Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of News Item titled “CSE report finds dangerous increase in ozone pollution across urban India” appearing in Down to Earth dated 06.08.2024. The Principal Bench of the NGT heard the matter on March 21, 2025. In the original application, registered suo …
By Samarth Pathak Move over pollution in the forms of air, water and land. The latest menace reported to be affecting the environment is light pollution. Besides causing numerous health problems, it is also a major hindrance in the activities of night sky gazers. Delhi is now waking up to …
The state government on Wednesday decided to continue the controversial cloud seeding operations for another five years. Tenders have been called to select the company which will conduct the operations. A top official said that there was actually no scientific reason for continuing the programme but added that there was
Reactive nitrogen (Nr) includes the inorganic (NH3, NH4, NOx, HNO3, N2O, NO3) and organic forms (urea, amines, proteins, nucleic acids) that readily participate in various reactions of the global N cycle. Over the last half a century, anthropogenic perturbations of the natural N cycle have led to the increasing accumulation …
Clouds contribute significantly to the formation of many of the natural hazards. Hence cloud mapping and its classification becomes a major component of the various physical models which are used for forecasting natural hazards. The problem of cloud data classification form NOAA AVHRR (advance very high resolution radiometer) satellite imagery …
Increasing quantities of atmospheric anthropogenic fixed nitrogen entering the open ocean could account for up to about a third of the ocean's external (nonrecycled) nitrogen supply and up to ~3% of the annual new marine biological production, ~0.3 petagram of carbon per year. This input could account for the production …
Dust aerosols can suppress rainfall by increasing the number of cloud condensation nuclei in warm clouds and affecting the surface radiation budget and boundary layer instability. The extent to which atmospheric dust may affect precipitation yields and the hydrologic cycle in semiarid regions remains poorly understood. We investigate the relationship …
At a time when the Chief Minister and other ministers are praising the rain gods for regular showers and releasing thanksgiving advertisements, the rain shadow areas development department (RSAD) claims that its efforts have paid rich dividends. Impressed by the "work" done by the private aviation company M/s Agni Aviation, …
Nuclear war between India and Pakistan would cause more than slaughter and destruction -- it would knock a big hole in the ozone layer, affecting crops, animals and people worldwide, US researchers said on Monday. Fires from burning cities would send 5 million metric tonnes of soot or more into …
Human activities have significantly intensified natural phosphorus cycles, which has resulted in some serious environmental problems that modern societies face today. This article attempts to quantify the global phosphorus flows associated with present day mining, farming, animal feeding, and household consumption. Various physical characteristics of the related phosphorus fluxes as …
Energy balance measurements were carried out in a suburban vegetated areas of southern part of Delhi. These measurements were made on several days during winter and summer of 1998 and 1999 respectively.
Destruction of the Earth's ozone shield due to the release of hydrogen sulphide and methane has been suggested as a cause of mass extinctions during periods of ocean anoxia over the past two billion years. This mechanism does not explain the end-Permian mass extinction, according to simulations with a two-dimensional …
Hydroxyl radicals are often called the "detergent" of the atmosphere because they control the atmosphere's capacity to cleanse itself of pollutants. In this article the researchers show that the reaction of electronically excited nitrogen dioxide with water can be an important source of tropospheric hydroxyl radicals.
More than a hundred people live in cities that fail to meet international standards for air quality. Efforts to improve conditions in these urban areas have usually focussed on reducing emissions of reactive hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxide free radicals and primary and secondary sources of particulate matter.
An evaluation of response of one disturbed, one rehabilitated and one mature forest soil in lower subtropic China to simulated acid rain (SAR) were studied using a controlled laboratory leaching experiment. Land use change is one of the important factors in controlling soil response to acid deposition.
Aerosols play an integral role in climate by directly scattering or absorbing solar radiation, and indirectly these particles serve as condensation and ice nucleic in clouds. Ice formation in tropospheric clouds is required for snow and most rainfall.
In 1971, meteorologists Roland Madden and Paul Julian studied weather data from near equatorial Pacific islands. To their surprise, tropospheric winds, pressure and rainfall oscillated with a period of about 40 to 50 days. The oscillation in clouds and precipitation trends to be confined to the tropical Indian and Pacific …
A Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) is a massive weather event consisting of deep convection coupled with atmospheric circulation, moving slowly eastward over the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Despite its enormous influence on many weather and climate systems worldwide, it has proven very difficult to simulate an MJO because of assumptions about …
Rainfall intensities measured at a few stations in Kerala during 2001–2005 using a disdrometer were found to be in reasonable agreement with the total rainfall measured using a manual rain gauge. The temporal distributions of rainfall intensity at different places and during different months show that rainfall is of low …
There is a large uncertainty in the relative roles of human land use, climate change and carbon dioxide fertilization in changing desert dust source strength over the past 100 years, and the overall sign of human impacts on dust is not known. We used visibility data from meteorological stations in …