The Karakoram and the Himalayan mountain range accommodate a large number of glaciers and are the major source of several perennial rivers downstream. To interactively describe to response of glaciers to climate change, a glacier parameterization scheme has been developed and implemented into the regional climate model REMO. The scheme simulates the mass balance as well as changes of the areal extent of glaciers on a subgrid scale. The parameterization scheme is for the first time applied to the region.

A new method to estimate sulfur dioxide (SO2) lifetimes and emissions from point sources using satellite measurements is described. The method is based on fitting satellite SO2 vertical column density to a three-dimensional parameterization as a function of the coordinates and wind speed. An effective lifetime (or, more accurately, decay time) and emission rate are then determined from the parameters of the fit.

As the water vapor content in the atmosphere scales with temperature, a warmer world is expected to feature an intensification of the hydrological cycle. Work to date has mainly focused on mean precipitation changes, whose connection to climatic modes is elusive at a global scale.