Aerosol spectral optical depths over the Bay of Bengal, Arabian sea and Indian ocean

Comprehensive investigations during the last decade have clearly established that aerosols have a significant impact on the climate. No serious attempts were made to characterize the aerosols over the Bay of Bengal, despite its role in the regional climate system. This paper reports the results of the measurements of aerosol spectral optical depths made over the Bay of Bengal and compares them with those made over the equatorial Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea, on-board the oceanographic research vessel, Sagar Kanya during its cruise #161-B in March 2001. The aerosol optical depth was found to decrease with distance from the coast with an exponential scale distance of ~1000 km for visible wavelengths and ~1600 km for near infra-red wavelengths. A significant dominance of small particle concentration near the coast is observed both over the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. The mean aerosol optical depth was higher over the Bay of Bengal compared to the Arabian Sea, at the shorter wavelengths. Over the equatorial Indian Ocean regions, aerosol optical depths were much lower compared to the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal and showed lesser wavelength dependence. The relative dominance of small particles is more over the Bay of Bengal compared to the Arabian Sea. Back-trajectory analysis shows that during the cruise period, the Arabian Sea was mainly influenced by air masses from the countries lying northwest of India, the Bay of Bengal by air masses from the east coast of India and the equatorial Indian Ocean mostly by the west coast and central India. The observed features are compared with long-term climatology of aerosol optical depth observations from the east and west coast of India and an island station in the Arabian Sea

Detection of marine aerosols with IRS P4-ocean colour monitor

The atmospheric correction bands 7 and 8 (765nm and 865nm respectively) of the Indian Remote Sensing Satellite IRS P4-0CM (Ocean Colour Monitor) can be used for deriving aerosol optical depth (AOD) over the oceans. A retrieval algorithm has been developed which computes the AOD using band 7 data by treating the ocean surface as a dark background after removing the Rayleigh path radiance in the sensor-detected radiances. This algorithm has been used to detect marine aerosol distributions at different coastal and offshore locations around India. A comparison between OCM derived AOD and the NOAA operational AOD shows a correlation ~0.92 while that between OCM derived AOD and the ground-based sun photometer measurements near the coast of Trivandrum shows a correlation of ~0.90

Aerosol characteristics at a remote island: minicoy in southern Arabian sea

Extensive measurements of aerosol optical and microphysical properties made at a remote island, Minicoy in southern Arabian Sea for the period (February 2006-March 2007) are used to characterize their temporal variability and Black Carbon (BC) mass mixing ratio. Large decrease in aerosol BC (from ~800 ng m-3 to ~100 ng m-3) was observed associated with change in airmass characteristics and monsoon rains. The total aerosol mass varied between ~80 and 20 μg m-3. Though the total mass fell drastically, a slight increase in super micron mass was observed during the June-August period associated with high winds. The mass fraction of Black Carbon aerosols during the prevalence of continental airmass is found to be ~1.2% of the composite aerosols, which is much lower than the values reported earlier for this region

Possible impact of a major oil-well fire on aerosol optical depth at Dibrugarh

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Estimation of the effect of long-range transport on seasonal variation of aerosols over northeastern India

Spectral aerosol optical depth (AOD) at ten discrete channels in the visible and near IR regions were estimated over Dibrugarh, located in the northeastern part of India, using a ground-based multi-wavelength solar radiometer (MWR) from October 2001 to February 2006. The observations reveal seasonal variations with low values of AODs in retreating monsoon and high values in the pre-monsoon season. Generally the AODs are high at shorter wavelengths and low at longer wavelengths. AOD spectra are relatively steep in winter compared to that in the monsoon period. The average value of AOD lies between 0.44±0.07 and 0.56±0.07 at 500 nm during the pre-monsoon season and between 0.19±0.02 and 0.22±0.02 during re-treating monsoon at the same wavelength. Comparison of MWR observation on Dibrugarh with satellite (MODIS) observation indicates a good correspondence between ground-based and satellite derived AODs. The synoptic wind pattern obtained from National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF), India and back trajectory analysis using the NOAA Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT4) Model indicates that maximum contribution to aerosol extinction could be due to transport of pollutants from the industrialized and urban regions of India and large amounts of desert and mineral aerosols from the west Asian and Indian desert. Equal contributions from Bay-of- Bengal (BoB), in addition to that from the Indian landmass and west Asian desert leads to a further increase of AOD over the region of interest in the pre-monsoon seasons

Aerosol spectral optical depths over the Bay of Bengal: role of transport

Recent experiments have shown the potential role of air masses in transporting aerosols to locations far away from source regions. Despite the importance of the Bay of Bengal to Indian climate and monsoon, no serious aerosol observations are available for this region. Extensive aerosol optical depth estimates, made for the first time from an island location, Port Blair (11.63°N; 92.71°E) in the Bay of Bengal, during the Indian winter of 2002, are used to examine the impact of air trajectories in modifying the optical depths and their spectral dependences. The results are examined for their distinctiveness with respect to the origin as well as transport. It is seen that the trajectories arriving from the regions east of the station (South China, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Burma) are richer in aerosol abundance, more in the sub micron size range, than those arriving from the west, across the Indian landmass

