In regard to global change, emphasis is generally placed on the increase in global temperature, but large changes in the distribution of precipitation are also likely to occur. Such changes have been redorded in the past by paleoclimatological studies or in the field of climatology. Different approaches to monitoring and forecasting the evolution of climate-scale precipitation are reviewed by paleoclimatologists, hydrologists, satellite meteorologists, and climate modellers.

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Section 1 Precipitation paleoclimatology.- Natural variability of the Asian, Indian and African monsoons over the last 130 KA.- Fluctuations of the Indian monsoon regime during the last 170,000 years: evidence from sea surface temperature, salinity and organic carbon records.- Accumulation at the surface of polar ice sheets: observation and modelling for global climate change.- Global climate changes and humidity variations over East Europe and Asia by historical data.- Regional climate change scenario based on paleoclimatic data.- Section 2 Recent precipitation history and existing climatologies.- Precipitation changes over the Northern Hemispheric Extratropics during the last hundred years.- The recent West African rainfall variability through empirical and modelling investigations.- Extreme precipitation in the Northern hemisphere.- Possible impacts of climate change upon the water balance in Central Europe.- Section 3 Methodologies of large scale estimation of precipitation from conventional data.- Terrestrial precipitation analysis: operational method and required density of point measurements.- Cartography of statistical pluviometric field with an automatic allowance for regional topography.- Approaches for regionalization of precipitation climates in the context of global climate change monitoring.- Spatial and temporal inhomogeneity of global precipitation data.- The effect of dimensions and shape of precipitation gauges on the wind-induced error.- Section 4 Methodologies of global scale precipitation from satellite data.- Use of microwave radiometry to estimate precipitation: physical basis and intercomparison of algorithms.- Combination of satellite microwaye and infrared measurements for rainfall estimation.- Satellite derived rainfaU estimates over Africa: their validation and use in monitoring climate change.- On the use of the normalized difference vegetation index as an indicator of rainfall.- Section 5 Validation and initialization of numerical models.- Improved precipitation forecast skill from the use of physical initialization.- Future cloud representation in the ECMWF model.- Analysis and prediction of the rainfall in the Tropics.- Understanding perturbations of the Intertropical Convergence Zone over tropical continents.- The hydrological cycle in the ECHAM3 simulations of the atmospheric circulation.- The parameterization of the precipitation process in the LMD general circulation model.- Validation of large-scale precipitation fields in global circulation models.- Section 6 Status of precipitation climatologies and current programmes.- The global precipitation climatology project.- Global and terrestrial precipitation climatologies: an overview and some intercomparisons.- Precipitation distributions from combined airborne microwave radiometric/radar measurements and ground based VLF sferics observations in support of Nasa's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission.- Recommendations of the working groups at the end of the workshop.- Alphabetical list of authors.