The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Assessment Report 6 (AR6), stated that the recent climate change is “widespread, rapid, intensifying and unprecedented in thousands of years.” It is further noted: “Climate change is already affecting every region on Earth in multiple ways. The changes we experience will increase with …
Residue burning practice is followed in major Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Punjab. Agricultural residue burning in the fields and used otherwise for rural domestic needs is responsible for a large number of toxic emissions, which are a health hazard. The main pollutants contributed from biomass burning are aerosols …
Harvesting a crop generates a huge amount of crop residue. Uttar Pradesh tops the list of the Crop Residue Producing States followed by Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and so on. A large part of this crop residue is burnt in the open fields since the farmers do not have any worthwhile …
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.
Foggy conditions during winters in Delhi have increased drastically over the past decade. Meteorological data for December and January in 1983 shows the average clear visibility during the day in the capital was 5:07 hours. This decreased to 10 minutes in 2005. Duration of dense fog rose from half an …
Ariyalur, the land of fossils, is found to be embedded with rich limestone deposits. Hence around 9 cement factories have been established in and around Ariyalur. This becomes one of the source of air pollution in this area.
In this article meteorological measurements in India are analysed showing marked trends of increasing temperature over the past quarter century, but significant variations in these trends during different seasons and over different regions of India. Marked differences between the variations in minimum temperatures in North and South India have been …
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 …
Paul J Crutzen received the 1995 Chemistry Nobel prize for showing that nitrogen oxides react catalytically with ozone, thus accelerating the rate of reduction of the atmospheric ozone content. His findings have triggered off much research on biogeochemical cycles like the carbon and nitrogen cycle. But he tells Archita Bhatta …
the brown haze over north-India's sky could portend a dry future. Caused by liquid pollutants suspended in air, the aerosol cloud, infamous for its effects on crops and human health, may result in localised decrease of rainfall. Aerosols reduce speed of winds near the earth's surface, thus leading to reduction …
"Climate Change 2007 - The Physical Science Basis" is the most comprehensive and up-to-date scientific assessment of past, present and future climate change. The report provides: the most complete and quantitative assessment of how human activities are affecting the radiative energy balance in the atmosphere; a more extensive assessment of …
Previous studies have found that atmospheric brown clouds partially offset the warming effects of greenhouse gases. This finding suggests a tradeoff between the impacts of reducing emissions of aerosols and greenhouse gases. Results from a statistical model of historical rice harvests in India, coupled with regional climate scenarios from a …
Projected anthropogenic warming and increases in CO2 concentration present a twofold threat, both from climate changes and from CO2 directly through increasing the acidity of the oceans. Future climate change may be reduced through mitigation (reductions in greenhouse gas emissions) or through geoengineering. Most geoengineering approaches, however, do not address …
tiny particles called aerosols found in smoke and most types of air pollution can increase or decrease the cloud cover, claims a study conducted in the us. Whether aerosols stop or assist cloud formation depends on their capacity to absorb sun's heat, adds the study conducted by a team of …
The elevated concentration of Respirable Suspended Particulate Matter (RSPM, PM10) in the ambient air is a major cause of health problem and urban people are affected at risk on exposure. http://www.springerlink.com/content/y076tm584r52u511/
South Asian emissions of fossil fuel SO2 and black carbon increased 6-fold since 1930, resulting in large atmospheric concentrations of black carbon and other aerosols. This period also witnessed strong negative trends of surface solar radiation, surface evaporation, and summer monsoon rainfall. These changes over India were accompanied by an …
South Asian emissions of fossil fuel SO2 and black carbon increased 6-fold since 1930, resulting in large atmospheric concentrations of black carbon and other aerosols. This period also witnessed strong negative trends of surface solar radiation, surface evaporation, and summer monsoon rainfall. These changes over India were accompanied by an …
researchers from Germany-based Max Planck Institute for Chemistry have recently found that the Indian Ocean region is adversely affected by nitrogen oxide (nox) pollution from Africa and Southeast Asia during the periods between the summer and winter monsoons. nox can adversely affect atmospheric chemistry because it catalyses the production of …
large amounts of soot particles and other pollutants are causing adverse changes in precipitation and temperatures over China, indicates a new research done by Washington dc-based National Aeronautical Space Administration (nasa). The soot is partially responsible for the increased incidences of floods and droughts witnessed by China during the last …
The Indian Ocean Experiment (INDOEX) was sponsored by research agencies within Europe, India and USA, and was mainly concerned with the haze over south Asia and the adjacent Indian Ocean. It excluded other equally or even more polluted areas in Asia. The Asian Brown Cloud is a follow on international …
the un Environment Programme (unep) needs to revamp its publicity department so that it can report with accuracy. With the World Summit on Sustainable Development (wssd) at Johannesburg barely a few weeks away, it chose to release the preliminary study on the Asian haze, which it claims to have sponsored. …
