Aerosol Studies over Central India

Earth’s radiation budget and thus climate change are significantly influenced by natural and anthropogenic aerosols. Variability of aerosols both in space and time poses challenges to quantify their effects on cloud microphysical properties, precipitation and hydrological cycle. Black carbon (BC) aerosol besides having effects on human health, possess light absorbing nature and thus contribute in atmospheric radiative properties and interaction with clouds. Aerosol properties have been studied over Nagpur (79.028°E, 21.125°N) located in central India, using multi instruments such as multi wavelength radiometer, aethalometer, sunphotometer, balloon based GPS radiosonde, etc., during the study period of 2008–2014. Seasonal variability of different parameters such as aerosol optical depth, columnar water vapor, black carbon mass concentrations, mixed layer height, etc. will be discussed. MODIS aerosol and water vapor products have also been validated against ground based sunphotometer measurements. To understand the source apportionment HYSPLIT model back trajectories have been used. The chapter discusses the interesting aspect of seasonal variability of aerosol properties including monsoonal effects over the data sparse region of central India