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Coupled Global Climate Models (CGCMs) of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) are unable to resolve the spatial and temporal characteristics of the South Asian Monsoon satisfactorily. A CGCM with the capability to reliably project the global as well as the regional climatic features would be a valuable tool for scientists and policymakers. Analysis of 28 CMIP5 models highlights varying degree of biases in precipitation and 2 m surface air temperature (T2m) over south Asia, and the Community Earth System Model (CESM) developed at the National Center for Atmospheric Research is found to be one of the best performing models. However, like all other CMIP5 models, CESM also has some inherent model biases. Using CESM, it is found that the precipitation and T2M biases reduce with increase in the model horizontal resolution from 2° to 0.5°. Further, a few deep convective parameters in the Zhang-McFarlane convection scheme are tuned for 2° and 1° model resolutions using both manual and semi-automatic model tuning methods. Comparing results from the two tuning methods we find that the performance of the manually tuned model is better than that of the semi-automated one.

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An effective, cost-efficient catalyst material that can replace platinum as electrode material in fuel cell has become the focus point of non-fossil fuel based alternate energy systems. Transition/post-transition metal oxide based catalyst development is now the thrust area in the above-mentioned context for efficient energy conversions, especially oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), oxygen evolution reaction (OER), and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Here, for the first time, application of electrospun β-gallium oxide (β-Ga2O3) nanofibers, a post-transition metal oxide, as an efficient bifunctional catalyst material is reported. These nanofibers are highly porous (specific surface area ∼100–300 m2/g) and exhibit a mesoporous architecture (pore size ∼1.5–2 nm) which facilitates better ion transport through the spongy morphology of individual nanofiber. The fabricated β-Ga2O3 nanofibers performed at par with the Pt/C catalyst, like for ORR the onset potential was 0.84 V (vs RHE) and for HER, although the onset potential was −0.34 V (vs RHE), the current density was visibly better than the latter catalyst. This catalyst also performed much better in methanol tolerance test and was near similar in current retention for 6 h, as measured in chronoamperometry. This performance was solely attributed to the large surface area and unique morphology presented by the material, via a rather simple fabrication technique, without addition of any dopant material.