Abstract
Abstract. Project Surya has documented indoor and outdoor concentrations of black carbon (BC) from traditional biomass burning cook stoves in a rural village located in the Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP) region of N. India from November 2009–September 2010. In this paper, we systematically document the link between local scale aerosol properties and column averaged regional aerosol optical properties and atmospheric radiative forcing. We document observations from the first phase of Project Surya and estimate the source dependent (biomass and fossil fuels) aerosol optical properties from local to regional scale. Data were collected using surface based observations of BC, organic carbon (OC), aerosol light absorption, scattering coefficient at the Surya village (SVI_1) located in IGP region and integrated with satellite and AERONET observations at the regional scale (IGP). The daily mean BC concentrations at SVI_1 showed a large increase of BC during the dry season (December to February) with values reaching 35 μg m−3. Space based LIDAR data revealed how the biomass smoke was trapped within the first kilometer during the dry season and extended to above 5 km during the pre-monsoon season. As a result, during the dry season, the variance in the daily mean single scattering albedo (SSA), the ratio of scattering to extinction coefficient, and column aerosol optical properties at the local IGP site correlated (with slopes in the range of 0.85 to 1.06 and R2>0.4) well with the "IGP_AERONET" (mean of six AERONET sites). The statistically significant correlation suggested that in-situ observations can be used to derive spatial mean forcing, at least for the dry season. The atmospheric forcing due to BC and OC exceeded 20 Wm−2 during all months from November to May, supporting the deduction that elimination of cook stove smoke emissions through clean cooking technologies will likely have a major positive impact not only on human health but also on regional climate.
Highlights
Half of the world’s population relies on solid fuels for daily household energy needs
Black carbon (BC) concentrations were found to be higher during the winter season (December to February) compared to the pre-monsoon season (March to May)
The highest monthly mean BC concentration at VC was observed in December (22.5 ± 5.2 μg m−3), and after a gradual decrease to a lower value in March (8.7 ± 2.4 μg m−3) the concentrations were found to increase again to 16 ± 3.9 μg m−3 in April
Summary
Half of the world’s population relies on solid fuels (wood, animal dung, crop residues and coal) for daily household energy needs Cooking with these fuels results in the emission of a significant amount of smoke (comprised mainly of black carbon and the condensed fraction of semivolatile organics) due to incomplete combustion. For the most part, cooking is done in the kitchen microenvironment with poor ventilation, which leads to an extensive build-up of smoke; this in turn results in exposure to high levels of particulate matter which causes adverse health effects (Sauvain et al, 2006; Smith et al, 2004; Schwarze et al, 2006) This indoor smoke escapes outdoors and leads to atmospheric brown clouds (ABCs) (Ramanathan et al, 2001a). Because of its positive atmospheric radiative forcing (i.e. warming) and relatively short residence time in the atmosphere (few days to weeks) compared to CO2 (lifetime of decades to centuries), reducing BC emissions
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
