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Background: Breathlessness is a cardinal symptom of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Long-term oxygen therapy (LTOT) is given to improve survival time in people with COPD and severe chronic hypoxaemia at rest. The efficacy of oxygen therapy for breathlessness and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in people with COPD and mild or no hypoxaemia who do not meet the criteria for LTOT
European managed grasslands are amongst the most productive in the world. Besides temperature and the amount and timing of precipitation, grass production is also highly controlled by applications of nitrogen fertilizers and land management to sustain a high productivity. Since management characteristics of pastures vary greatly across Europe, land-use intensity and their projections are critical
The “Green Sahara” is a period when North Africa was characterized by vegetation cover and wetlands. To qualitatively identify the orbital-climatic causation of the Green Sahara regime, we performed dynamic vegetation model (LPJ-GUESS) simulations, driven by climate forcings from coupled general circulation model (EC-Earth) simulations for the mid-Holocene, in which the vegetation is prescribed to
Across the Arctic, the net ecosystem carbon (C) balance of tundra ecosystems is highly uncertain due to substantial temporal variability of C fluxes and to landscape heterogeneity. We modeled both carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) fluxes for the dominant land cover types in a ~100-km2 sub-Arctic tundra region in northeast European Russia for the period of 2006–2015 using process-based biogeoc
The 8.2 ka bp cooling event is assumed to be the most clearly marked abrupt climate event in the Holocene at northern mid- to high latitudes. In this study, we simulate the vegetation responses to the 8.2 ka bp climate change event over Europe and Northern Africa. Our results show that all dominant plant functional types (PFTs) over Europe and North Africa respond to these climate changes, but the
Recent accelerated warming over the Arctic coincides with sea ice reduction and shifting patterns of land cover. We use a state-of-the-art regional Earth system model, RCAO-GUESS, which comprises a dynamic vegetation model (LPJ-GUESS), a regional atmosphere model (RCA), and an ocean sea ice model (RCO), to explore the dynamic coupling between vegetation and sea ice during 1989–2011. Our results sh
In this work, the forestry-enabled dynamic vegetation model LPJ-GUESS was used to simulate forest standing volume for the three main regions of Sweden. At the regional scale, the model results were evaluated against observational data from the Swedish National Forest Inventory. Carbon fluxes of net ecosystem exchange (NEE), gross primary productivity (GPP), and ecosystem respiration (Reco) were si
Childhood stunting is a serious public health concern in Rwanda. Although stunting causes have been documented, we still lack a more in-depth understanding of their local factors at a more detailed geographic level. We cross-sectionally examined 615 height-for-age prevalence observations in the Northern Province of Rwanda, linked with their related covariates, to explore the spatial heterogeneity
Boreal and temperate forests are undergoing structural, compositional and functional changes in response to increasing temperatures, changes in precipitation, and rising CO2, but the extent of the changes in forests will also depend on current and future forest management. This study utilized the dynamic vegetation model LPJ-GUESS enabled with forest management (version 4.1.2, rev11016) to simulat
Severe obesity during childhood is associated with cognitive deficits. Studies in adults have suggested improvements in executive functioning and memory after bariatric surgery. Our aim was to explore changes in cognitive function in adolescents over two years after bariatric surgery or intensive non-surgical treatment. Methods: The Adolescent Morbid Obesity Surgery 2 (AMOS2) is a multicentre, ope
Background: Etranacogene dezaparvovec, the first gene therapy approved for haemophilia B treatment, was shown to be superior to treatment with continuous prophylactic factor IX in terms of bleeding protection 18 months after gene therapy in a phase 3 trial. We report post-hoc 24-month efficacy and safety data from this trial to evaluate the longer-term effects of etranacogene dezaparvovec in indiv
The Earth system model EC-Earth3 for contributions to CMIP6 is documented here, with its flexible coupling framework, major model configurations, a methodology for ensuring the simulations are comparable across different high-performance computing (HPC) systems, and with the physical performance of base configurations over the historical period. The variety of possible configurations and sub-model
Nonlinear responses to externally forced climate change are known to dampen or amplify the local climate impact due to complex cross-compartmental feedback loops in the Earth system. These feedbacks are less well represented in the traditional stand-alone atmosphere and ocean models on which many of today's regional climate assessments rely (e.g., EURO-CORDEX, NOSCCA and BACC II). This has promote
The Arctic is warming rapidly, especially in winter, which is causing large-scale reductions in snow cover. Snow is one of the main controls on soil thermodynamics, and changes in its thickness and extent affect both permafrost thaw and soil biogeochemistry. Since soil respiration during the cold season potentially offsets carbon uptake during the growing season, it is essential to achieve a reali
The synthesis aims to lay the foundation for an improved understanding of the biophysical influence of land-use and land-cover changes on regional climate and terrestrial ecosystem change in Sweden, and to outline a roadmap for developing tools that support the formulation of policies and decision-making by policymakers, taking these potentially significant effects into account. The additional inf
Large-scale photovoltaic solar farms envisioned over the Sahara desert can meet the world's energy demand while increasing regional rainfall and vegetation cover. However, adverse remote effects resulting from atmospheric teleconnections could offset such regional benefits. We use state-of-the-art Earth-system model simulations to evaluate the global impacts of Sahara solar farms. Our results indi
Understanding the transition of biosphere‐atmosphere carbon exchange between glacial and interglacial climates can constrain uncertainties in its future projections. Using an individual‐based dynamic vegetation model, we simulate vegetation distribution and terrestrial carbon cycling in past cold and warm climates and elucidate the forcing effects of temperature, precipitation, atmospheric CO2 con
The Community Atmosphere-Biosphere Land Exchange model (CABLE) is a land surface model (LSM) that can be applied stand-alone and provides the land surface-atmosphere exchange within the Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator (ACCESS). We describe new developments that extend the applicability of CABLE for regional and global carbon-climate simulations, accounting for vegetation re
