ARIES to hold online conference on ‘Aerosol Air Quality, Climate Change, Impact on Water Resources & Livelihoods in Greater Himalayas’

By Our Staff Reporter 
Nainital, 24 Aug: Mid-September brings an opportunity to witness a major online international conference on ‘Aerosol Air Quality, Climate Change and Impact on Water Resources and Livelihoods in the Greater Himalayas’. The conference will deliberate on rapid increase in air pollution associated with industrialisation and urbanisation and its resultant impacts on regional and global air quality, visibility degradation, cloud formation, and atmospheric chemistry, radiation budget, ecosystem, Himalayan climate, and glaciology, cryosphere, monsoon patterns, water availability, and human health — important topics of discussion particularly in India, Nepal and Bangladesh.
Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), Nainital, an autonomous research institute under the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India and Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University, (HNBGU) Srinagar, are planning to jointly organise the three-day online international conference between 14 and 16 September. The international conference is being organised as a part of the celebration of Golden Jubilee Commemoration Year of DST. This is the first online international conference to be held at ARIES, Nainital, during this Pandemic.
The invited speakers in the conference are from different parts of the globe and will deliver lectures on ‘Growing air pollution over the Indo-Gangetic Plains and Central Gangetic Himalayan Region’; Himalayan Glaciers, Climate Change impacts on Himalayan Glacier and monsoon over the Himalayas; extreme events and so on. The reviewed presentations will be published on a Thematic Issue entitled “Aerosols-Climate interaction and water resources over the Himalayas” in the Journal of Earth System Science (JESS).
ARIES, Nainital, started research activities in the field of atmospheric science and climate change about two decades ago. It has installed a battery of modern instruments at Manora Peak, a strategically important location in the Central Himalayan region, for in situ measurements of various optical, physical and chemical properties of aerosols and trace gases. The ARIES has also established both national and international collaborations in these areas.