Efficiency of Weather Derivatives as Primary Crop Insurance Instruments

This study analyzes efficiency of weather derivatives as primary insurance instruments for six crop reporting districts that are among the largest producers of corn, cotton, and soybeans in the United States. Specific weather derivatives are constructed for each crop/district combination based on analysis of several econometric models. The performance of the designed weather derivatives is then analyzed both in- and out-of-sample. The primary findings suggest that the optimal structure of weather derivatives varies widely across crops and regions, as does the risk-reducing performance of the optimally designed weather derivatives. Further, optimal weather derivatives required rather complicated combinations of weather variables to achieve reasonable fits between weather and yield.agricultural risk management, crop insurance, index insurance, weather derivatives, Risk and Uncertainty,

Summary report of Committee B

Topics discussed in this summary include: (1) general aviation and services; (2) aircraft design; and (3) simulation. It was concluded that private pilots need to be more knowledgeable about weather. Improvement is needed in providing general aviation pilots with changes in the weather reporting and forecasting systems. There should also be some simulation of various severe shear profiles in training simulators, although there is still a problem in simulating shear conditions using mathematical models and data

London's weather and the everyday: two centuries of newspaper reports

This study surveys 200 years of London’s weather and its public reporting in newspapers to reveal some of the recurring modes of reporting and linguistic styles that are used to describe and make sense of the human experience of weather. These modes include: the cultural anxieties prompted by ‘unusual weather’; the visual dramas of ‘great storms’; the weather as culpable; and bench-marking extreme weather. Even as the broader processes and patterns of our climate are changing, at the level of the everyday the human and cultural experience of weather remains remarkably familiar

Cloud Radiative Effect Study Using Sky Camera

The analysis of clouds in the earth's atmosphere is important for a variety of applications, viz. weather reporting, climate forecasting, and solar energy generation. In this paper, we focus our attention on the impact of cloud on the total solar irradiance reaching the earth's surface. We use weather station to record the total solar irradiance. Moreover, we employ collocated ground-based sky camera to automatically compute the instantaneous cloud coverage. We analyze the relationship between measured solar irradiance and computed cloud coverage value, and conclude that higher cloud coverage greatly impacts the total solar irradiance. Such studies will immensely help in solar energy generation and forecasting.Comment: Accepted in Proc. IEEE AP-S Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and USNC-URSI Radio Science Meeting, 201

Whither the Weather? 130 Years of Weather Recording at Saint John’s

Saint John\u27s started keeping weather records in October 1892, and monks have been reporting weather measurements to the U.S. Government ever since. The weather stations\u27 various locations over the decades are documented in this history lesson

ESTIMATING CORN YIELD RESPONSE MODELS TO PREDICT IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Projections of the impacts of climate change on agriculture require flexible and accurate yield response models. Typically, estimated yield response models have used fixed calendar intervals to measure weather variables and omitted observations on solar radiation, an essential determinant of crop yield. A corn yield response model for Illinois crop reporting districts is estimated using field data. Weather variables are time to crop growth stages to allow use of the model if climate change shifts dates of the crop growing season. Solar radiation is included. Results show this model is superior to conventionally specified models in explaining yield variation in Illinois corn.Crop Production/Industries,

Delivering organisational adaptation through legislative mechanisms: Evidence from the Adaptation Reporting Power (Climate Change Act 2008)

There is increasing recognition that organisations, particularly in key infrastructure sectors, are potentially vulnerable to climate change and extreme weather events, and require organisational responses to ensure they are resilient and adaptive. However, detailed evidence of how adaptation is facilitated, implemented and reported, particularly through legislative mechanisms is lacking. The United Kingdom Climate Change Act (2008), introduced the Adaptation Reporting Power, enabling the Government to direct so-called reporting authorities to report their climate change risks and adaptation plans. We describe the authors' unique role and experience supporting the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) during the Adaptation Reporting Power's first round. An evaluation framework, used to review the adaptation reports, is presented alongside evidence on how the process provides new insights into adaptation activities and triggered organisational change in 78% of reporting authorities, including the embedding of climate risk and adaptation issues. The role of legislative mechanisms and risk-based approaches in driving and delivering adaptation is discussed alongside future research needs, including the development of organisational maturity models to determine resilient and well adapting organisations. The Adaptation Reporting Power process provides a basis for similar initiatives in other countries, although a clear engagement strategy to ensure buy-in to the process and research on its long-term legacy, including the potential merits of voluntary approaches, is required

Dangerous calling, the life-and-death matter of safety at sea: a collection of articles from SAMUDRA Report

Fishing is arguably the world's most dangerous vocation, reporting the highest rate of occupational fatalities among industries, made only worse by declining fish prices, overfished waters and shortened fishing seasons. As fishermen are forced to move farther away from shore in search of scarce resources, the dangers they face are many: bad weather, rough seas, flooding, fire, poor vessel design, mechanical problems navigational error, missing safety equipment. For the small-scale and artisanal fishers of developing countries, these problems are compounded several times over, as this series of articles from SAMUDRA Report reveals. (44pp.

South Dakota Climate Office Records

The South Dakota Climate Office is the main resource for South Dakota climate and weather data. The collection is composed of material from 1893 to 2002, including selected data sheets from South Dakota as well as Iowa and Minnesota weather reporting stations

Extreme water-related weather events and waterborne disease

Global climate change is expected to affect the frequency, intensity and duration of extreme water-related weather events such as excessive precipitation, floods, and drought. We conducted a systematic review to examine waterborne outbreaks following such events and explored their distribution between the different types of extreme water-related weather events. Four medical and meteorological databases (Medline, Embase, GeoRef, PubMed) and a global electronic reporting system (ProMED) were searched, from 1910 to 2010. Eighty-seven waterborne outbreaks involving extreme water-related weather events were identified and included, alongside 235 ProMED reports. Heavy rainfall and flooding were the most common events preceding outbreaks associated with extreme weather and were reported in 55·2% and 52·9% of accounts, respectively. The most common pathogens reported in these outbreaks were Vibrio spp. (21·6%) and Leptospira spp. (12·7%). Outbreaks following extreme water-related weather events were often the result of contamination of the drinking-water supply (53·7%). Differences in reporting of outbreaks were seen between the scientific literature and ProMED. Extreme water-related weather events represent a risk to public health in both developed and developing countries, but impact will be disproportionate and likely to compound existing health disparities