Feature Article

Satellite-based estimates of the aerosol indirect effect (AIE) are consistently smaller than the estimates from global aerosol models, and, partly as a result of these differences, the assessment of this climate forcing includes large uncertainties. Satellite estimates typically use the present-day (PD) relationship between observed cloud drop number concentrations (Nc) and aerosol optical depths (AODs) to determine the preindustrial (PI) values of Nc.

We describe volumetric changes in three benchmark glaciers in the Nepal Himalayas on which observations have been made since the 1970s. Compared with the global mean of glacier mass balance, the Himalayan glaciers showed rapid wastage in the 1970s–1990s, but similar wastage in the last decade. In the last decade, a glacier in an arid climate showed negative but suppressed mass balance compared with the period 1970s–1990s, whereas two glaciers in a humid climate showed accelerated wastage. A mass balance model with downscaled gridded datasets depicts the fate of the observed glaciers.

Jason Clay identifies eight steps that, taken together, could enable farming to feed 10 billion people and keep Earth habitable.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v475/n7356/full/475287a.html

Just mention the large brown-and-white bird and the residents of Mardi village in Solapur burst out in anger. The district in Maharashtra is one of the few refuges for the rare Great Indian Bustard (Ardeotis nigriceps), endemic to the grasslands of India and Pakistan. Of the 30-35 birds remaining in Maharashtra, Solapur’s grasslands support the largest population—25. But residents are not keen to protect the bird, called maldhok locally, because they perceive the Great Indian Bustard sanctuary as the stumbling block to the region’s development.