Large-scale and synoptic meteorology in the south-east Pacific during the observations campaign VOCALS-REx in austral Spring 2008

We present a descriptive overview of the meteorology in the south eastern subtropical Pacific (SEP) during the VOCALS-REx intensive observations campaign which was carried out between October and November 2008. Mainly based on data from operational analyses, forecasts, reanalysis, and satellite observations, we focus on spatio-temporal scales from synoptic to planetary. A climatological context is given within which the specific conditions observed during the campaign are placed, with particular reference to the relationships between the large-scale and the regional circulations. The mean circulations associated with the diurnal breeze systems are also discussed. We then provide a summary of the day-to-day synoptic-scale circulation, air-parcel trajectories, and cloud cover in the SEP during VOCALS-REx. Three meteorologically distinct periods of time are identified and the large-scale causes for their different character are discussed. The first period was characterised by significant variability associated with synoptic-scale systems interesting the SEP; while the two subsequent phases were affected by planetary-scale disturbances with a slower evolution. The changes between initial and later periods can be partly explained from the regular march of the annual cycle, but contributions from subseasonal variability and its teleconnections were important. Across the whole of the two months under consideration we find a significant correlation between the depth of the inversion-capped marine boundary layer (MBL) and the amount of low cloud in the area of study. We discuss this correlation and argue that at least as a crude approximation a typical scaling may be applied relating MBL and cloud properties with the large-scale parameters of SSTs and tropospheric temperatures. These results are consistent with previously found empirical relationships involving lower-tropospheric stability.

Think local, act local? Issues of co-ordination and integration in Local Agenda 21

The political response to the complex package of environmental problems which threaten the future of our planet has been to introduce a new agenda of environmental action based on the principles of sustainability and subsidiarity. This has been crystallised in world agreements signed at the Earth Summit in Rio. One of these, Agenda 21, calls for the governments and communities of the world to prepare action plans for their areas which can build consensus between the various stakeholder groups and feed the principles of sustainable development back into their policies and day-to-day practices. This paper explores the experience of Local Agenda 21 type processes at three levels in the South East of England: the regional, county (sub-regional) and local level. In particular it undertakes a critical appraisal of the success of these participatory and consensus-building exercises in developing an integrated and co-ordinated approach to environmental action planning. It concludes that, although much useful work has been done in raising awareness and modifying policy and practice, there are significant cultural and institutional barriers which are hindering progress.

Promoting resilient livelihoods through adaptive social protection: lessons from 124 programmes in South Asia

Adaptive Social Protection refers to efforts to integrate social protection (SP), disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA). The need to integrate these three domains is now increasingly recognized by practitioners and academics. Relying on 124 agricultural programmes implemented in 5 countries in Asia, this paper considers how these elements are being brought together, and explores the potential gains of these linkages. The analysis shows that full integration of SP, DRR and CCA interventions is still relatively limited but that when it occurs, integration helps to shift the time horizon beyond short-term interventions aimed at supporting peoples’ coping strategies and/or graduation objectives, toward longer-term interventions that can assist in promoting transformation towards climate and disaster resilient livelihood options.

Climate change and the South Asian summer monsoon

The vagaries of South Asian summer monsoon rainfall on short and long timescales impact the lives of more than one billion people. Understanding how the monsoon will change in the face of global warming is a challenge for climate science, not least because our state-of-the-art general circulation models still have difficulty simulating the regional distribution of monsoon rainfall. However, we are beginning to understand more about processes driving the monsoon, its seasonal cycle and modes of variability. This gives us the hope that we can build better models and ultimately reduce the uncertainty in our projections of future monsoon rainfall.

Managing the duality of IHRM: unravelling the strategy and perceptions of key actors in South Korean MNCs

This research aims to extend our understanding of the duality between global integration and local responsiveness in multinational corporations (MNCs) by exploring the perceptions of corporate HR actors regarding the intra-organisational factors that alter the balance between these pressures. It examines the perceptions and actions of key actors in the context of two Korean MNCs. The study shows the importance attributed to a range of socio-procedural factors by corporate actors and which, therefore, inform the practical management of the dual forces, notably: HR expertise, social ties, trustworthy relationships and co-involvement in decision processes.

