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.

Fundamental thermodynamics and climate models suggest that dry regions will become drier and wet regions will become wetter in response to warming. Efforts to detect this long-term response in sparse surface observations of rainfall and evaporation remain ambiguous. We show that ocean salinity patterns express an identifiable fingerprint of an intensifying water cycle. Our 50-year observed global surface salinity changes, combined with changes from global climate models, present robust evidence of an intensified global water cycle at a rate of 8 ± 5% per degree of surface warming.

Ecological diversity in Sunderban is at the threshold of decline. The fragile land here is being swallowed every day by gradual sea level rise, coastal erosion and tropical cyclones. Besides the global cause of sea level rise i.e. thermal expansion of sea water also responsible is the land degrading anthropogenic activity. An unsustainable situation has crept in the deltaic plain when natural capital is being used up faster than it can be replenished.

Bangladesh - An overview of key environmental issues.

This study investigates the impact of monthly Ganges–Brahmaputra river discharge variations on Bay of Bengal salinity and temperature during the period 1992–1999. The Ganges–Brahmaputra river discharge is characterized by a well-defined seasonal cycle with strong interannual variations. The highest/lowest yearly peak discharge occurs in summer 1998/summer 1992, with 1998 value amounting to twice that of 1992. This river discharge is then used to force an ocean general circulation model.

A massive campaign will be taken up during the next five years, with the assistance of the local public sector units as well as the private sector, to grow 40 lakh trees in and around Visakhapatnam to combat the ill-effects of industrial pollution and haphazard urbanisation, according to Dr T. Subbarami Reddy, Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Technology, Environment and Forests.

Land degradation, synonymous to desertification in arid, semi arid and sub-humid region, covers the processes adversely affecting productive capacity of land under different land use systems. Present paper reports the extent, type and severity of land degradation in south Asian countries. Impact of land degradation contributing factors including population and poverty, climate change and natural hazards, agriculture globalization, overgrazing and livestock, summer fallowing and inappropriate land use management are discussed.

In late 2010 a group of professionals published a report of surveys conducted in the Sundarbans following the destruction caused by cyclone Aila in May 2009. This report shows how little we care to know about the people living in the delta. While the state government attempts to include it among the wonders of the world, the people living here are impoverished and vulnerable. The Sundarbans is a disasterprone region, but the government is yet to come up with a disaster management policy.

Accumulating evidence shows that the planet is warming as a response to human emissions of greenhouse gases. Strategies of adaptation to climate change will require quantitative projections of how altered regional patterns of temperature, precipitation and sea level could cascade to provoke local impacts such as modified water supplies, increasing risks of coastal flooding, and growing challenges to sustainability of native species.

Groundwater conditions in the multi-aquifer system in the Krishna River Delta, India, were studied through an integrated approach using hydrochemical, hydrogeological and isotopic techniques. This study

Pages