How well do CMIP5 Earth System Models simulate present climate conditions in Europe and Africa?

This study provides a comprehensive evaluation of seven Earth System Models (ESMs) from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 in present climate conditions from a downscaling perspective, taking into account the requirements of both statistical and dynamical approaches. ECMWF's ERA-Interim reanalysis is used as reference for an evaluation of circulation, temperature and humidity variables on daily timescale, which is based on distributional similarity scores. To additionally obtain an estimate of reanalysis uncertainty, ERA-Interim's deviation from the Japanese Meteorological Agency JRA-25 reanalysis is calculated. Areas with considerable differences between both reanalyses do not allow for a proper assessment, since ESM performance is sensitive to the choice of reanalysis. For use in statistical downscaling studies, ESM performance is computed on the grid-box scale and mapped over a large spatial domain covering Europe and Africa, additionally highlighting those regions where significant distributional differences remain even for the centered/zero-mean time series. For use in dynamical downscaling studies, performance is specifically assessed along the lateral boundaries of the three CORDEX domains defined for Europe, the Mediterranean Basin and Africa.S.B. would like to thank the CSIC JAE-PREDOC programme for financial support. J.F. and J.M.G. acknowledge financial support from the Spanish R&D&I programme through grants CGL2010-22158-C02 (CORWES project) and CGL2010-21869 (EXTREMBLES project) and from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement 243888 (FUME Project).Peer Reviewe

EDITORIAL

El concepto de internacionalización debe incluir a todas las actividades que realice la Universidad donde se involucren personas (estudiantes, profesores o personal administrativo) que colaboren o tengan contacto con otras personas o instituciones que se encuentren por fuera de nuestras fronteras, pero que afectan a las estructuras de nuestros planes de estudios, a la manera como enseñamos, investigamos y hacemos la extensión en Unisucre.En la Facultad de Ciencias económicas y administrativas llevamos varios años realizando movilidad estudiantil y necesitamos, como segundo paso, incursionar en la movilidad docente para lo cual ya existe una norma interna que permite y promueve la movilidad entrante y saliente de docentes e investigadores, esta norma a su vez permite la adaptación administrativa de esta nueva realidad al interior de la Universidad

EDITORIAL

En esta edición se abordan temas tan variados como: el maltrato, violencia y delincuencia juvenil en el municipio de Sincelejo; o la práctica de la responsabilidad social empresarial en la minería latinoamericana; o el relacionado con el  estado de bienestar: Una aproximación a la intervención estatal, y el  entrepreneurship y Gerencia estratégica, avances de investigaciones para aumentar la competitividad. De igual importancia es el tema de la perspectiva estratégica en organizaciones de base: Caso juntas de acción comunal y por último el referente al análisis de los métodos de amortización utilizados en Argentina, Chile y Perú

Comments on "global and regional comparison of daily 2-m and 1000-hPa maximum and minimum temperatures in three global reanalyses"

Pitman and Perkins claimed that instantaneous 2-m air temperatures from different reanalysis products largely disagree over widespread regions of the globe and that, because of their much smaller differences, temperatures at 1000 hPa should be preferably used. This comment shows that this claim is based on erroneous results. © 2012 American Meteorological Society.S.B. would like to thank the 'Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas' (CSIC) pre- doctoral program 'JAE-PREDOC' for funding.Peer Reviewe

Future trends of snowfall days in northern Spain from ENSEMBLES regional climate projections

