The impacts of climate change on the winter water cycle of the western Himalaya

Some 180 million people depend on the Indus River as a key water resource, fed largely by precipitation falling over the western Himalaya. However, the projected response of western Himalayan precipitation to climate change is currently not well constrained: CMIP5 GCMs project a reduced frequency and vorticity of synoptic-scale systems impacting the area, but such systems would exist in a considerably moister atmosphere. In this study, a convection-permitting (4 km horizontal resolution) setup of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model is used to examine 40 cases of these synoptic-scale systems, known as western disturbances (WDs), as they interact with the western Himalaya. In addition to a present-day control run, three experiments are performed by perturbing the boundary and initial conditions to reflect pre-industrial, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 background climates respectively. It is found that in spite of the weakening intensity of WDs, net precipitation associated with them in future climate scenarios increases significantly; conversely there is no net change in precipitation between the pre-industrial and control experiments despite a significant conversion of snowfall in the pre-industrial experiment to rainfall in the control experiment, consistent with the changes seen in historical observations. This shift from snowfall to rainfall has profound consequences on water resource management in the Indus Valley, where irrigation is dependent on spring meltwater. Flux decomposition shows that the increase in future precipitation follows directly from the projected moistening of the tropical atmosphere (which increases the moisture flux incident on the western Himalaya by 28%) overpowering the weakened dynamics (which decreases it by 20%). Changes to extreme rainfall events are also examined: it is found that such events may increase significantly in frequency in both future scenarios examined. Two-hour maxima rainfall events that currently occur in 1-in-8 WDs are projected to increase tenfold in frequency in the RCP8.5 scenario; more prolonged (one-week maxima) events are projected to increase fiftyfold

Medicinal plants used by local <i style="">Vaidyas </i>in Ukhimath block, Uttarakhand

480-485Throughout the Indian sub-continent, all earlier medical branches have developed and refined different treatments based on preparations made from available natural resources. Traditional knowledge of local Vaidyas (practitioners of Ayurveda) about medicinal plants and their importance in local healthcare practices is well known since Vedic time. However, mode of applications of the different medicinal plants is lacking from many remote areas of the country. The research work was initiated in the vicinity of Ukhimath (block head) of Uttarakhand state, as it has unique habitat specificity and availability of Vaidyas. Of 60 different plant species collected, 45 herbs, 8 trees, 5 shrubs and 2 climbers were used for curing a total of 34 diseases such as headache, fever and intestinal problems. Rhizome/tuber/roots (41.66%), followed by leaves (31.66%), fruits/seeds (15%), twigs/barks (6.66%), flowers (3.33%) and whole plant (1.66%) were used for curing different ailments. A total of 8 medicinal plants such as Aconitum heterophyllum, Angelica glauca, Berberis osmastonii, Dactylorhiza hatagirea, Nardostachys jatamansi, Picrorhiza kurrooa, Podophyllum hexandrum and Zanthoxylum armatum were rare and endangered species, which had high demand in the market and showed greater potential towards curing of ailments. Thus, there is an urgent need to conserve such medicinal plant species for the benefit of humankind