Western disturbances (WDs) are upper-level synoptic-scale systems embedded in the subtropical westerly jet stream (STWJ), often associated with extreme rainfall events in north India and Pakistan during boreal winter. Here, a tracking algorithm is applied to the upper-tropospheric vorticity field for 37 years of ERA-Interim reanalysis data, giving a catalogue of over 3000 events.

The Minamata Convention on Mercury entered into force in August 2017, committing its currently 92 parties to take action to protect human health and the environment from anthropogenic emissions and releases of mercury. But how can we tell whether the convention is achieving its objective? Although the convention requires periodic effectiveness evaluation (1), scientific uncertainties challenge our ability to trace how mercury policies translate into reduced human and wildlife exposure and impacts.

A new comprehensive surface temperature data set for India is used to document changes in Indian temperature over seven decades, in order to examine the patterns and possible effects of global warming. The data set is subdivided into pre-monsoon, monsoon, and post-monsoon categories in order to study the temperature patterns in each of these periods.

Nitrogen availability is a pivotal control on terrestrial carbon sequestration and global climate change. Historical and contemporary views assume that nitrogen enters Earth’s land-surface ecosystems from the atmosphere. Here we demonstrate that bedrock is a nitrogen source that rivals atmospheric nitrogen inputs across major sectors of the global terrestrial environment.

A very unusual dust plume generated from dust-storm activities over the Arabian Peninsula and Southwest Asia affected the north-west region of India between March 20 and 23, 2012, causing significant reductions in air quality and consequently changes in meteorological parameters. Ground based measurements of aerosol optical depth at 500 nm reached 1.015 ± 0.24 and 0.837 ± 0.042 at Jodhpur while Angstrom exponent dropped to -0.030 and -0.065 on March 20 and 21, 2012 respectively. The AOD reached 0.959 in Delhi while Angstrom exponent dropped to 0.006 on March 21, 2012.

Ocean‐Waves‐Atmosphere (OWA) exchanges are not well represented in current Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) systems, which can lead to large uncertainties in tropical cyclone track and intensity forecasts. In order to explore and better understand the impact of OWA interactions on tropical cyclone modeling, a fully coupled OWA system based on the atmospheric model Meso‐NH, the oceanic model CROCO, and the wave model WW3 and called MSWC was designed and applied to the case of tropical cyclone Bejisa (2013–2014).