Thursday, January 31, 2008

US satellites find cause of winter pollution in north India

New Delhi, Mar 8:
American have found the reason for haze and smog during winter that leads to cancellation of and brings day-to-day life to a standstill in north India.Analysis of data from instruments onboard satellites has shown that ash from coal-fired thermal power plants is the main culprit.The found that aerosols (particulate matter) in the northern plains, especially Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, pollute the air and create haze in the entire Indo-Gangetic basin and not bio-fuel or burning cow-dung as previously thought. About 600 million people live in this basin.The joint Indo-US study was carried out by Professor Ramesh Singh and his Anup Krishna Prasad of the Department of Civil Engineering in IIT Kanpur and Professor Menas Kafatos of the George Mason , US.Their report was today in the online edition of 'Geophysical Research Letter', the prestigious journal of the American Union.Singh's group analysed the MODIS and MISR satellite data and found very high "aerosol optical depth" - a measure of particulate pollution - especially over the coal-burning thermal power plants in the Ganges basin."These power plants use thousands of tons of very low grade coal daily (with 30-45 per cent ash content)," Singh told PTI

1 comment: