ERA5 Climate Application in Cold and Arid Regions

Dear Colleagues,

Cold regions (Arctic, Antarctic, and Tibetan Plateau) and arid environments are among the areas most sensitive to climate change. Recent cryospheric imbalances and persistent water scarcity in these zones have raised increasing scientific concern. However, the limited availability of in situ observations continues to constrain research in fields such as climatology, glaciology, hydrology, and environmental monitoring.

The advent of high-resolution reanalysis datasets, particularly ERA5, has significantly improved our capacity to study climate dynamics and extreme events in data-scarce regions. ERA5 is increasingly used for diverse applications, including cryosphere monitoring, energy balance studies, and water resource assessment in cold and arid regions. Despite its growing popularity, more efforts are needed to evaluate ERA5 performance, explore downscaling techniques, and expand its integration with remote sensing.

This Special Issue aims to highlight recent advances in the use of ERA5 for studying weather and climate variability in cold and arid regions. Contributions may focus on ice-sheet/glacier dynamics, water scarcity issues, remote sensing-based downscaling of ERA5, and assessment of reanalysis accuracy. The integration of ERA5 with remote sensing is particularly encouraged to improve the understanding of spatiotemporal processes in extreme environments.

Paper topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Performance of ERA5 in cold and arid regions using in situ or satellite data;
• ERA5 and remote sensing for monitoring climate variability and extremes;
• Cryosphere dynamics and ice–atmosphere interactions;
• ERA5-based climate and hydrological modeling;
• Downscaling of ERA5 using remote sensing techniques.

Dr. Yetang Wang
Dr. Giuseppe Longo-Minnolo
Dr. Matteo Ippolito
Dr. Baojuan Huai
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Remote Sensing is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.