There is an ever-growing need for fresh water, for people, animals, crops and industry. Life depends on water and climate change severely impacts upon its availability and usage. Monsoons fail, rain patterns shift and fertile areas become barren.

Meteorology and Climatology are all about weather, from a local scale to the complete global system. Professionals in these disciplines strive to understand how our environment works and to make forecasts for both the short-term (weather) and the long-term (climate).

A pyranometer is a type of actinometer used for measuring solar irradiance on a planar surface and it is designed to measure the solar radiation flux density (W/m²) from the hemisphere above within a wavelength range 0.3 μm to 3 μm. The name pyranometer stems from the Greek words πῦρ (pyr), meaning "fire", and ἄνω (ano), meaning "above, sky".

A typical pyranometer does not require any power to operate.

Drought is an insidious hazard of nature. It is often referred to as a "creeping phenomenon" and its impacts vary from region to region. Drought can therefore be difficult for people to understand. It is equally difficult to define, because what may be considered a drought in, say, Bali (six days without rain) would certainly not be considered a drought in Libya (annual rainfall less than 180 mm). In the most general sense, drought originates from a deficiency of precipitation over an extended period of time--usually a season or more--resulting in a water shortage for some activity, group, or environmental sector. Its impacts result from the interplay between the natural event (less precipitation than expected) and the demand people place on water supply, and human activities can exacerbate the impacts of drought. Because drought cannot be viewed solely as a physical phenomenon, it is usually defined both conceptually and operationally.