CLASSIFICATION OF KEY TYPES AND PREDICTING TRANSPORT PATHWAY OF AEROSOLS OVER IGB FROM SATELLITE-DERIVED ATMOSPHERIC OPTICAL DATA

Environmental Engineering

ABSTRACT When about 900 million people in northern India experienced poor air quality as a result of intense fog, haze, and smog during the post-monsoon/winter period and dust storm activity during the summer, the scientific community paid particular attention to the high aerosol loading over the entire Indo-Gangetic Basin (IGB) region. The objective of the current study was to conduct the first long-term comparison analysis to quantify the aerosol features throughout the biomass burning (October–November) and dusty (April–June) periods employing Lahore, Delhi, and Kolkata satellite measurements over IGB from 2004 to 2018 at three separate places. Throughout the whole research period, Kanpur had the greatest aerosol optical depth (AOD) values for the biomass (0.74 0.35) and dusty period (0.63 0.34). Anthropogenic aerosol (AA) type emissions during the biomass burning era whereas clean condition (CC) aerosol type was dominating over Kolkata (69%), were determined to be prominent over Lahore (52%) and Delhi (56%) On the other hand, during the dusty period, Lahore (37%) and Delhi (30%) had the biggest contributions of desert dust (DD), whilst Kolkata (42%), had the highest concentrations of CC type aerosol. The potential source sectors and the pathways for the transmission of pollutants have been thoroughly established at all of the stations using the concentration weighted trajectory (CWT) studies with the backward air mass trajectories and the potential source contribution function (PSCF) analyses. The upper and middle IGB region, as well as local regions, were found to be the main sources of the large levels of aerosol above the stations, according to the results.

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