Seasonal Variation of Atmospheric Aerosols over Prominent Hotspot Regions in South India by Employing MODIS Data

Abstract

Mounting the amount of aerosols in the atmosphere is a subject of deep concern all over the globe. This elevated level of aerosol concentrations has proven direct impact on the radiative forcing (Gadhavi and Jayaraman A, 2004) and subsequent climate change. Thus it becomes imperative to study the inter-annual and seasonal variations of aerosols with the aid of remote sensing method by employing MODIS data. This paper pertains to the study of seasonal variations of Aerosol Optical Depths over three different locations which are lying along the same latitude in South India. The five year (2005-2009) observation is presented and it reveals that aerosol abundance has strong dependence on the geography, environment and local climate at a specific region. The variation of aerosol abundance is found to be higher at the coastal region than the region surrounded by land mass.