Aerosol black carbon radiative forcing at an industrial city in northern India

Tripathi, SN and Dey, Sagnik and Tare, V and Satheesh, SK (2005) Aerosol black carbon radiative forcing at an industrial city in northern India. In: Geophysical Research Letters, 32 (8).

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Abstract

During a comprehensive aerosol field campaign as part of ISRO-GBP,extensive measurements of aerosol black carbon were made during December 2004, for the first time, at Kanpur, an urban continent allocation in northern India. BC diurnal variation is associated with changes in boundary layer mixing and anthropogenic activities. BC concentration in Kanpur is comparable to those measured in other megacities of India but much higher than in similar locations of Europe,USA and Asia. High BC concentration is found both in absolute terms $(6-20 \mu g m^{-3} )$ and mass fraction (similar to 10%) yielding very low single scattering albedo (0.76). The estimated surface forcing is as high as $-62 +/- 23 W m^{-2}$ and top of the atmosphere (TOA) forcing is $+9 +/- 3 W m^{-2}$, which means the atmospheric absorption is $+71 Wm^{-2}$. The short wave atmospheric absorption translates to a lower atmospheric heating of similar to 1.8 degrees K/day. Large surface cooling and lower atmospheric heating may have impacts to regional climate.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	Geophysical Research Letters
Publisher:	American Geophysical Union
Additional Information:	Copyright for this article belongs to American Geophysical Union.
Department/Centre:	Division of Mechanical Sciences > Centre for Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences
Date Deposited:	17 May 2005
Last Modified:	20 Jan 2012 09:51
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/3183

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