As regards glaciers, in the park 50 ice bodies are present covering about 40 km2. Among the others, Forni, at 12 km2 of area the largest Italian valley glacier. Its recent changes underlined a strong relation with regional and global climate evolution (Pelfini & Smiraglia, 1997; Smiraglia et al., 2007; Smiraglia et al., 2008); in addition this glacier was also inserted in the GOSITES list (Diolaiuti & Smiraglia, 2010), a list including all the geomorphological systems to be protected due to their high scientific, environmental and aesthetic values. On Forni Glacier since 2005 has been running the first Italian supraglacial automatic weather station (Citterio et al., 2007). The data collected were useful to model glacier energy and mass exchanges and to describe local micro-meteorology (Diolaiuti at al., 2009; Senese et al., 2010). Not only large glaciers are important for environmental studies; in fact, in the Park also smaller ones revealed important information.

The SHARE STELVIO project was developed by a group of researchers of the University of Milan, the Politecnico of Milan and CNR of Italy in the frame of the SHARE and the SHARE ITALY Projects promoted and managed by Ev-K2-CNR. The program is supported by the Lombardy Region under the umbrella of an agreement between the Lombardy Region and a regional research foundation: FLA (Lombardy Foundation for the Environment). The project aims at detecting and quantifying climate change evidences and effects on a sensible area located in the Italian Alps: The Stelvio National Park – Lombardy sector (600 km2 of area).

Several territories, e.g. high mountain areas in developing Countries, are significantly influenced by climate change, increase of human activities and tourism. Impacting fuels, together with bad daily habits and obsolete technologies, cause often high levels of indoor air pollution; this reduces the quality of life and determines a number of respiratory diseases especially in elderly people, women and children. Moreover the increase in touristic inflow contributed to a progressive deforestation, and the consequent alteration of the hydro-geological system, and to the accumulation of waste. SERA project aims at promoting useful strategies for sustainable development of high altitude territories, through an energy and environmental planning, in accordance with the Resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly concerning the sustainable mountain development (UN, A/Res/62/196, 2008). For this purpose a thorough analysis has to be conducted to identify the specific features of reference context from several points of view. On this basis, two main key actions can be carried out: - Survey on possible energy efficiency measures, proposal and experimentation of technical/technological solutions, which may be integrated with the local territory, in order to meet population needs, in terms of simplicity of realization, use of local materials, environmental compatibility, exploitation of available renewable energies and indoor air quality improvement. The best solutions will be chosen on the basis of technical-economic feasibility studies and their impact during the entire life cycle. - Definition of guide lines about sustainable development of territory and active support to local Government and Authorities for adopting correct policies aimed to a low environmental impact energy planning, through a “sharing” process of scientific knowledge gained during the project. A pilot project should be implemented to test technological innovation for energy efficiency and renewable sources. This phase is extremely important for its repeatability and visibility, and could mobilize resources for further upgrade and replication in wider areas. Latest information about SERA project: Khumbu Valley was selected as reference context and a thorough analysis was conducted to identify its specific features; at the same time, a survey on efficiency solutions has been started, concerning building sector, renewable energies and distributed generation. To support the experimental development stage and the creation of a pilot repeatable project, an on-site investigation was organized in Chaurikharka village (Sagarmatha zone, Solukhumbu district, 27° 41’ 48” N, 86° 43’ 17” E, 2,660 m a.s.l.) from November 17 to December 3, 2013. The village and its inhabitants have been the focus of a cross assessment, aimed to: - Detect the presence of markers of early atherosclerosis with ultrasound and estimate the value of systolic pulmonary pressure (Institute of Clinical Physiology, National Research Council of Italy, Pisa, Italy). - Analyse respiratory function and health, by means of spirometry and a validated questionnaire; measure the indoor carbon monoxide (Biomedical Sport Studies Center, University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy). - Continuous indoor measurements of Black Carbon and ambient aerosol number size distribution (Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, National Research Council of Italy, Bologna, Italy). - Energy and structural audit, in order to get the housing main features of the village (construction types, lifestyle and customs are useful to design technological eco-sustainable solutions as well as integrated within the local context). This phase was directly on charge of Perugia University.

