ICARB: an integrated campaign for aerosols, gases, and radiation budget over India

Abstract

Characteristics of atmospheric aerosols and their radiative impacts show large variations in space and time, leading to large uncertainties in the climate impact assessment. Despite the concerted efforts in the last decade through several field campaigns, the uncertainty still persists. This essentially arises due to lack of a comprehensive data on several aerosol parameters with adequate spatial resolution and for long duration. This is particularly true for the Indian region, with large geographical diversities, large density of population, diverse living habits and rapid industrialization. With a view to addressing to this problem and to evolve a regional scale database for assessing the radiative impacts of aerosols, an integrated, multi-platform field campaign, ICARB, was carried out during March-May 2006, under the ISRO's Geosphere Biosphere Programme. The campaign involved participation by more than 100 scientists from about 35 different institutions across the country and collocated observation over the mainland, over oceans and same time measurements of altitude profiles using aircrafts. A campaign of this magnitude is carried out for the first time in this region, and perhaps for the first time globally. The mainland observations included a network of aerosol observatories over Indian landmass and from islands in the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal, while a dedicated scientific cruise of 64- days duration covered the vast oceanic regions around India. Altitude profiles were obtained using research aircraft of the National Remote Sensing Agency, from 5 different bases. The details of the campaign and the preliminary findings will be presented.