Wintertime spatial characteristics of boundary layer aerosols over peninsular India

Abstract

During an intense field campaign for generating a spatial composite of aerosol characteristics over peninsular India, collocated measurements of the mass concentration and size distribution of near‐surface aerosols were made onboard instrumented vehicles along the road network during the dry, winter season (February–March) of 2004. The study regions covered coastal, industrial, urban, village, remote, semiarid, and vegetated forestlands. The results showed (1) comparatively high aerosol (mass) concentrations (exceeding 50 μg m −3 ), in general, along the coastal regions (east and west) and adjacent to urban locations, and (2) reduced mass concentration (<30 μg m −3 ) over the semiarid interior continental regions. Fine, accumulation‐mode particles (<1 μm) contribute more than 50% to the total aerosol mass concentration in the coastal regions, which is more conspicuous along the east coast than the west coast, while the interior regions showed abundance (>50% of the total) of coarse‐mode aerosols (>1 μm). The spatial composite of accumulation‐mode share to the total aerosol mass concentration agreed very well with the monthly mean spatial composite of aerosol fine‐mode fraction for February 2004, deduced from Moderate‐Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer data for the study region, while a point by point comparison yielded a linear association with a slope of 1.09 and correlation coefficient of 0.79 for 76 independent data pairs. Pockets of enhanced aerosol concentration were observed around the industrialized and urban centers along the coast as well as inland. Aerosol size distributions were parameterized using a power law. Spatial variation of the retrieved aerosol size index shows relatively high values (>4) along the coast compared to interior continental regions except at a few locations. Urban locations showed steeper size spectra than the remote locations.