Using over 1.6 million profiles of salinity, potential temperature, and neutral density from historical archives and the international Argo Program, this study develops the three-dimensional field of multidecadal linear change for ocean-state properties. The period of analysis extends from 1950 to 2008, taking care to minimize the aliasing associated with the seasonal and major global El Niño–Southern Oscillation modes. Large, robust, and spatially coherent multidecadal linear trends in salinity to 2000-dbar depth are found.

A once-in-a-century drought struck much of the Amazon rainforest in 2005, reducing rainfall by 60–75% in some areas — and giving scientists a window on to a future coloured by climate change. The drought foreshadowed the Amazon drying that many climate modellers expect to see in a warmer world.

Absorbing aerosols affect global-mean precipitation primarily in two ways. They give rise to stronger shortwave atmospheric heating, which acts to suppress precipitation. Depending on the top-of-the-atmosphere radiative flux change, they can also warm up the surface with a tendency to increase precipitation.

Annual variability of different climatic parameters was analysed from historical weekly meteorological data for three different stations of Punjab namely Ballowal Saunkhri, Ludhiana and Bathinda representing the three different agroclimatic regions of the state.