Abstract. Recent thinning of glaciers over the Himalayas (sometimes referred to as the third polar region) have raised concern on future water supplies since these glaciers supply water to large river systems that support millions of people inhabiting the surrounding areas. Black carbon (BC) aerosols, released from incomplete combustion, have been increasingly implicated as causing large changes in the hydrology and radiative forcing over Asia and its deposition on snow is thought to increase snow melt. In India BC emissions from biofuel combustion is highly prevalent and compared to other regions, BC aerosol amounts are high. Here, we quantify the impact of BC aerosols on snow cover and precipitation from 1990 to 2010 over the Indian subcontinental region using two different BC emission inventories. New estimates indicate that Indian BC emissions from coal and biofuel are large and transport is expected to expand rapidly in coming years. We show that over the Himalayas, from 1990 to 2000, simulated snow/ice cover decreases by ∼0.9% due to aerosols. The contribution of the enhanced Indian BC to this decline is ∼36%, similar to that simulated for 2000 to 2010. Spatial patterns of modeled changes in snow cover and precipitation are similar to observations (from 1990 to 2000), and are mainly obtained with the newer BC estimates.

on board Envisat, respectively, for the time period of 1996-2006 have been used to identify major NO 2 emission hot spots, trends, and seasonal cycle over different regions of India. Emission hot spots are observed over the locations of thermal power plants and over major urban and industrial regions. A multifunctional regression model has been used to analyze the trends and seasonal cycle over these emission hot spots. Increasing trends of $1.65 ± 0.52% a À1 have been observed for NO 2 over India. The fast growing industrial regions of Mumbai and Delhi show increasing trends of $2.1 ± 1.1 and $2.4 ± 1.2% a À1 , respectively. Seasonal variations of tropospheric NO 2 concentrations show a maximum during winter-summer (December-May) and a minimum during the monsoon seasons (June-September). The observed seasonal cycle in satellite-derived NO 2 agrees well with the surface-level observations of NO X .Citation: Ghude, S. D., S. Fadnavis, G. Beig, S. D. Polade, and R. J. van der A (2008), Detection of surface emission hot spots, trends, and seasonal cycle from satellite-retrieved NO 2 over India,

This bottom-up modeling study, supported by emission inventories and crop production, simulates ozone on local to regional scales. It quantifies, for the first time, potential impact of ozone on district-wise cotton, soybeans, rice, and wheat crops in India for the first decade of the 21st century. Wheat is the most impacted crop with losses of 3.5 ± 0.8 million tons (Mt), followed by rice at 2.1 ± 0.8 Mt, with the losses concentrated in central and north India. On the national scale, this loss is about 9.2% of the cereals required every year (61.2 Mt) under the provision of the recently implemented National Food Security Bill (in 2013) by the Government of India. The nationally aggregated yield loss is sufficient to feed about 94 million people living below poverty line in India.

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