Spatial heterogeneities in aerosol size distribution over Bay of Bengal during Winter-ICARB Experiment

Abstract

This work examines the aerosol physical properties and size distribution measured in the Marine Atmospheric Boundary Layer (MABL) over entire Bay of Bengal (BoB) and Northern Indian Ocean (NIO) during the Winter Integrated Campaign on Aerosols, Gases and Radiation Budget (W-ICARB). The measurements were taken using the GRIMM optical particle counter from 27th December 2008 to 30th January 2009. The results show large spatial heterogeneities regarding both the total aerosol number concentrations (NT) and the size distributions over BoB, which in turn indicates the variations in the source strength or advection from different regions. The aerosol number size distribution seems to be bi-modal in the 72% of the cases and can also be parameterized by uni-modal or by a combination of power-law and uni-modal distributions for the rest of the cases. The mode radius for accumulation and coarse-mode particles ranges from ∼0.1–0.2 μm and ∼0.6–0.8 μm, respectively. In the northern BoB and along the Indian coast, the aerosols are mainly of sub-micron size with effective radius (R_eff) ranging between 0.25 and 0.3 μm highlighting the strong anthropogenic influence, while in the open oceanic areas they are much higher (0.4–0.6 μm). It was also found that the sea-surface wind plays a considerable role in the super-micron number concentration, R_eff and mode radius for coarse-mode aerosols. Using the relation between N_T and columnar AOD from Terra and Aqua-MODIS we found that the majority of the aerosols are within the lower MABL, while in some areas vertical heterogeneities also exist.