Tirthankar Banerjee

Banaras Hindu University | BHU · Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development

Attenuated backscatter profiles retrieved by the space borne active lidar CALIOP on-board CALIPSO satellite were used to measure the vertical distribution of smoke aerosols and to compare it against the ECMWF planetary boundary layer height (PBLH) over the smoke dominated region of Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP), South Asia. Initially, the relative abun...

Very high spatially resolved satellite-derived ground-level PM2.5 concentrations have multiple potential applications especially in air quality modelling, epidemiological and climatological research. Satellite-derived aerosol optical depth (AOD), and columnar water vapor (CWV), meteorological parameters, and land use data were used as variables wit...

Size-segregated airborne fine (PM2.1) and coarse (PM>2.1) particulates were measured in an urban environment over central Indo-Gangetic plain in between 2015 and 2018 to get insights into its nature, chemistry and sources. Mean (±1σ) concentration of PM2.1 was 98(±76)µgm-3 with a seasonal high during winter (DJF, 162±71µgm-3) compared to pre-monsoo...

Aerosol climatology during typical haze dominating period over South and Southeast Asia was explored using several Earth‐Observing A‐Train satellite products retrieved in between 2010 and 2020. Comparatively high aerosol optical depth (AOD) with dominance of fine and UV‐absorbing aerosols are noted across the Indo‐Gangetic plain, South Asia (IGP; A...

Three-dimensional (temporal-spatial-vertical) climatology of South Asian summertime (MAMJ, 2010–2019) aerosols and aerosol sub-types was explored using multiple high-resolution satellite-based observations and reanalysis dataset. Vertical stratification of aerosol layer and aerosol sub-types was identified using observation from space-borne lidar....

Particulate-bound metals are reported to be toxic upon exposure through multiple pathways. In this study, both non-carcinogenic and carcinogenic health risks of diverse population age groups from the exposure of particulate-bound metals were systematically investigated considering size-segregated (PM1.1; PM2.1; PM>2.1) metal concentration measured...

Abundance of fine particulate-bound 16 priority polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) was investigated to ascertain its sources and potential carcinogenic health risks in Varanasi, India. The city represents a typical urban settlement of South Asia having particulate exposure manyfold higher than standard with reports of pollution induced mortali...

Spatio-temporal nature in aerosol optical and microphysical properties over four major cities across the Indo-Gangetic Plain, South Asia namely Karachi, Delhi, Varanasi and Dhaka, was explored fusing multi-satellite aerosols products. Emphases were made to assess any distinctions in aerosol loading and aerosol sub-types over the cities and its surr...

Spatio-temporal variations in aerosol loading over central to lower Gangetic plain, South Asia was explored with emphasis on how regional meteorology influences building up high aerosol loading over the region. Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on-board Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (S-NPP) DB AOD at 550 nm and ERA5 rean...

Retrieval accuracy and stability of two operational aerosol retrieval algorithms, Deep Blue (DB) and Dark Target (DT), applied on Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on-board Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (S-NPP) satellite were evaluated over South Asia. Performance of both algorithms were initially evaluated by comparing...

Fine airborne particles (diameter <2.5 μm; PM2.5) are recognized as a major threat to human health due to their physicochemical properties: composition, size, shape, etc. However, normally only size-fraction-specific particle concentrations are monitored. Interestingly, although the aerosol type is reported as part of the aerosol optical depth retr...

This study examines vertically resolved aerosol optical properties retrieved from Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) onboard CALIPSO satellite over several cities across South Asia from March 2010 to February 2021. Atmospheric layer-specific stratification of aerosols and dominant aerosol sub-types was recognized over each ci...

This study examines uncertainties in the retrieval of the Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) for different aerosol types, which are obtained from different satellite-borne aerosol retrieval products over North Africa, California, Germany, and India and Pakistan in the years 2007–2019. In particular, we compared the aerosol types reported as part of the AO...

Vertical distribution of aerosols during high-pollution days during pre-monsoon months (March to June) across Indian geographical region was explored using Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) on-board Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) satellite. The CALIOP, an elastic polarization lida...

Microplastics (MPs) are ubiquitous in our environment. Its presence in air, water, and soil makes it a serious threat to living organisms and has become a critical challenge across ecosystems. Present study aimed to assess the abundance of MPs in aerosols and street dust in Varanasi, a typical urban city in Northern India. Airborne particulates and...