The repatriation of 1973 and the re-making of modern south Asia

In the aftermath of the 1971 war, nearly 250,000 people found themselves stranded in various parts of the subcontinent. These 'trapped minorities' became hostages in a complex negotiation process that highlighted how questions of citizenship and belonging remained unresolved in post-Partition South Asia. By studying three groups - the non-Bengalis, the Bengalis and the prisoners of war in a comparative perspective, this paper re-visits the question of who was welcome within certain borders and on what terms. It argues that these decisions depended not just on the state's policies towards 'outsiders' but also upon its own relationship with its minority communities.

Animal disease and the limits of local knowledge: dealing with ticks and tick-borne diseases in South Africa

Some proponents of local knowledge, such as Sillitoe (2010), have expressed second thoughts about its capacity to effect development on the ‘revolutionary’ scale once predicted. Our argument in this article follows a similar route. Recent research into the management of livestock in South Africa makes clear that rural African livestock farmers experience uncertainty in relation to the control of stock diseases. State provision of veterinary services has been significantly reduced over the past decade. Both white and African livestock owners are to a greater extent left to their own devices. In some areas of animal disease management, African livestock owners have recourse to tried-and-tested local remedies, which are largely plant-based. But especially in the critical sphere of tick control, efficacious treatments are less evident, and livestock owners struggle to find adequate solutions to high tickloads. This is particularly important in South Africa in the early twenty-first century because land reform and the freedom to purchase land in the post-apartheid context affords African stockowners opportunities to expand livestock holdings. Our research suggests that the limits of local knowledge in dealing with ticks is one of the central problems faced by African livestock owners. We judge this not only in relation to efficacy but also the perceptions of livestock owners themselves. While confidence and practice varies, and there is increasing resort of chemical acaricides we were struck by the uncertainty of livestock owners over the best strategies.

The influence of anthropogenic landscape changes on weather in south Florida

Using identical observed meteorology for lateral boundary conditions, the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System was integrated for July-August 1973 for south Florida. Three experiments were performed-one using the observed 1973 landscape, another the 1993 landscape, and the third the 1900 landscape, when the region was close to its natural state. Over the 2-month period, there was a 9% decrease in rainfall averaged over south Florida with the 1973 landscape and an 11% decrease with the 1993 landscape, as compared with the model results when the 1900 landscape is used. The limited available observations of trends in summer rainfall over this region are consistent with these trends.

A 45 kyr palaeoclimate record from the lowland interior of tropical South America

We present a well-dated, high-resolution, ~ 45 kyr lake sediment record reflecting regional temperature and precipitation change in the continental interior of the Southern Hemisphere (SH) tropics of South America. The study site is Laguna La Gaiba (LLG), a large lake (95 km2) hydrologically-linked to the Pantanal, an immense, seasonally-flooded basin and the world's largest tropical wetland (135,000 km2). Lake-level changes at LLG are therefore reflective of regional precipitation. We infer past fluctuations in precipitation at this site through changes in: i) pollen-inferred extent of flood-tolerant forest; ii) relative abundance of terra firme humid tropical forest versus seasonally-dry tropical forest pollen types; and iii) proportions of deep- versus shallow-water diatoms. A probabilistic model, based on plant family and genus climatic optima, was used to generate quantitative estimates of past temperature from the fossil pollen data. Our temperature reconstruction demonstrates rising temperature (by 4 °C) at 19.5 kyr BP, synchronous with the onset of deglacial warming in the central Andes, strengthening the evidence that climatic warming in the SH tropics preceded deglacial warming in the Northern Hemisphere (NH) by at least 5 kyr. We provide unequivocal evidence that the climate at LLG was markedly drier during the last glacial period (45.0–12.2 kyr BP) than during the Holocene, contrasting with SH tropical Andean and Atlantic records that demonstrate a strengthening of the South American summer monsoon during the global Last Glacial Maximum (~ 21 kyr BP), in tune with the ~ 20 kyr precession orbital cycle. Holocene climate conditions occurred as early as 12.8–12.2 kyr BP, when increased precipitation in the Pantanal catchment caused heightened flooding and rising lake levels in LLG. In contrast to this strong geographic variation in LGM precipitation across the continent, expansion of tropical dry forest between 10 and 3 kyr BP at LLG strengthens the body of evidence for widespread early–mid Holocene drought across tropical South America.