In a previous study Pons et al. (Clim Res 54(3):197-207, 2010. doi:10.3354/cr01117g) reported a significant decreasing trend of snowfall occurrence in the Northern Iberian Peninsula since the mid 70s. The study was based on observations of annual snowfall frequency (measured as the annual number of snowfall days NSD) from a network of 33 stations ranging from 60 to 1350 m. In the present work we analyze the skill of Regional Climate Models (RCMs) to reproduce this trend for the period 1961-2000 (using both reanalysis- and historical GCM-driven boundary conditions) and the trend and the associated uncertainty of the regional future projections obtained under the A1B scenario for the first half of the twenty-first century. In particular, we consider the regional simulation dataset from the EU-funded ENSEMBLES project, consisting of thirteen state-of-the-art RCMs run at 25 km resolution over Europe. While ERA40 severely underestimates both the mean NSD and its observed trend (-2.2 days/decade), the corresponding RCM simulations driven by the reanalysis appropriately capture the interannual variability and trends of the observed NSD (trends ranging from -3.4 to -0.7, -2.1 days/decade for the ensemble mean). The results driven by the GCM historical runs are quite variable, with trends ranging from -8.5 to 0.2 days/decade (-1.5 days/decade for the ensemble mean), and the greatest uncertainty by far being associated with the particular GCM used. Finally, the trends for the future 2011-2050 A1B runs are more consistent and significant, ranging in this case from -3.7 to -0.5 days/decade (-2.0 days/decade for the ensemble mean), indicating a future significant decreasing trend. These trends are mainly determined by the increasing temperatures, as indicated by the interannual correlation between temperature and NSD (-0.63 in the observations), which is preserved in both ERA40- and GCM-driven simulations.This research has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme under Grant Agreements 606799 (INTACT Project). The RCM simulations used in this study were obtained from the European Union-funded FP6 Integrated Project ENSEMBLES (Contract No. 505539)

La información escrita del farmacéutico mejora el cumplimiento de la antibioterapia

Non-compliance with therapeutic guidelines represents a potential public health risk, given that it contributes to bacterialresistance. One of the strategies used to improve compliance to such guidelines is to provide the patient with betterinformation in written form. The objectives of the present investigation were the following; To evaluate the influencethat written information, provided by the community pharmacist, has on compliance with antibiotic therapy, to verify theconsequences of degree of compliance on patient health, and to discover other factors influencing patient compliance.The experimental study was carried on patients that attend a community pharmacy for antibiotic prescriptions. Membersof the control group were given information in verbal form only, while members of the experimental group were giventhe same information in both verbal and written form. The degree of compliance was determined through telephoneinterviews, carried out the day after having finished treatment. 214 patients completed the study. A 14% increase incompliance among members of the experimental group was achieved. Patients that had completed treatment, had a betterperception of their own health than those that had not. Another factor found to have a significant influence oncompliance was the number of daily dosages.In conclusion, the written information provided by the pharmacist improves therapeutic compliance. Therapeutic complianceimproves patients’ perception of their state of health. The number of daily dosages also have an influence to bear, butcontradict appropriate antibiotic administration policies.El incumplimiento terapéutico es un riesgo potencial para la salud pública al contribuir al incremento de lasresistencias bacterianas. Una de las estrategias utilizadas para mejorar el cumplimiento terapéutico es el de mejorarla información del paciente mediante información escrita. Los objetivos fueron evaluar la influencia de la informaciónescrita del farmacéutico comunitario sobre el cumplimiento antibiótico, verificar sus consecuencias sobre lasalud y descubrir otros factores que influyan en el cumplimiento. Se trata de un estudio experimental en pacientesque acuden a una farmacia comunitaria con una prescripción antibiótica. Al grupo control se le da informaciónverbal sobre su tratamiento, y al grupo de intervención la misma información, pero también por escrito. Se mideel cumplimiento mediante encuesta telefónica al día siguiente de haber tenido que finalizar el tratamiento. 214pacientes finalizaron el estudio. Los pacientes del grupo de intervención incrementaron el cumplimiento terapéuticoen un 14,2%. Los pacientes que cumplen el tratamiento tienen una mejor percepción de salud respecto de losincumplidores. Otro factor que influye significativamente en el cumplimiento es la pauta posológica diaria. Estetrabajo concluye que la información escrita del farmacéutico mejora el cumplimiento terapéutico. El cumplimientoterapéutico mejora la percepción de salud de los pacientes

Robust projections of fire weather index in the Mediterranean using statistical downscaling