This study aims to evaluate the variation of PM2.5 components as well as to identify PM2.5 sources under non-hazy weather conditions in a tropical urban city, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia. The non-hazy weather conditions were characterized by copious rainfall throughout the year and ephemeral dry periods, with no significant haze events. The PM2.5 conce...

This work examines the impact of different environmental attributes on the uncertainty in satellite-based Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) retrieval against the benchmark Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) AOD measurements at 21 sites across North Africa, California and Germany, in the years 2007-2017. As a first step, we studied the effects of spatial a...

The effects of climate on infectious-diseases could influence the health impacts, particularly in children in countries with unfair socioeconomic condition. In a prospective cohort of 461 children under 16-years-of-age in Varanasi-city, India, the association of maximum-temperature (Tmax), relative-humidity (RH), absolute-humidity (AH), rainfall (R...

The present study summarizes two decades (2000-2019) of climatology and trends in aerosol loading and optical properties using a high spatial resolution data obtained from NASA's MODIS MAIAC and MISR aerosol products supplemented by moderate resolution aerosol data from OMI sensor over South Asia (SA). MISR AOD showed good agreement against AERONET...

The short term effect of multiple air pollutants e.g. aerosols (black carbon, BC; PM2.5 and PM10) and trace gases (NO2, SO2, and O3) on all-cause mortality was systematically investigated in a typical urban pollution hotspot over central Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP). To our knowledge, this would be the first report of mortality estimates for exposure...

Exposure to fine particulate bound toxic metals in ambient air poses adverse effects to human. This study aims to determine the spatial variability in heavy metals in PM2.5 samples, for identifying their potential sources and to perform the health risk modelling. PM2.5 samples were collected using high volume sampler (HVS) on 24 h basis from three...

Sources of airborne particulates (PM10) were investigated in two contrasting sites over central Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP), one representing a rural background (Mirzapur) and another as an urban pollution hotspot (Varanasi). Very high PM10 concentration was noted both in Varanasi (178 ± 105 μgm⁻³; N:435) and Mirzapur (131 ± 56 μgm⁻³; N:169) with 72%...

Aerosol remote sensing has become a powerful tool to characterize the optical and microphysical properties of aerosols. Several satellite sensors such as MODIS, MISR, OMI, Tropomi and PARASOL utilize the solar electromagnetic radiation for retrieving aerosol properties from space. These instruments have high spatial coverage and can provide aerosol...

Size-resolved water-soluble ionic species (Cl-, NO3-, SO42-, NH4+, Na+, K+, Mg2+ & Ca2+) were measured in size-segregated aerosols (dae <0.43, 0.65, 1.1, 2.1, 3.3, 4.7, 5.8 & >9 µm) collected during October 2018 – May 2019. Sampling was performed for 3 major seasons of India, post monsoon (ON), winter (DJF) and summer (MAM) at an urban aerosol hots...

Potential impact of change in climate on Indian agriculture may be significantly adverse, if not disastrous. There are projections of potential loss in wheat yield due to the rise in daily minimum (Tmin) and maximum (Tmax) temperature, but only few researchers have considered the extent of such loss on a spatial scale. We therefore, systematically...

Evolution of submicron particles in terms of particle number concentration and mobility-equivalent diameter were measured during Diwali festival specific intensive pyrotechnic displays in Varanasi over central Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP). A scanning mobility particle sizer coupled with an optical particle sizer was used to fit in an overlapping size...

Climate extremes are often associated with increased human mortality and such association varies considerably with space and time. We therefore, aimed to systematically investigate the effects of temperature extremes, daily means and diurnal temperature variations (DTV) on mortality in the city of Varanasi, India during 2009-2016. Time series data...

The Multiangle Implementation of Atmospheric Correction (MAIAC) is a new generic algorithm applied to collection 6 (C6) MODIS measurements to retrieve Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) over land at high spatial resolution (1km). This study is the first evaluation of the MAIAC AOD from MODIS Aqua (A) and Terra (T) satellites between 2006 and 2016 over Sou...

The first ever long-term measurements of Black Carbon (BC) aerosols over an urban location at central Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) are presented. Both short- and long-term variations in BC from 2009 to 2013 are discussed with specific emphases on variation in BC sources, meteorology, trend and possible transport mechanism across IGP. High BC mass load...

