ISRO-Geosphere and Biospheric Programme The Earth’s climate is modulated by Land-Air-Ocean interactions through Geosphere-Biosphere-Atmospheric processes. These interactive forces regulate equilibrium in the weather and climate. The indiscriminate land use practices, fossil fuel burning, increased vehicular traffic, loss of vegetation cover, etc., are exerting changes in the earth’s atmosphere. The temporal and spatial scales of changing Earth’s climate result in aberrations of our natural cycles of monsoon, vagaries in the natural disasters, increased temperatures both on surface and oceans, loss of soil moisture, decrease in the extent of snow/glaciers, changes in plant productivity, etc., cumulatively inflicting irrecoverable changes to our climate. Realising the importance of temporal and spatial scales in earth system processes - ISRO-Geosphere and Biospheric Programme (ISRO-GBP) during the 11th FYP focused its objectives mainly on large-scale issues that contribute to the overall understanding of the science aspects of changing climate. ISRO-GBP, with multi-institutional participation, has been pursuing studies in well organised eight specific large scale projects: (i) Aerosol Radiative Forcing over India ARFI involves continuous measurements of aerosols using ARFI network (ARFINET) which has grown to a chain of more than 30 stations. ARFINET, which has data compiled up to 2009 is being stored in a common format that could be effectively used by scientific community for various R&D purposes.Aerosol Radiative Forcing experiments covers the projects related to Integrated Campaign for Aerosols, gases and Radiation Budget (ICARB) and Regional Aerosol Warming Experiment (RAWEX). Under ICARB, multi-platform field campaigns, involving synchronous measurements of several aerosol parameters from the network, onboard ship and aircraft, balloons and satellites have been conducted. RAWEX is being carried out to assess the impact of regional warming by elevated absorbing aerosols in regional atmospheric warming, monsoon system, weather and climate. (ii) Atmospheric Trace Gases, Chemistry & Transport over India Some of important observations from the research are from the high altitude balloon experiment, revealing the concentrations of CFCs and N2O and their significant role towards depleting the ozone concentrations in the stratosphere. (iii) Atmospheric Dust, Chemistry & Transport Modeling over India Atmospheric Dust Chemistry and Transport Modelling program under IGBP has been working on the Organic Carbon and Element Carbon (Black Carbon) emissions in the various cities in India and their contribution to radiative forcing of the atmosphere. It is understood that secondary aerosols act as a hygroscopic cloud condensation nuclei and has cooling effect. The study on rainwater chemistry in the north-western India has revealed on neutralisation of rains over India and making it non-acidic. (iv) Atmospheric Boundary Layer Network & Characterization Initial observations of atmospheric boundary layer studies over Bay of Bengal region detecting the variable convective processes having significance in modulating regional weather and climate (v) Energy & Mass Exchange in Vegetative Systems A Network of about 20 Agro-Met Stations (AMS) have been established across the country and the datasets are being collected and stored on MOSDAC server. The quality of Primary Data and Intermediate products are being evaluated. Integrated science plan for canopy characterisation through in-situ measurements on phenology, LAI, soil moisture, photosynthesis, biomass etc. are being carried out as part of the research activity. (vi) Land use & Land cover Impact on Human Dimension in River Basins The objective of this program is in setting up and calibration of basin scale model for different river basins under Land use and Land cover scenario and prediction of future scenarios using specific modelling exercise. Remote sensing based information is being compiled at large scale for the country and predictive modelling methods are initiated as part of research. (vii) National Carbon Projects National Carbon Project in terms of soil carbon pool assessment (SCP), vegetation carbon pool assessment (VCP) and soil and vegetation fluxes (SVF) using Flux towers measurements, observations from space and other collateral data and ground measurements are being carried out. The NPP modelling from flux tower to national scale with biosphere model is being done to identify changes in phytomass. The future plans of NCP is to cover multi-constraint modelling, satellite derived top-down (atmospheric CO2) and bottom-up (Remote Sensing-based inventory approach and inclusion of atmospheric transport) approaches. (viii) Quantitative Multi-Proxy Paleomonsoon Reconstruction Quantitative Multi-Proxy Paleomonsoon Reconstruction (QMPRC) programme attempts to reconstruct the SW and NE monsoon precipitation over different regions of India quantitatively using tree rings and speleothems, spanning last 20,000 years and check for the consistency with other proxies. While the methodologies have been established, there is a need for oxygen isotopic and Mg/Ca analysis of a large number of samples to be done as part of the research. ISRO GBP: Highlights of a few outcomes and Ground observation networks