Aerosol Studies and New Initiatives in Developing a
Regional Transport Model

C. Sharma*, A.K. Sarkar*, Prabhat K. Gupta*, Kavita Rai*, R.K. Parmar*, Z. Chowdhury?, Moti L. Mittal? and A.P. Mitra*

*National Physical Laboratory, Dr K.S. Krishnan Road, New Delhi-110 012 India

?Georgia Institute of Technology, 221 Bobby Dodd Way, Atlanta GA 30332-0340, USA

#Ohio Super Computer Centre, Columbus, OH 43212-1163, USA

Abstract:

In Delhi, the aerosol studies have been carried out by the National Physical Laboratory since last many years, which include both studies of precipitation as well as total suspended particulate matter. Aerosol samples have also been collected at different location like Hanle in Laddakh, Sunderbans and Darjeeling in West Bengal and Port Blair in Andaman and Nicobar Islands during various field campaigns over last two years. In view of greater interests in the studies of finer particles, the National Physical Laboratory at New Delhi coordinated a joint program in which four PM2.5 samplers of Georgia Tech University, USA were installed at Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chandigarh and sampling was carried out during different seasons of the year 2001. Some of the preliminary results of compositional analysis of collected samples show interesting features.   

Recently, another initiatives towards the development of a regional transport model has been taken in collaboration with the Ohio Super Computer Centre, USA to obtain gridded concentrations of precursor and trace gases over India. In this activity, effort is being made to integrate the output of the MM5 software with that of HANK software (a chemical transport model designed to simulate tropospheric chemistry). The preliminary outputs of this effort show promising results.