The effect of climate change on wildfires constitutes a serious concern in fire-prone regions with complex fire behavior such as the Mediterranean. The coarse resolution of future climate projections produced by General Circulation Models (GCMs) prevents their direct use in local climate change studies. Statistical downscaling techniques bridge this gap using empirical models that link the synoptic-scale variables from GCMs to the local variables of interest (using e.g. data from meteorological stations). In this paper, we investigate the application of statistical downscaling methods in the context of wildfire research, focusing in the Canadian Fire Weather Index (FWI), one of the most popular fire danger indices. We target on the Iberian Peninsula and Greece and use historical observations of the FWI meteorological drivers (temperature, humidity, wind and precipitation) in several local stations. In particular, we analyze the performance of the analog method, which is a convenient first choice for this problem since it guarantees physical and spatial consistency of the downscaled variables, regardless of their different statistical properties. First we validate the method in perfect model conditions using ERA-Interim reanalysis data. Overall, not all variables are downscaled with the same accuracy, with the poorest results (with spatially averaged daily correlations below 0.5) obtained for wind, followed by precipitation. Consequently, those FWI components mostly relying on those parameters exhibit the poorest results. However, those deficiencies are compensated in the resulting FWI values due to the overall high performance of temperature and relative humidity. Then, we check the suitability of the method to downscale control projections (20C3M scenario) from a single GCM (the ECHAM5 model) and compute the downscaled future fire danger projections for the transient A1B scenario. In order to detect problems due to non-stationarities related to climate change, we compare the results with those obtained with a Regional Climate Model (RCM) driven by the same GCM. Although both statistical and dynamical projections exhibit a similar pattern of risk increment in the first half of the 21st century, they diverge during the second half of the century. As a conclusion, we advocate caution in the use of projections for this last period, regardless of the regionalization technique applied. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.This work was partly funded by European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreements 243888 (FUME Project) and from Spanish Ministry MICINN under grant EXTREMBLES (CGL2010-21869).Peer Reviewe

Evaluation of the EURO-CORDEX Regional Climate Models Over the Iberian Peninsula: Observational Uncertainty Analysis

ABSTRACT: This work evaluates the daily precipitation and mean temperature of eight CORDEX-EUR11 ERA-Interim-driven simulations of EURO-CORDEX over the Iberian Peninsula (IP) for the period 1989-2008. To this aim, three observational data sets (Iberia01, E-OBS-v19e, and MESAN-0.11) were considered as reference and compared with the models by means of several indices reflecting the mean and extreme regimes over the IP. For precipitation the Lamb weather types were considered to identify synoptic conditions related with higher observational uncertainty. RCMs are able to reproduce the spatial pattern and the variability observed in the IP. However, there is a higher agreement between models and observations for mean temperature than for precipitation, decreasing when extremes are analyzed. For the observational uncertainty analysis, also extreme daily temperatures were considered to obtain a wider picture of this topic. A higher dependence on the observational data set has been found for precipitation than for temperature. This uncertainty is particularly significant when the 50-year return value is considered for which the observational uncertainty doubles the model uncertainty. Only the wet-day frequency presents values lower than 0.5 for all seasons, with most of the rest of values reflecting a similar contribution of both components to the uncertainty. In the case of temperatures, the main contribution of the observations has been found when the lower (MAE01) and upper (MAE99) extremes are considered, with values lower than 0.5. For precipitation the observational uncertainty increases when synoptic patterns affecting the Mediterranean Basin are considered, reflecting the difficulty to properly capture the Mediterranean precipitation regimes.This work was partially funded by the Spanish Government R&D Programme (Exp. CGL2010-21869 and CGL2010-22158-C02) and the European Comission (INDECIS: H2020-690462). Pedro M. M. Soares and Rita M. Cardoso wish to acknowledge the SOLAR (PTDC/GEOMET/7078/2014) Project and the funding by the Instituto Dom Luiz (Project FCT UID/GEO/50019/2019)

Complement Binding Anti-HLA Antibodies and the Survival of Kidney Transplantation

Background: Antibody-mediated rejection (AMR) is one of the most important challenges in the context of renal transplantation, because the binding of de novo donor-specific antibodies (dnDSA) to the kidney graft triggers the activation of the complement, which in turn leads to loss of transplant. In this context, the objective of this study was to evaluate the association between complement-fixing dnDSA antibodies and graft loss as well as the possible association between non-complement-fixing antibodies and transplanted organ survival in kidney transplant recipients. Methods: Our study included a cohort of 245 transplant patients over a 5-year period at Virgen de las Nieves University Hospital (HUVN) in Granada, Spain. Results: dnDSA was observed in 26 patients. Of these patients, 17 had non-complement-fixing dnDSA and 9 had complement-fixing dnDSA. Conclusions: Our study demonstrated a significant association between the frequency of rejection and renal graft loss and the presence of C1q-binding dnDSA. Our results show the importance of the individualization of dnDSA, classifying them according to their ability to activate the complement, and suggest that the detection of complement-binding capacity by dnDSA could be used as a prognostic marker to predict AMR outcome and graft survival in kidney transplant patients who develop dnDSA