Ocean Sampling Day was initiated by the EU-funded Micro B3 (Marine Microbial Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Biotechnology) project to obtain a snapshot of the marine microbial biodiversity and function of the world’s oceans. It is a simultaneous global mega-sequencing campaign aiming to generate the largest standardized microbial data set in a single day. This will be achievable only through the coordinated efforts of an Ocean Sampling Day Consortium, supportive partnerships and networks between sites. This commentary outlines the establishment, function and aims of the Consortium and describes our vision for a sustainable study of marine microbial communities and their embedded functional traits.

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Tephra: Fragments of rock, regardless of size, that become airborne during a volcanic eruption. Lapilli: Fragments of rock, between 2 and 64 mm in diameter, produced explosively during a volcanic eruption. Volcanic ash: Tephra less than 2 mm in diameter, produced explosively during a volcanic eruption. Ash (tephra) fall: Volcanic ash and lapilli dispersed by winds away from the volcano, falling out of suspension to form a deposit. Tephra falls are commonly referred to colloquially as ash falls. Hazard: Potential threat arising from the physical phenomenon. Hazard intensity: A parameter describing the severity of a hazard at a location, e.g. ash fall thickness. Exposure: Societal assets (e.g. people, property, infrastructure networks) present in hazard zones that are thereby subject to potential losses. Vulnerability: The degree to which characteristics and the circumstances of an individual, community, system, network or asset, and any interdependencies, makes it susceptible to the damaging effects of a hazard. Impact: Function of the hazard and vulnerability on the exposed asset. Risk: Function of both the characteristics of the hazardous event and the consequences for the exposed assets. Resilience: The ability of a system, community or society exposed to hazards to resist, absorb, accommodate to and recover from the effects of a hazard in a timely and efficient manner, including through the preservation and restoration of its essential basic structures and functions.

ABSTRACT:The rainfall regime of the South of Portugal is Mediterranean with Atlantic influence. Long-term series of reliable precipitation records are essential for land and water resources management, climate-change monitoring, modelling of erosion and run-off, among other applications for ecosystem and hydrological impact modelling. This study provides a qualitative classification of 106 daily rainfall series from stations located in the South of Portugal and evaluates temporal patterns in extreme precipitation by calculating a number of indicators at stations with homogeneous data within the 1955/1999 period. The methodology includes both absolute and relative approaches and a new homogeneity testing procedure, besides the application of other statistical tests. The proposed technique is an extension of the Ellipse test that takes into account the contemporaneous relationship between several candidate series from the same climatic area (SUR+Ellipse test). The results indicate that this technique is a valuable tool for the detection of non-climatic irregularities in climate time series if the station network is dense enough. The existence of trends and other temporal patterns in extreme precipitation indices was investigated and uncertainty about rainfall patterns evolution was assessed. Three indices describing wet events and another three indicators characterizing dry conditions were analysed through regression models and smoothing techniques. The simple aridity intensity index (AII) reflects increases in the magnitude of dryness. Especially pronounced trends are found over most of southern Portugal in the 1955/1999 period, highlighting the fact that large areas are threatened by drought and desertification. The trend signals of the wetness indices are not significant at the majority of stations, but there is evidence of increasing short-term precipitation intensity over the region during the last three decades of the twentieth century. Finally, the results also indicate that extreme precipitation variability and climate uncertainty are greater in recent times.

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