Nagpur : Ghana hazeAssociated with winter haze and late autumn crop burning The situation has worsened in northern India over the last four decades, shows a latest scientific study.
Published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the study ‘Extreme smog challenge of India intensified by increasing lower tropospheric stability’ found that hazardous smog is affecting an area of over 600 million people in the country’s Gangetic plains, considered a hotspot goes. for air pollution,
The researchers studied the relationship between smog intensity and long-term changes in the lower atmosphere by combining two decades of multi-satellite observations, 40 years of meteorological observations and atmospheric modeling datasets from 1980 to 2019.
They found that aerosol particles such as soot, which can affect how much energy from the Sun reaches Earth’s surface, warmed the lower atmosphere while cooling the planet’s surface.
“The temperature in the lower troposphere should normally decrease with altitude, but here the opposite happened. This condition is responsible for phenomena known as ‘inversion’ events, when the Earth’s surface is cooler than the air above it. The increased number of inversion days, increased relative humidity and reduced boundary layer height have led to more intense smog in the region, the study said.
The authors found aerosol pollution building up not only in large, urban areas but across the region. “These aerosol-radiation-meteorological feedbacks, combined with emissions, are increasing long-term haze across the region,” said Ritesh Gautam, principal senior scientist at the international non-profit organization Environmental Defense Fund Inc. and lead author of the study.
Pointing to smog from rural areas and smaller cities, the findings suggest that monitoring and mitigation efforts may provide more measurable benefits if implemented across regions rather than just in major cities.
“These findings suggest that we may need more robust or different types of mitigation measures to control air pollution in the region. We need systematic air pollution in urban, semi-urban and rural areas along the Gangetic plains.” There is a need to reduce the level of pollution Punjab For West Bengal,” said Partha Bosu, who leads EDF’s air quality work in India.
To create awareness and develop sustainable solutions, Bosu suggested developing analytical metrics, such as a haze-severity index, that could describe the challenges in both rural and urban communities across different scenarios in the region.
Published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the study ‘Extreme smog challenge of India intensified by increasing lower tropospheric stability’ found that hazardous smog is affecting an area of over 600 million people in the country’s Gangetic plains, considered a hotspot goes. for air pollution,
The researchers studied the relationship between smog intensity and long-term changes in the lower atmosphere by combining two decades of multi-satellite observations, 40 years of meteorological observations and atmospheric modeling datasets from 1980 to 2019.
They found that aerosol particles such as soot, which can affect how much energy from the Sun reaches Earth’s surface, warmed the lower atmosphere while cooling the planet’s surface.
“The temperature in the lower troposphere should normally decrease with altitude, but here the opposite happened. This condition is responsible for phenomena known as ‘inversion’ events, when the Earth’s surface is cooler than the air above it. The increased number of inversion days, increased relative humidity and reduced boundary layer height have led to more intense smog in the region, the study said.
The authors found aerosol pollution building up not only in large, urban areas but across the region. “These aerosol-radiation-meteorological feedbacks, combined with emissions, are increasing long-term haze across the region,” said Ritesh Gautam, principal senior scientist at the international non-profit organization Environmental Defense Fund Inc. and lead author of the study.
Pointing to smog from rural areas and smaller cities, the findings suggest that monitoring and mitigation efforts may provide more measurable benefits if implemented across regions rather than just in major cities.
“These findings suggest that we may need more robust or different types of mitigation measures to control air pollution in the region. We need systematic air pollution in urban, semi-urban and rural areas along the Gangetic plains.” There is a need to reduce the level of pollution Punjab For West Bengal,” said Partha Bosu, who leads EDF’s air quality work in India.
To create awareness and develop sustainable solutions, Bosu suggested developing analytical metrics, such as a haze-severity index, that could describe the challenges in both rural and urban communities across different scenarios in the region.