A005-0013
Detection of Change in the Aerosol distribution over North-West India during the Covid-19 Lockdown period

Monday, 7 December 2020
Poster
Thuy Huong Nguyen1, Sachiko Hayashida1,2, Prakhar Misra2, Pradeep Khatri3, Yutaka Matsumi4, Tomoki Nakayama4,5, S K Dhaka6, A P Dimri7 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)Tohoku University, Graduate School of Science, Sendai, Japan, (4)Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan, (5)Nagasaki University, Nagasaki, Japan, (6)Rajdhani College, University of Delhi, Delhi, India, (7)Jawaharlal Nehru University, School of Environmental Sciences, Delhi, India
Abstract:
In India the entire country was locked down to avoid Covid-19 outbreak on 23 March and the first phase had continued until 14 April. During this total lockdown, suspension of the most of air-pollutants emissions led to unexpected improvement of air quality in many cities in India. In this study, we focus on the aerosol change over North-West India, in particular near Delhi-NCR. We detected the aerosol change by analyzing PM2.5/PM10 ground-based measurements, AOD from MODIS, and aerosol profiles from CALIPSO. Over some areas in North-West India, clear reduction of PMs and AOD was detected during the lockdown period. From CALIPSO, we found that aerosol decreased in the PBL over the state of Haryana, west of Delhi-NCR. On the other hand, some CALIPSO data indicated that aerosol near the east of Delhi-NCR was enhanced rather than reduced. The reason of the temporal and spatially irregular change in the aerosol amounts may be attributed to various sources of aerosols such as the power plants and factories, or indoor cooking etc. As the lifetime of aerosols is relatively long compared to reactive chemical species (e.g. NO2), transport processes and meteorological conditions should be also taken into account. In this presentation, we will discuss the spatiotemporal variations in aerosol amount around Delhi-NCR before and after the Covid-19 lockdown.

Acknowledgement: This research is financially supported by Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN: a constituent member of NIHU) Project No. 14200133 (Aakash). Mission DELHIS is under the WG2 of Aakash project.

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