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Assessment of near-surface air pollutants at an urban station over the central Indo-Gangetic Basin: Role of pollution transport pathways

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Abstract

The assessment of near-surface air pollutants has been done at an urban site, Varanasi, in the central Indo-Gangetic Basin (IGB) during July 2014 to June 2018. The various pollutants, such as particulate matters of diameter less than 2.5 μm (PM2.5) and less than 10 μm (PM10), sulphur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and ozone (O3) were obtained from the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). The annual mean mass concentrations of PM10, PM2.5, SO2, NO2 and O3 were 239 ± 128, 123 ± 89, 17.5 ± 9.6, 52 ± 35 and 30 ± 14 μg m−3, respectively. The concentrations of PM10, PM2.5 and NO2 were found to be higher than their National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) by a factor of 4, 3.1 and 1.3, respectively; however, SO2 and O3 were always well within their standard limits. Seasonally, all the pollutants, except ozone were found to be the highest during the postmonsoon and winter seasons. The sources of pollutants have been widely characterized at this site and in general over the IGB. Further, an attempt has been made, for the first time, to elucidate the possible transport pathways of the measured pollutants, especially PM2.5 to downwind of the station using concentration weight trajectory (CWT) analyses with the forward air mass trajectories. The results show significant potential for transport of PM2.5 (~ 65%) from the IGB to downwind over the northern Bay of Bengal region, with more pronounced during the winter season (~ 95%). These results underline the importance of IGB pollution outflow towards downwind continental and marine regions, which can have significant climatic impacts.

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Acknowledgments

Authors are thankful to the CPCB, India for providing air quality data used in the present study. We acknowledge the NOAA Air resource Laboratory (ARL) for the provision of HYSPLIT model (https://www.ready.noaa.gov). Authors expresses their gracious thank to Director, IITM, Pune for his encouragement and support. AKS thanks to Vijay Kanawade (University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, India) for valuable discussions. The authors are grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions to improve the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Engineering and Technology, Lucknow, India

    Amarendra Singh, Sunil Kumar, Virendra Pathak & Arvind Kumar Shukla

  2. Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Ministry of Earth Sciences, New Delhi, India

    Amarendra Singh, Atul Kumar Srivastava & Sunil Kumar

  3. Centre for Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, India

    V. Varaprasad

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  1. Amarendra Singh
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Correspondence to Atul Kumar Srivastava.

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Communicated by Maja Telisman Prtenjak.

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Singh, A., Srivastava, A.K., Varaprasad, V. et al. Assessment of near-surface air pollutants at an urban station over the central Indo-Gangetic Basin: Role of pollution transport pathways. Meteorol Atmos Phys 133, 1127–1142 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00703-021-00798-x

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