Recent crop harvesting practices use mechanical harvesters in the rice and wheat farm system in India. These practices leave behind large quantities of crop residue in the field. However, there is no suitable method available for managing the crop residues. Crop residues / biomass burning are cheap and easiest method to dispose the leftover crop residues (wheat, rice, sugarcane etc.) after harvesting, for land clearing and pest control. Burning of crop residues is a common approach to eliminate waste after harvesting all over the world.

This study compares observed and model-simulated spatiotemporal patterns of changes in Chinese extreme temperatures during 1961–2007 using an optimal detection method. Four extreme indices, namely annual maximum daily maximum (TXx) and daily minimum (TNx) temperatures and annual minimum daily maximum (TXn) and daily minimum (TNn) temperatures, are studied.

Black carbon aerosol plays a unique and important role in Earth's climate system. Black carbon is a type of carbonaceous material with a unique combination of physical properties. This assessment provides an evaluation of black-carbon climate forcing that is comprehensive in its inclusion of all known and relevant processes and that is quantitative in providing best estimates and uncertainties of the main forcing terms: direct solar absorption, influence on liquid, mixed-phase, and ice clouds, and deposition on snow and ice.

Climate data suggest greater warming over the Arctic than lower latitudes, and the most abundant direct source of black carbon and other climate-relevant pollutants over the Arctic is cross-polar flights by international aviation. A relevant question is whether rerouting cross-polar flights to circumnavigate the Arctic Circle reduces or enhances such warming.

Commitments made under the Kyoto climate treaty expire at the end of 2012, but emissions are rising faster than ever.

Knowledge of the past variability of climate at high northern latitudes during astronomical analogues of the present interglacial1 may help to inform our understanding of future climate change. Unfortunately, long-term continuous records of ice-sheet variability in the Northern Hemisphere only are scarce because records of benthic 18O content represent an integrated signal of changes in ice volume in both polar regions2.

The deliberate injection of particles into the stratosphere has been suggested as a possible geoengineering scheme to mitigate the global warming aspect of climate change. Injected particles scatter solar radiation back to space and thus reduce the radiative balance of Earth. Previous studies investigating this scheme have focused primarily on sulphuric acid particles to mimic volcanic injections of stratospheric aerosol. However, the composition and size of volcanic sulphuric acid particles are far from optimal for scattering solar radiation.