Climate-smart irrigation and responsible innovation in South Asia: A systematic mapping.

This review systematically traces the context and evolution of climate-smart irrigation (CSI) in four South Asian countries-Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan. CSI technologies and practices strive to address two main objectives: (1) sustainably enhance agricultural/water productivity and rural farm incomes to build community and farm-level resilience to climate change and (2) enable adaptation/mitigation to climate change across different scales through irrigation technologies and water resources management. These innovations also pose various social and environmental challenges.

Has the IPCC's revised vulnerability concept been well adopted?

In the Third and Fourth Assessment Reports (TAR and AR4, respectively) by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), vulnerability is conceived as a function of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. However, in its Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX) and Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), the IPCC redefined and separated exposure, and it reconceptualized vulnerability to be a function of sensitivity and capacity to cope and adapt. In this review, we found that the IPCC's revised vulnerability concept has not been well adopted and that researchers' preference, possible misinterpretation, possible confusion, and possible unawareness are among the possible technical and practical reasons.

University-Based Researchers as Knowledge Brokers for Climate Policies and Action.

Responding effectively to climate crisis requires strong science-policy links to be put in place. Past research on the research-policy interface indicates longstanding challenges that have become more acute in the case of climate science, since this requires multi-disciplinary approaches and faces distinctive political challenges in linking knowledge with policy. What can be learned from the experiences of university-based researchers seeking to influence policy as they try to operate in the brokering space? With this in mind, an empirical study was designed to capture the detailed views and experiences of forty researchers in four universities across four countries-Bangladesh, Germany, Uganda and UK.

Spatial Pattern and Land Surface Features Associated with Cloud-to-Ground Lightning in Bangladesh: An Exploratory Study.

Unlabelled: Severe weather events such as lightning appear to be a significant threat to humans and property in South Asia, an area known for intense convective activity directly related to the tropical climate of these areas. The current study was conducted in Bangladesh and examined the association between cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning and ground surface properties, with the aim of improving existing knowledge regarding this phenomenon. GLD360 data from 2015 to 2020 were used to describe the seasonal lightning climatology.

IPCC's current conceptualization of 'vulnerability' needs more clarification for climate change vulnerability assessments.

In this Short Communication, we raise the concern that the existing conceptualization of 'vulnerability', introduced in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), is not facilitative for standalone vulnerability assessments and that this conceptualization has not been well accepted by the vulnerability researchers. We identify three key reasons for low adoption of the AR5 conceptualization in climate change vulnerability assessments, and urge the IPCC Working Group II to clarify how the current conceptualization of 'vulnerability' can facilitate standalone climate change vulnerability assessments. We propose treating 'exposure' not only as a precondition for vulnerability but also as a secondary driver of vulnerability to capture the influence of differential exposure.

Prior crop season management constrains farmer adaptation to warming temperatures: Evidence from the Indo-Gangetic Plains.

Climate change induced heat stress is predicted to negatively impact wheat yields across the Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP) of India. Research suggests that early sowing of wheat can substantially reduce this impact. However, a large proportion of farmers sow wheat late across this region, likely resulting in large-scale yield loss.

Assessing environmental impacts and change in Myanmar's mangrove ecosystem service value due to deforestation (2000-2014).

Myanmar is one of the mangrove-richest countries in the world, providing valuable ecosystem services to people. However, due to deforestation driven primarily by agricultural expansion, Myanmar's mangrove forest cover has declined dramatically over the past few decades, while what remains is still under pressure. To support management planning, accurate quantification of mangrove forest cover changes on a national scale is needed.

Examining the ecosystem health and sustainability of the world's largest mangrove forest using multi-temporal MODIS products.

Sweeping across Bangladesh and India, the Sundarbans forest is the world's largest contiguous mangrove forest. Although the human population density is high at the edge, Sundarbans has not encountered significant areal transformation in the last four decades. However, we argue that forest degradation can occur discontinuously within the forest without alteration of the entire forest area.