Abstract
The radiative effects of black carbon (BC) aerosols over New Delhi, the capital city of India, for the period August 2010–July 2011, have been investigated using Santa Barbara DISTORT Atmospheric Radiative Transfer (SBDART) model in the present paper. The monthly mean BC concentrations in Delhi, an urban location, vary in between 15.935 ± 2.06 μg m−3(December 2010)–2.44 ± 0.58 μg m−3(July 2011). The highest value for monthly mean BC forcing has been found to be in November 2010 (66.10 ± 6.86 Wm−2) and the lowest in July 2011 (23 ± 3.89 Wm−2). Being the host city for the XIX Commonwealth Games (CWG-2010), government of Delhi set up a plan to reduce emissions of air pollutants during Games, from 03 October to 14 October, 2010. But opposite to the expectations, the emission controls implemented were not sufficient to reduce the pollutants like black carbon (BC), and therefore relatively a high value of BC radiative forcing (44.36 ± 2.4) was observed during the month of October 2010.
Highlights
Atmospheric aerosols play a major role in the earth climate because of their potential to perturb the radiation balance of the earth at regional and global scales
black carbon (BC) mass fractions were used as input in the Optical Properties of Aerosols and Clouds (OPAC) model developed by Hess et al [22] to derive spectral aerosol optical parameters such as aerosol optical depth (AOD), single scattering albedo (SSA), and asymmetry parameter (ASP) at different relative humidity conditions over Delhi
BC aerosol mass concentrations measured for 24 hrs per day during each month are averaged and the monthly mean BC mass concentrations are obtained
Summary
Atmospheric aerosols play a major role in the earth climate because of their potential to perturb the radiation balance of the earth at regional and global scales. The government of Delhi executed an ambitious air quality monitoring program to International Journal of Photoenergy reduce the emissions of air pollutants and to monitor the different pollutant levels before and during the games period The aim of these restrictions was to improve the air quality through control measures, which has shown some success in the past during large international sporting events in polluted cities like Beijing [15, 16]. Under this initiative the “System for Air quality Forecasting And Research” (SAFAR) was an intensive experiment initiated by the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), government of India, for investigating the air quality in Delhi during the CWG period and evaluating the effectiveness of the air pollution control measures.
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