Fog is formed frequently in mountain areas and is apt to cause forest decline, because fog has highly concentrated air pollutants and is readily acidified. The elucidation of the fog characteristics in the areas has been limited because successive observation is difficult in mountains. We have observed wet depositions and meteorological conditions at Mt. Oyama, located about 56 km west–southwest of Tokyo. The mountain meteorology was observed with various devices and the fog frequencies dependent on the altitude were roughly estimated from the meteorology of the base of the mountain. The precipitation amount of the throughfall at the mountain is much larger than that of rainfall, and the large deposition on the canopy is caused by not only fog but also drizzle. Fog and drizzle sample was collected by string-type passive fog collector, PFC, and the meteorological data relating to the collecting rate of PFC sample were observed. PFC samples were affected by rainwater under windy condition and the contribution of the rain to the PFC sample volume was evaluated to be about 30% in average. The sampling rate of PFC was related to the precipitation intensity of throughfall, and it became possible to estimate the air pollutants deposition on the canopy via wet deposition by the analysis of the samples of PFC as well as rain. The fog and drizzle may cause several times larger deposition of air pollutants on the canopies than the deposition via rain at high mountain forest.

A dramatic increase in winter (December–February) temperature by 7.2 K (1.1 K per decade) since 1950 has occurred in the Ulan Bator basin, Mongolia. This increase in temperature strongly exceeds the global average of late twentieth century warming and even exceeds warming in most of the polar regions with pronounced increases in temperature. The exceptional warming is restricted to Ulan Bator within the Mongolian forest-steppe region and to wintertime. This suggests that the observed warming could result from radiative forcing by black carbon aerosols. In winter, Ulan Bator’s air is heavily polluted by particulate matter, including black carbon, originating from the combustion of low-quality fuel at low temperature. Winter smog has strongly increased in recent decades, concomitant to the increase in winter temperature, as the result of a strong increase in the city’s population. Exponential growth of Ulan Bator’s population started in the mid-twentieth century, but since 1990, altered socioeconomic frame conditions and a warming climate have driven more than 700,000 pastoralists from rural Mongolia to Ulan Bator where people live in provisional dwellings and cause Ulan Bator’s heavy air pollution. Tree-ring analysis from larch trees growing at the edge of the Ulan Bator basin shows negative correlation of stem increment with December temperature. This result suggests that milder winters promote herbivores and, thus, reduce the tree’s productivity. The negative impact of winter warming on the larch forests adds to adverse effects of summer drought and the impact of high sulfur dioxide emissions. Winter warming putatively associated with high atmospheric concentrations of black carbon aerosols in the Ulan Bator basin is an interesting example of a case where greenhouse gas-mediated climate warming in an area where people themselves hardly contribute to global greenhouse gas emissions affects both humans and ecosystems and causes additional local climate warming.