Organic and secondary inorganic aerosols (SIA) constitute a considerable fraction of atmospheric aerosols and have potential negative effects on human health, visibility reduction and cloud formation. However, aerosol-climate-health nexus predominantly depends on the particle size and chemical composition, which is in most case are function of asso...

Diurnal Temperature Range (DTR) has been recently used in several study as a temperature metric to assess the additional burden of mortality due to unusual temperature. Importantly most of the studies have reported the mortality burden due to increase in DTR as the places where the studies were performed have very low mean temperature in compared t...

The entire Indo-Gangetic Basin (IGB) has long been exposed to high ambient particulate matter concentration with aerodynamic diameter <10 μm (PM10) (Pande et al., 2018; Dey and Girolamo 2011; Singh et al., 2017). A zone of accumulated and persisting airborne particulates has especially been recognized over central IGB (Kumar et al., 2018). The long...

South Asia is vulnerable to a variety of hydrometeorological hazards, which are often crossboundary in nature. Climate change is expected to influence many of these hazards. Thus, climate-related risks over South Asia make disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) key policy goals. Recently there is an increasing consensus th...

The impact of extreme temperature on morbidity and mortality has been well established in many developed countries and some developing countries. With the increasing night time temperature, the gap between maximum and minimum temperature has led to decline in diurnal temperature variability that can have serious consequences on health particularly...

Air pollution is one of the major challenges of Anthropocene having closer links with undesirable health impacts. Concerns for quantifying health effects of air pollution is initiated globally with multiple approaches and precision. Air pollution health impact assessment is complex and entails information on the existing pollution, processes affect...

The large-scale emissions of airborne particulates from burning of agricultural residues particularly over the upper Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) have often been associated with the frequent formation of haze, adverse health impacts, modification in aerosol climatology and thereby aerosols impact on regional climate. In this study, short-term variatio...

The Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP), South Asia experiences frequent haze events during post-monsoon (October-November), especially influenced by the burning of agricultural residues over upper IGP, and additionally instigate by regional boundary conditions. To understand the effects of biomass burning on regional aerosol characteristics, size-segregated...

There are multiple scientific evidences that air pollution causes adverse effects on human health, both at indoor and outdoor environment. Anthropogenic emissions have already made irreversible impacts on Earth’s life-supporting capacity by increasing the concentration of some short and long-lived trace gases and aerosol. Until 2000s, gradual incre...

Airborne particulates were collected over a typical urban environment at middle Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) during winter (January-February, 2016), and fractionated into eight stages using an Anderson cascade impactor. The molecular characterization of organic compounds was carried out for coarse mode (PM>2.1), fine mode (PM2.1-1.1) and submicron mod...

Long-term aerosol climatology is derived using Terra MODIS (Collection 6) enhanced Deep Blue (DB) AOD retrieval algorithm to investigate decadal trend (2006-2015) in columnar aerosol loading, future scenarios and potential source fields over the Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP), South Asia. Satellite based aerosol climatology was analyzed in two contexts:...

Aerosols, a typical multicomponent mixture originating from varying sources, potentially modify the physiochemical properties of atmosphere and thereby induce modifications in insolation, lower tropospheric heating, changes in atmospheric thermal structure, and interruption in circulation systems that both directly and indirectly link it with susta...

All the anthropogenic activity, including various festivals, affect the environment. Impact of fireworks done during various festivals are well documented in literature. In India, the festival of colors, Holi, is celebrated during spring season. During this festival, wood-log and other natural biomass are burned on the eve of the festival (Holika)....

Atmospheric aerosols are distinguished as multi-component mixtures typically composed of liquid and/or solid particles suspended in the atmosphere. These aerosols are originated from numerous sources, successively evolved through various micro-physical processes before being scavenged off either by wet or dry depositions. Implications of these airb...

In the present work a hybrid approach is implemented to retrieve aerosol optical depth (AOD) from ocean colour monitor sensor on board Oceansat-2. The retrieved AOD (490 nm) has been validated with the ground observed AOD (500 nm) made at different locations of the study area for different months observed by AERONET sites and hand held sun photomet...

Organic aerosol (OA) constitutes a dominant fraction of airborne particulates over Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) especially during post-monsoon and winter. Its exposure has been associated with adverse health effects while there are evidences of its interference with Earth's radiation balance and cloud condensation (CC), resulting possible alteration o...

