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Olga Scudiero,1,2,* Luca Gentile,2,* Annaluisa Ranieri,1,2 Eduardo Coppola,3 Pierpaolo Di Micco,4 Cristina Mazzaccara,1,2 Giovanni D’alicandro,5 Eleonora Leggiero,2 Giulia Frisso,1,2 Lucio Pastore,1,2 Barbara Lombardo1,2 1Dipartimento di Medicina Molecolare e Biotecnologie Mediche, Università degli Studi di Napoli “Federico II”, Napoli, Italia; 2CEINGE-Biotecnologie Avanzate, Napoli, Italia; 3Vulcanair S.p.A, Casoria, Italia; 4Dipartimento di Medicina Interna, Ospedale Fatebenefratelli, Napoli, Italia; 5Centro di Medicina dello Sport e delle Disabilità, Dipartimento di Neuroscienze e Riabilitazione, AORN, Santobono-Pausillipon, Napoli, Italia*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Pierpaolo Di MiccoDipartimento di Medicina Interna, Ospedale Fatebenefratelli, Via Alessandro Manzoni, Napoli, NA 80123, ItaliaEmail pdimicco@libero.itBarbara LombardoDipartimento di Medicina Molecolare e Biotecnologie Mediche, Università degli Studi di Napoli “Federico II”, Corso Umberto I, 40, Napoli, NA 80138, ItaliaEmail barbara.lombardo@unina.itAbstract: The role of influence on protein C anticoagulant system and PC deficiency-related thrombophilic risk due to strenuous physical exercise is still under discussion. To investigate the modification of the protein C anticoagulant pathway after vigorous exercise, we measured ProC® Global assay, a protein C activity dependent clotting time, in 20 healthy subjects before and immediately after maximal treadmill exercise, and at 5, 15, 30 and 60 min in the recovery phase. The most evident change was a shortening of ProC® Global clotting time from the average basal value of 123 sec to 84 sec at 30 min in post-exercise. Our study shows that the coagulation unbalance observed after strenuous exercise and with no consequence in healthy individuals with normal PC level, could increase the thrombophilic risk in silent carriers of significant defects of the protein C system and occasionally trigger an episode of deep vein thrombosis.Keywords: ProC® Global, protein C unbalance after physical exercise, physical exercise; thrombophilic risk

We present an assessment of climate change pro jections over the European region for the 21st century from the ensembles of CMIP3 global model experiments and PRUDENCE regional climate model experiments. The A2, A1B, and B1 IPCC emission scenarios are considered. A brief review is also presented of the literature available on future European climate pro jections. In all emission scenarios the European region shows maximum warming of up to several degrees C over the Mediterranean region in summer and over northeastern Europe in winter. The precipitation change signal shows a north-south dipolar structure, with increasing precipitation over Northern Europe and decreasing over southern Europe. This structure migrates northward from the winter to the summer and is tied to the north-south motion of an increasing anticyclonic circulation cell over the North Atlantic-European sector. Temperature interannual variability decreases in winter over central and northern Europe and increases in summer throughout Europe. Precipitation interannual variability shows a predominant increase, most pronounced in summer. The seasonal temperature anomaly probability density functions (PDFs) show a shift and a widening and flattening in future climate conditions, especially in summer, which is indicative of pronounced increases of extreme hot seasons. The seasonal precipitation anomaly PDFs show pronounced changes over Southern Europe in summer, with a strong increase of very dry seasons. In general, the magnitude of future climate change increases with the greenhouse gas forcing. A broad consensus is found between the pro jections obtained with the CMIP3 and PRUDENCE ensembles, as well as between the present analysis and previous generations of model pro jections. The climate change signal over Europe exhibits a consistent latitudinal and seasonal evolution identified as the European Climate change Oscillation (ECO) by Giorgi and Coppola [F. Giorgi and E. Coppola, Geophys. Res. Lett. 34, L21703 (2007)]. The changes of temperature and precipitation over Europe are pronounced, making this region highly vulnerable to global warming.

We describe a new, state-of-the-art, Earth System Regional Climate Model (RegCM-ES), which includes the coupling between the atmosphere, ocean, and land surface, as well as a hydrological and ocean biogeochemistry model, with the capability of using a variety of physical parameterizations. The regional coupled model has been implemented and tested over some of the COordinated Regional climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) domains and more regional settings featuring climatically important coupled phenomena. Regional coupled ocean-atmosphere models can be especially useful tools to provide information on the mechanisms of air-sea interactions and feedbacks occurring at fine spatial and temporal scales. RegCM-ES shows a good representation of precipitation and SST fields over the domains tested, as well as realistic simulations of coupled air-sea processes and interactions. The RegCM-ES model, which can be easily implemented over any regional domain of interest, is open source, making it suitable for usage by the broad scientific community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT We intercompare three gridded observed daily rainfall datasets over Africa (FEWS (Famine Early Warning System), GPCP (Global Precipitation Climatology Project) and TRMM (Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission)) in order to assess uncertainties in observation products towards the evaluation of the performance of a Regional Climate Model (RegCM3) in simulating daily precipitation characteristics over a domain encompassing the whole African continent. We find that different observation products exhibit substantial systematic differences in mean rainfall, but especially in higher order daily precipitation statistics, such as frequency of wet days, precipitation intensity and extremes as well as maximum length of wet and dry spells. For example, FEWS shows mostly higher frequency and lower intensity events than TRMM and GPCP. Thus, the different datasets provide quite different representations of daily precipitation behavior. As a result, although RegCM3 captures pretty well the monsoon rainband evolution and exhibits a representation of daily precipitation statistics within the range of the observations, it performs differently with respect to the various products. For instance, it simulates more intense but less frequent events over East and Southern Africa than in FEWS and vice versa compared to TRMM. We thus highlight the uncertainty in observations as a key factor preventing a rigorous and unambiguous evaluation of climate models over Africa. Improving the quality and consistency of observation products is thus paramount for a better understanding of the response of African climate to global warming. Copyright © 2012 Royal Meteorological Society [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interactions between land cover change in Central Africa and the Africa monsoon is investigated using a regional climate model simulation (2000-2007) under a Congo Basin deforestation scenario. Decreased evaporation over the deforested area locally produces a heat low and reduced precipitation. In JJA, this low strengthens the West Africa monsoon causing increased precipitation over the Sahel and decreased precipitation over the Guinea coast. In DJF, it strengthens the south-equatorial African monsoon causing an increase of precipitation over south-equatorial Africa. Therefore our simulations indicate that the biosphere-state in Central Africa may play an important role locally but also remotely via interactions with regional monsoon dynamics. Copyright © 2012 Royal Meteorological Society [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An Artificial Neural Network (ANN) approach is used to downscale ECHAM5 GCM temperature (T ) and rainfall (R) fields to RegCM3 regional model scale over Europe. The main inputs to the neural network were the ECHAM5 fields and topography, and RegCM3 topography. An ANN trained for the period 1960-1980 was able to recreate the RegCM3 1981-2000 mean T and R fields with reasonable accuracy. The ANN showed an improvement over a simple lapse-rate correction method for T , although the ANN R field did not capture all the fine-scale detail of the RCM field. An ANN trained over a smaller area of Southern Europe was able to capture this detail with more precision. The ANN was unable to accurately recreate the RCM climate change (CC) signal between 1981-2000 and 2081-2100, and it is suggested that this is because the relationship between the GCM fields, RCM fields and topography is not constant with time and changing climate. An ANN trained with three ten-year "time-slices" was able to better reproduce the RCM CC signal, particularly for the full European domain. This approach shows encouraging results but will need further refinement before becoming a viable supplement to dynamical regional climate modelling of temperature and rainfall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]