Regional CO pollution over the Indian-subcontinent and various transport pathways as observed by MOPITT

Abstract

We used day-side Measurement of Pollution in the Troposphere (MOPITT) carbon monoxide (CO) retrievals (2000–2007) to examine the regional CO emission and its transport pathways during the summer/winter monsoon, with a specific focus on the Indian-subcontinent. It is observed that MOPITT CO retrievals at 850 hPa level in general show large scale features of CO emission in India, as reflected in the bottom-up inventory. In particular, high CO mixing ratios over the eastern north-eastern part of India, along the Indo-Gangetic (IG) region, and low CO mixing ratios over central India are generally captured from the MOPITT data. A strong plume with enhanced CO mixing ratios at 350 hPa is observed during the summer monsoon, demonstrating large scale vertical transport of the boundary layer CO from the Indian region into the upper troposphere. During winter outflow CO from the Indian region is found to be transported over the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal and reaches up to Saudi Arabia and north-eastern Africa. It is observed that emissions from Southeast Asia and the eastern north-eastern Indian region have the greatest impact over the Bay of Bengal and the eastern Indian Ocean, while emissions from the rest of India dominate over the Arabian Sea and the western Indian Ocean.

Acknowledgements

The authors are thankful to the Director, IITM for his encouragement during the progress of the work. The MOPITT CO data were obtained from the NASA Langley Research Center, Atmospheric Science Data Center. One of the authors (Pavan S. Kulkarni) is financed through project ‘SPATRAM-MIGE Polar Project’, funded by the Portuguese Science Foundation – FCT.