HR: 1340h
AN: A33A-0872    [Abstracts]
TI: Inferring Aerosol-Cloud Interactions over the Indian Subcontinent from Satellite data
AU: * Gautam, R
EM: rgautam@gmu.edu
AF: Center for Earth Observing and Space Research, George Mason University, 4400 University Drive, Fairfax, VA 22031 United States
AU: Hsu, C
EM: hsu@climate.gsfc.nasa.gov
AF: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt Road, Greenbelt, MD 20771 United States
AU: Kafatos, M
EM: mkafatos@gmu.edu
AF: Center for Earth Observing and Space Research, George Mason University, 4400 University Drive, Fairfax, VA 22031 United States
AU: Tsay, S
EM: si-chee.tsay-1@nasa.gov
AF: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt Road, Greenbelt, MD 20771 United States
AB: The increasing anthropogenic pollution in South Asia has been affecting the climate and weather conditions in recent years. The Indian subcontinent is one of the major contributors towards this pollution pool and studies conducted as part of the Indian Ocean Experiment reported the role of anthropogenic aerosols in impacting the radiation budget and the regional climate of South Asia. Here, we focus on the Indo-Gangetic (IG) basin which is the most populated and polluted region in the northern part of India to study the interactions between aerosol and clouds by using remote sensing data. The IG basin is characterized by dense haze and fog during winter season and our study shows the influence of aerosols in controlling this phenomena. Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data were used to study various aerosol optical and cloud microphysical properties. Significant changes in the cloud microphysical properties such as cloud effective radius and cloud fraction have been observed with changes in aerosol optical properties in different years. We have also inferred the diurnal variations of fog cloud properties to study the modifications induced by aerosols by using data from NASA's Terra and Aqua platforms.
DE: 3311 Clouds and aerosols
SC: Atmospheric Sciences [A]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005