Industrial relations in South-Eastern Europe: disaggregating the contexts

This study critically evaluates industrial relations (IR) in South-Eastern Europe and points towards future practical and research-oriented opportunities in the region. A survey of organizational policies and practices has been used to explore the state of IR in both private and public organizations in this region. Specifically, the data, collected in 2009–2010 (including the latest changes due to the economic crisis), cover 840 different organizations located in Slovenia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and Cyprus. We discuss the development of ‘regional-specific’ IR policies, the ‘importing’ of varieties of capitalism models, the diffusion of the European Union social model and the role of foreign MNCs in changing IR in the region.

Detection of recent changes in climate using meteorological data from south-eastern Bangladesh

Analysis of meteorological records from four stations (Chittagong, Cox’s Bazar, Rangamati, Sitakunda) in south-eastern Bangladesh show coherent changes in climate over the past three decades. Mean maximum daily temperatures have increased between 1980 and 2013 by ca. 0.4 to 0.6°C per decade, with changes of comparable magnitude in individual seasons. The increase in mean maximum daily temperature is associated with decreased cloud cover and wind speed, particularly in the pre- and post-monsoon seasons. During these two seasons, the correlation between changes in maximum temperature and clouds is between -0.5 and -0.7; the correlation with wind speed is weaker although similar values are obtained in some seasons. Changes in mean daily minimum (and hence mean) temperature differ between the northern and southern part of the basin: northern stations show a decrease in mean daily minimum temperature during the post-monsoon season of between 0.2 and 0.5°C per decade while southern stations show an increase of ca. 0.1 to 0.4°C per decade during the pre-monsoon and monsoon seasons. In contrast to the significant changes in temperature, there is no trend in mean or total precipitation at any station. However, there is a significant increase in the number of rain days at the northern sites during the monsoon season, with an increase per decade of 3 days in Sitakunda and 7 days at Rangamati. These climate changes could have a significant impact on the hydrology of the Halda Basin, which supplies water to Chittagong and is the major pisciculture centre in Bangladesh.

Adaptive social protection: mapping the evidence and policy context in the agriculture sector in south Asia

An aim of government and the international community is to respond to global processes and crises through a range of policy and practical approaches that help limit damage from shocks and stresses. Three approaches to vulnerability reduction that have become particularly prominent in recent years are social protection (SP), disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA). Although these approaches have much in common, they have developed separately over the last two decades. However, given the increasingly complex and interlinked array of risks that poor and vulnerable people face, it is likely that they will not be sufficient in the long run if they continue to be applied in isolation from one another. In recognition of this challenge, the concept of Adaptive Social Protection (ASP) has been developed. ASP refers to a series of measures which aims to build resilience of the poorest and most vulnerable people to climate change by combining elements of SP, DRR and CCA in programmes and projects. The aim of this paper is to provide an initial assessment of the ways in which these elements are being brought together in development policy and practice. It does this by conducting a meta-analysis of 124 agricultural programmes implemented in five countries in south Asia. These are Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan. The findings show that full integration of SP, DRR and CCA is relatively limited in south Asia, although there has been significant progress in combining SP and DRR in the last ten years. Projects that combine elements of SP, DRR and CCA tend to emphasise broad poverty and vulnerability reduction goals relative to those that do not. Such approaches can provide valuable lessons and insights for the promotion of climate resilient livelihoods amongst policymakers and practitioners.

A three-fold framework for understanding HRM practices in South-Eastern European SMEs

Purpose We study particular structural and organisational factors affecting the formality of human resource management (HRM) practices in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in South-Eastern European (SEE) post-communist countries, in particular Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) in order to understand the antecedents of formalization in such settings. Design/methodology/approach Adopting a quantitative approach, this study analyses data gathered through a survey of 168 managers of SMEs from throughout the region. Findings The results show that HRM in SMEs in the SEE region can be understood through a three-fold framework which includes: degree of internationalisation of SMEs, sector of SMEs and organisational size of SMEs. These three factors positively affect the level of HRM formalisation in SEE SMEs. These findings are further attributed to the particular political and economic context of the post-communist SEE region. Research limitations/implications Although specific criteria were set for SME selection, we do not suggest that the study reflects a representative picture of the SEE region because we used a purposive sampling methodology. Practical implications This article provides useful insights into the factors which influence HRM in SMEs in a particular context. The findings can help business owners and managers understand how HRM can be applied in smaller organisations, particularly in post-communist SEE business contexts. Originality/value HRM in SMEs in this region has hardly been studied at all despite their importance. Therefore, this exploratory research seeks to expand knowledge relating to the application of HRM in SMEs in SEE countries which have their business environments dominated by different dynamics in comparison to western European ones.