Both in-situ and space-borne observations reveal an extremely high loading of particulates all year around, over the Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP), all year around. With a burgeoning population and combustion sources (fossil fuels (FFs) and biofuels (BFs)) in close proximity to each other, the IGP is widely regarded as a hotspot for anthropogenic aero...

Airborne particulate were collected and fractionated into eight size fractions with eight stage cascade impactor. The organic compounds characterization was carried out for coarse mode (PM>2.1), fine mode (PM2.1-1.1) and submicron mode (PM<1.1). The weekly average mass concentration of total aerosol during wintertime varied from 189-449 µgm-3 (mean...

The variation in particulate mass and particulates types (PM2.5 and PM10) with respect to local/ regional meteorology was analyzed from January to December, 2014 (n=104) for an urban location over middle Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP). Both coarser (mean±SD; PM10: 161.3±110.4µgm-3, n=104) and finer particulates (PM2.5: 92.5±49.8µgm-3) revealed enormous...

Sustainability has emerged as a principle issue of anthropocene era. Climate change intervened by major atmospheric components including aerosols is proved to be a potential factor which may lead to a check on the concept of sustainable development. A number of anthropogenic activities have substantially increased the level of pollutants in the atm...

Winter-specific characteristics of airborne particulates over middle Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) were evaluated in terms of aerosol chemical and micro-physical properties under three-dimensional domain. Emphases were made for the first time to identify intra-seasonal variations of aerosols sources, horizontal and vertical transport, effects of region...

Mercury (Hg) is one of the heavy metals of concern for fish-eating populations. This pollutant can be released from many sources and generates diverse toxic effects in humans. The aim of this study was to evaluate hematological parameters and their relationship with total Hg (T-Hg) levels in the hair of adolescents from Tierrabomba, an island close...

The submission explores the possibility of a policy revision for considering clean air quality in recently launched nationwide campaign, Clean India Mission (CIM). Despite of several efforts for improving availability of clean household energy and sanitation facilities, situation remain still depressing as almost half of global population lacks acc...

Airborne particulates comprise of variety of compounds originating either directly from emissions sources and/or evolved through various chemical and micro-physical processes in the atmosphere (Kumar et al., 2016; Murari et al., 2016). Associations of particulates specifically in fine and ultrafine range have often been reported with adverse health...

Diwali-specific firework induced particle pollution was measured in terms of aerosol mass loading, type, optical properties and vertical distribution. Entire nation exhibited an increase in particulate concentrations specifically over Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP). Aerosol surface mass loading at middle IGP revealed an increase of 56-121% during festiv...

Airborne particulates were monitored at an urban location of middle Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) and subsequently analyzed for particulate diversity and mixing states. Exceptionally high particulate loading were found both in case of coarser (PM10: 157.5±102.9 μgm-3, n=46) and finer particulates (PM2.5: 92.5±49.8 μgm-3). Based on particulate morpholog...

Observations on black carbon (BC) aerosols during the period of 2009-2011 are reported for an urban site at middle Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP).Emphasis was made to evaluate BC variations during typical monsoon seasons (June-September, JJAS) over the years to recognize variations of BC loading with monsoonal rainfall. Black carbon mass loading and aer...

Enhanced transport of dust with the prevailing mid to upper tropospheric westerly winds from arid regions in South-west Asia and North-west India into the Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) and the influx of marine aerosol from the Arabian Sea (AS), Tropical Indian Ocean (TIO) and Southern Bay of Bengal (SBoB) into India along with the low level south-west...

Enhanced transport of dust with the prevailing mid to upper tropospheric westerly winds from arid regions in Southwest Asia and Northwest India into the Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) and the influx of marine aerosol from the Arabian Sea (AS), Tropical Indian Ocean (TIO) and Southern Bay of Bengal (SBoB) into India along with the low level southwest win...

Towards an Interdisciplinary Approach in Earth System ScienceAdvances of a Helmholtz Graduate Research SchoolSeries: Springer Earth System SciencesPublisher: Springer International Publishing, SwitzerlandISBN: 978-3-319-13865-7Editors: Lohmann, G., Meggers, H., Unnithan, V., Wolf-Gladrow, D., Notholt, J., Bracher, A.In recent decades, earth system...