A new analytical inversion method has been developed to determine the regional and global emissions of long-lived atmospheric trace gases. It exploits in situ measurement data from three global networks and builds on backward simulations with a Lagrangian particle dispersion model. The emission information is extracted from the observed concentration increases over a baseline that is itself objectively determined by the inversion algorithm. The method was applied to two hydrofluorocarbons (HFC-134a, HFC-152a) and a hydrochlorofluorocarbon (HCFC-22) for the period January 2005 until March 2007. Detailed sensitivity studies with synthetic as well as with real measurement data were done to quantify the influence on the results of the a priori emissions and their uncertainties as well as of the observation and model errors. It was found that the global a posteriori emissions of HFC-134a, HFC-152a and HCFC-22 all increased from 2005 to 2006. Large increases (21%, 16%, 18%, respectively) from 2005 to 2006 were found for China, whereas the emission changes in North America (?9%, 23%, 17%, respectively) and Europe (11%, 11%, ?4%, respectively) were mostly smaller and less systematic. For Europe, the a posteriori emissions of HFC-134a and HFC-152a were slightly higher than the a priori emissions reported to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). For HCFC-22, the a posteriori emissions for Europe were substantially (by almost a factor 2) higher than the a priori emissions used, which were based on HCFC consumption data reported to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Combined with the reported strongly decreasing HCFC consumption in Europe, this suggests a substantial time lag between the reported time of the HCFC-22 consumption and the actual time of the HCFC-22 emission. Conversely, in China where HCFC consumption is increasing rapidly according to the UNEP data, the a posteriori emissions are only about 40% of the a priori emissions. This reveals a substantial storage of HCFC-22 and potential for future emissions in China. Deficiencies in the geographical distribution of stations measuring halocarbons in relation to estimating regional emissions are also discussed in the paper. Applications of the inversion algorithm to other greenhouse gases such as methane, nitrous oxide or carbon dioxide are foreseen for the future.

This Work Package of the SHARE Stelvio Project, managed by ISE-CNR research group is focus on fresh water resources (i.e.: rivers and lakes) to describe their chemical, physical and biological features and to look for relations with recent atmosphere, climate and cryosphere variability.

As regards permafrost, at the Stelvio-Livrio site (3000 m) since 1998 is active a borehole, performed in the framework of the international project PACE (Guglielmin, 2004; Harris et al., 2003) and equipped with thermistors and data loggers from the surface up to 100.3 m of depth. Thermal data indicate a possible permafrost base (cryopeg) located at about 200 m of depth or more, a very deep value for the Alps which suggests to focus here further investigations. Moreover in the Park are also present several rock glaciers, among the most interesting periglacial landforms (Smiraglia, 1985; 1987; Guglielmin, 1997) which whenever active are characterized by an ice core driving their dynamics and preserving important information on past environmental and climate history (Guglielmin et al., 2004; Stenni et al., 2007).

The Himalayan-Karakoram range - for its elevation and geographic location, represents one of the ideal places for studying long-range pollutant transport systems on a regional scale and for monitoring changes index by mechanisms that act on global scale through monsoon circulation. This book offers a comprehension of the environmental phenomena

The most remote regions of globe represent some of the least disturbed ecosystems, yet they are threatened by air pollution and by climatic change. The Himalaya is one of the most isolated regions in the world and least explored wildernesses outside the Polar Regions; and it is for this reason that the Tibetan Plateau is often referred to as the ‘Third Pole’. Limnological survey (including chemistry, biology and sediment core studies) of lakes located between ca. 4500 and 5500 m a.s.l. has been performed from 1992 in the Kumbhu Valley, Nepal. Lake water chemical surveys reveal a constant increase of the ionic content of the lake water probably related to glacier retreat. Modern phytoplankton data compared with previous data point to an increasing trend in lake productivity. Zooplankton, benthos and thechamoebians provide useful biogeographical information. Paleolimnological reconstructions show the potential use of these sites in providing proxy data of past climatic changes in high altitude regions. Data collected of persistent organic pollutants show that the studied sites receive input related to long-range transport pollution. The aims and rationale for the future development of the Ev-K2-CNR Limnological Information System is discussed.

A Cimel sunphotometer operating in the framework of the AERONET project has been installed at the Himalayan Ev-K2-CNR Pyramid (5079 m a.s.l.) in the year 2006, as site Ev-K2-CNR. The observational activity will provide a characterization of the optical and microphysical properties of atmospheric aerosols, in particular of the atmospheric brown cloud (ABC) in the Himalayan region. This paper will describe the Cimel sunphotometer measurement technique, will introduce to the AERONET programme and will evaluate the contribution of the proposed Ev-K2-CNR AERONET site to the study of the ABC.

This work describes the preliminary results of a study aimed at: (1) assessing the ability of a general circulation model routinely run at the Epson Meteo Centre (CEM) in predicting daily rainfall; (2) evaluating the performance of satellite-derived precipitation estimates (namely, NOAA CPC CMORPH) over the same domain and during the same period. The CPC daily rain gauge analysis is used as reference for validation. The study focused on the Indian Monsoon during summer 2004, and comparison with a similar analysis at the mid-latitudes is also shown.