effect of asian dust storms on the ambient so2 concentration over north-east india a case study影响亚洲沙尘暴的二氧化硫浓度在印度东北部一个案例研究.pdfVIP

Journal of Environmental Protection, 2011, 2, 778-795 doi:10.4236/jep.2011.26090 Published Online August 2011 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/jep) Effect of Asian Dust Storms on the Ambient SO2 Concentration over North-East India: A Case Study Timmy Francis Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, India. Email: timmyf@prl.res.in Received May 3rd th st , 2011; revised June 12 , 2011; accepted July 21 , 2011. ABSTRACT Ambient SO2 concentration at a high rain fall site, Shillong (25.67˚N, 91.91˚E, 1064 m ASL), located in North-East In- dia, was measured during March 2009 and January 2010 with the aim to understand the effect of long range transport of pollutants from North-East Asia on the ambient SO2 levels at this relatively clean site. The concentrations recorded during the former sampling period were very high (Max : 262.3 ppb)—which decayed down gradually towards the end the sampling period—whereas those during the latter sampling period were well within the acceptable limits (Max : 29.7 ppb). This elevated SO2 concentrations during March 2009 is proposed to have association with a major cold air outbreak and an associated cyclone preceding one of the dust storm events reported in China, and a resultant sudden change in wind trajectory leading to the long range transport of pollutants to the sampling site. The argument is for- mulated on the basis of the back trajectory analysis performed using HYSPLIT for the month of March 2009—the plots clearly showed a drastic change in wind trajectories between 8th and 15th of March 2009 wherein the winds traveled over some of the highly polluted regions such as the Perm region of Russia—and on the results from model runs per- formed using the global 3-D model of tropospheric chemistry, GEOS-Chem (v8-03-01)—it clearly showed the tropo- spheric SO2 over Perm region in Russia peaking during