the 0.8 ppb from the reduction of EU emissions, leading to an import sensitivity ratio of 0.7. The ensemble mean surface O 3 response to foreign emissions is largest in spring and late fall (0.7-0.9 ppb decrease in all regions from the combined precursor reductions in the three foreign regions), with import sensitivities ranging from 0.5 to 1.1 (responses to domestic emission reductions are 0.8-1.6 ppb). High O 3 values are much more sensitive to domestic emissions than to foreign emissions, as indicated by lower import sensitivities of 0.2 to 0.3 during July in EA, EU, and NA when O 3 levels are typically highest and by the weaker relative response of annual incidences of daily maximum 8-h average O 3 above 60 ppb to emission reductions in a foreign region (<10-20% of that to domestic) as compared to the annual mean response (up to 50% of that to domestic). Applying the ensemble annual mean results to changes in anthropogenic emissions from 1996 to 2002, we estimate a Northern Hemispheric increase in background surface O 3 of about 0.1 ppb a À1 , at the low end of the 0.1-0.5 ppb a À1 derived from observations. From an additional simulation in which global atmospheric methane was reduced, we infer that 20% reductions in anthropogenic methane emissions from a foreign source region would yield an O 3 response in a receptor region that roughly equals that produced by combined 20% reductions of anthropogenic NO x , NMVOC, and CO emissions from the foreign source region.

Abstract. This study explores the evolution and distribution of carbon monoxide (CO) using the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ( vary seasonally due to transport, changes in OH concentration, and seasonality of emission sources. CO from all four sources contributes to the total magnitude of CO in all regions. Seasonality, however, is usually governed by the transport and destruction by OH of CO emitted by fossil fuel and/or biomass burning. The sensitivity to the hydroxyl field varies spatially, with a 30% increase in OH yielding decreases in CO ranging from 4-23%, with lower sensitivities near emission regions where advection acts as a strong local sink. The lifetime of CO varies from 10 days over summer continental regions to well over a year at the winter poles, where we define lifetime as the turnover time in the troposphere due to reaction with OH.

Biofuels from land-rich tropical countries may help displace foreign petroleum imports for many industrialized nations, providing a possible solution to the twin challenges of energy security and climate change. But concern is mounting that crop-based biofuels will increase net greenhouse gas emissions if feedstocks are produced by expanding agricultural lands. Here we quantify the 'carbon payback time' for a range of biofuel crop expansion pathways in the tropics. We use a new, geographically detailed database of crop locations and yields, along with updated vegetation and soil biomass estimates, to provide carbon payback estimates that are more regionally specific than those in previous studies. Using this cropland database, we also estimate carbon payback times under different scenarios of future crop yields, biofuel technologies, and petroleum sources. Under current conditions, the expansion of biofuels into productive tropical ecosystems will always lead to net carbon emissions for decades to centuries, while expanding into degraded or already cultivated land will provide almost immediate carbon savings. Future crop yield improvements and technology advances, coupled with unconventional petroleum supplies, will increase biofuel carbon offsets, but clearing carbon-rich land still requires several decades or more for carbon payback. No foreseeable changes in agricultural or energy technology will be able to achieve meaningful carbon benefits if crop-based biofuels are produced at the expense of tropical forests.S Supplementary data are available from stacks.iop.org/ERL/3/034001

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Surface ozone (O 3 ) air pollution in populated regions has been attributed to emissions of nitrogen oxides (NO + NO 2 = NO x ) and reactive volatile organic compounds (VOCs). These constituents react with hydrogen oxide radicals (OH + HO 2 = HO x ) in the presence of sunlight and heat to produce O 3 . The question of whether to reduce NO x emissions, VOC emissions, or both is complicated by spatially and temporally heterogeneous ozone-NO x -VOC sensitivity. This study characterizes spatial and temporal variations in O 3 sensitivity by analyzing the ratio of formaldehyde (HCHO, a marker of VOCs) to nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ), a metric known as the formaldehyde nitrogen ratio (FNR). Level 3 gridded retrievals from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) aboard the NASA Aura satellite were used to calculate FNR, with our analysis focusing on China. Based on previous studies, we take FNR < 1.0 as indicating VOC-limited regimes, FNR > 2.0 as indicating NO x -limited regime, and FNR between 1.0 and 2.0 as indicating transitional regime (where either NO x reductions or VOC reductions would be expected to reduce O 3 ). We find that the transitional regime is widespread over the North China Plain (NCP), the Yangtze River Delta, and the Pearl River Delta during the ozone season (defined as having near-surface air temperatures >20°C at the early afternoon OMI overpass time). Outside of these regions, the NO x -limited regime is dominant. Because HCHO and NO 2 have distinct seasonal patterns, FNR also has a pronounced seasonality, consistent with the seasonal cycle of surface O 3 . Examining trends from 2005 to 2013 indicates rapid growth in NO 2 , especially over less-developed areas where O 3 photochemistry is NO x limited. Over this time period, HCHO decreased in southern China, where VOC emissions are dominated by biogenic sources, but increased slightly over the NCP, where VOC emissions are dominated by anthropogenic sources. A linear regression approach suggests that most of China (70% of grid cells) will be characterized by a transitional regime during the O 3 season by 2030. However, in megacities such as Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing, NO 2 has decreased such that the chemical regime has shifted from VOC limited in 2005 to transitional in 2013.

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