The role of low-frequency intraseasonal oscillations in the anomalous Indian summer monsoon rainfall of 2002

We analyze the dynamical features and responsible factors of the low-frequency intraseasonal time scales which influenced the nature of onset, intensity and duration of active/break phases and withdrawal of the monsoon during the anomalous Indian summer monsoon of 2002 - the most severe drought recorded in recent times. During that season, persistent warm sea surface temperature anomalies over the equatorial Indian Ocean played a significant role in modulating the strength of the monsoon Hadley circulation. This in turn affected the onset and intense break spells especially the long break during the peak monsoon month of July. Strong low-frequency intraseasonal modulations with significant impact on the onset and active/break phases occurred in 2002 which were manifested as a good association between low-frequency intraseasonal oscillations and the onset and active/break spells. Further, SST anomalies over the equatorial Indo-Pacific region on low-frequency intraseasonal time scales were found to affect the equatorial eastward and thereby off-equatorial northward propagations of enhanced convection over the Indian region. These propagations in turn modulated the active/break cycle deciding the consequent severity of the 2002 drought

Aerosol optical depth studies during INDOEX: comparison of the spectral features over coastal India with the pristine southern hemispheric environment over Mauritius

Aerosol spectral optical depths, estimated using a ground-based network of multi wavelength radiometers (MWR) along the west coast of India [Trivandrum (TVM; 8.5°N, 77°E), and Minicoy (MCY; 8.3°N, 73.04°E)] and the pristine southern hemispheric environment at Mauritius (MRU; 20.26°S, 57.54°E) during the period January to June 1998 along with those obtained over the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean during the INDOEX FFP-98 cruise (SK133) of ORV Sagar Kanya, are used to study the inter-hemispheric features of aerosols. Results indicate that there is a significant hemispherical difference for aerosol spectral optical depth (AOD) at shorter wavelengths (λ≤ 650 nm), while at the longer wavelengths (λ > 650 nm), AOD does not show any appreciable variation with location. The spectral variation of AOD at TVM and MCY (for March 1998) depicted a similar pattern with the AOD values between 0.5 and 0.6 at shorter wavelengths and between 0.2 and 0.4 at longer wavelengths. In contrast to this, the AOD at MRU are very low, lying in the range 0.1 to 0.2 in the shorter wavelengths, whereas at the longer wavelengths the AOD values are more or less comparable (in the range 0.2 to 0.4) with the northern hemispheric stations. The cruise data clearly showed that the transition occurs generally across the ITCZ. The increased AOD at shorter wavelengths in the northern hemisphere indicates higher concentration of sub-micron aerosols in these environments arising mainly due to anthropogenic activities, while the AOD at the longer wavelengths is attributed mainly to be of marine origin. In the post-cruise period, the spectral optical depths showed a gradual increase from March to June at MRU, while at TVM, the pattern followed more or less the climatological mean. By May the AOD at shorter wavelengths decreased at TVM (due to increased rainfall) and by June, the AOD at TVM are very much comparable with those seen at MRU, indicating a dominating marine aerosol influence at both these locations. The implications are discussed

Aircraft measurements of aerosol black carbon from a coastal location in the North-East part of peninsular India during ICARB

During the Integrated Campaign for Aerosols, gases and Radiation Budget (ICARB) over India, high-resolution airborne measurements of the altitude profiles of the mass concentrations (MB) of aerosol black carbon (BC) were made off Bhubaneswar (BBR, 85.82°E, 20.25°N), over northwest Bay of Bengal, in the altitude region upto 3 km. Such high-resolution measurements of altitude profiles of aerosols are done for the first time over India. The profiles showed a near-steady vertical distribution of MB modulated with two small peaks, one at 800m and the other at ~2000m. High resolution GPS (Global Positioning System) sonde (Vaisala) measurements around the same region onboard the research vessel Sagar Kanya (around the same time of the aircraft sortie) revealed two convectively well mixed layers, one from ground to ~700m with an inversion at the top and the other extends from 1200m to ~2000m with a second inversion at ~2200m and a convectively stable region in the altitude range 700-1200m. The observed peaks in the MB profile are found to be associated with these temperature inversions. In addition, long-range transport from the Indo- Gangetic Plain (IGP) and deserts lying further to the west also influence the vertical profile of BC. Latitudinal variation of MB showed a remarkable land ocean contrast at the 500m altitude (within the well mixed region) with remarkably lower values over oceans, suggesting the impact of strong sources over the mainland. However, above the ABL (at 1500m), the latitudinal variations were quite weak, and this appears to be resulting from the impact of long-range transport. Comparison of the altitude profiles of MB over BoB off BBR with those obtained during the earlier occasion over the inland stations of Hyderabad and Kanpur showed similarities above ~500m, with MB remaining around a steady value of ~1 μg m-3. However, large differences are seen within the ABL. Even though the observed MB values are not unusually high, their near constancy in the vertical column will have important implications to radiative forcing