A005-0009
Reduction of air pollutants over North-West India observed from space during the Covid-19 lockdown period

Monday, 7 December 2020
Poster
Sachiko Hayashida1, Prakhar Misra2, Kaho Nitta3, Thuy Huong Nguyen1, Prabir Kumar Patra4, Masayuki Takigawa5, Pradeep Khatri6, S K Dhaka7, A P Dimri8, Kazuyo Yamaji9, Mizuo Kajino10, Wataru Takeuchi11 and Scientific Team of Mission DELHIS, Aakash Project, RIHN, (1)Nara Women's University, Nara, Japan, (2)Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Aakash Project, Kyoto, Japan, (3)Nara Women's University, Faculty of Science, Nara, Japan, (4)Center for Environmental Remote Sensing, Chiba University, Chiba, Japan, (5)JAMSTEC Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Yokohama, Japan, (6)Tohoku University, Graduate School of Science, Sendai, Japan, (7)Rajdhani College, University of Delhi, Delhi, India, (8)Jawaharlal Nehru University, School of Environmental Sciences, Delhi, India, (9)KOBE UNIVERSITY, Graduate School of Maritime Sciences, Kobe, Japan, (10)Meteor. Res. Inst., Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan, (11)University of Tokyo, Institute of Industrial Science, Bunkyo-ku, Japan
Abstract:
The Aakash Project commenced on April 1, 2020 at the Research Institute of Humanity and Nature (RIHN) in Kyoto, Japan. This study addresses air pollution caused by large-scale post-harvest burning of rice-straw in post-monsoon season in North-West India. Quantification of the effect of straw burning in Punjab on air quality in Delhi is the first target of the working group of atmospheric science (WG2) in the project, and now we are executing “Mission DELHIS (Detection of Emission Change of air pollutants: Human Impact Studies)” under WG2. This activity aims to quantify the reduction in anthropogenic pollutant emissions in Delhi due to the temporary suspension of emissions after the Covid-19 lockdown. Analysis of the contrast before and after the lockdown will make it possible to accurately quantify anthropogenic emissions, which may help separating the contributions of non-agricultural anthropogenic emissions and agricultural burning in the total pollutants emissions. The coronavirus pandemic has presented us with an unexpected opportunity to conduct a social experiment on a large scale. We found significant reduction in NO2 from TROPOMI (Misra et al., AGU2020), aerosols in the PBL from CALIPSO (Nguyen et al., AGU2020), and PM2.5 measured by a compact in-situ sensor (Dhaka et al., Scientific Report, accepted, 2020). In this presentation we will focus on detectability of emission reduction of NO2 and aerosols from space based on inter-comparison analysis of multiple satellite sensors, combined with ground-based measurements.

Acknowledgement: This research is financially supported by Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN: a constituent member of NIHU) Project No. 14200133 (Aakash).

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