Subject	Earth and Planetary Sciences
Specific subject areas	Atmospheric chemistry; Geochemistry; Air pollution modelling.
Data format	Raw, processed and analyzed.
Type of data	Image: GeoTIFF, NetCDF, TIF Vector: SHP Text: TXT
Data collection	The MERRA-2 data with a spatial resolution of 0.625° × 0.5° were used. The data is available at https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/. The HYSPLIT model, available at https://www.arl.noaa.gov/hysplit/, was used to generate the local, regional and global aerosol sources on the three selected glaciers in the study area. ASTER DEM, available at https://search.earthdata.nasa.gov/search/, with a spatial resolution of 30 m was used for ascertaining the mean elevation of five mountain ranges. Total population was derived from the 1-km Gridded Population of the World (Version 4) dataset accessible from https://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/data/collection/gpw-v4.
Data source location	Name of the study area: Western Himalaya Mountain ranges: Pir Panjal range of Kashmir (PP), Greater Himalayan range of Kashmir (GH), Trans-Himalayan Zanskar range (ZA), Trans-Himalayan Ladakh range (LA), and Karakoram range (KA). Glaciers: Kolahoi, Machoi and Nehnar Affiliation: University of Kashmir, Hazratbal Srinagar Jammu and Kashmir, India Country: India Latitude: 32°17′ N and 37°6′ N Longitude:73°26′ E and 80°30′ E
Data accessibility	Repository name: Zenodo Data identification number: 10.5281/zenodo.10444504 Direct URL to data: https://zenodo.org/records/10444504
Related research article	I. Rashid, I. A. Bhat, N.A. Najar, S. Kang, F. Z. Jan, S. A. Dar, S. U. Bhat, S. D. R. Kashani, W. Rasool, Aerosol variability and glacial chemistry over the western Himalayas, Environ. Chem. 19 (2022) 312-327 https://doi.org/10.1071/EN22022