Unit-II :Air Quality Monitoring

Objectives Time and Space Variability in air quality Air Sampling Design Analysis & Interpretation of Air Quality Data Guidelines of Network Design in Urban & Rural Areas Monitoring

OBJECTIVE OF AUR QUALITY MONITORING Type of Monitoring Work Site Ambient Air Quality Parameters and Frequencies Purpose of Monitoring Programme & Area to be covered E.g. National Air Quality Monitoring Programme (NAMP). The network consist of 308 operating stations covering 115 cities/towns in 25 States and 4 Union Territories of the country Regular Monitoring by SPCB in their specified region Special purpose monitoring Base Line Data for EIA & EMP Case Study of any critical Zone Derivation of Standard To determine status and trends of ambient air quality; To ascertain whether the prescribed ambient air quality standards are violated, To Identify Non-attainment Cities To obtain the knowledge and understanding necessary for developing preventive and corrective measures; To understand the natural cleansing process undergoing in the environment through pollution dilution, dispersion, wind based movement, dry deposition, precipitation and chemical transformation of pollutants generated.

The overall objective of any Air Quality Monitoring should be to improve environment and bring in visible results through implementation of identified environmental improvement projects in the selected towns/cities. The specific objectives are to: Identify the environmental problems/hotspots in the identified towns and priority environmental improvement projects through participatory approach; Designing & detailing the prioritized environmental improvement projects; and creation of landmarks that shows visible environmental improvement.

Air Pollution Air pollution and its impact on human health and ecological systems is a major societal concern. The lower atmosphere can oxidize both industrial and biological emissions of pollutants. Precipitation and/or dry deposition removes the resulting fully or partially oxidized pollutants from the atmosphere relatively rapidly. The maintenance of this self-cleaning "atmospheric oxidative capacity" is critically important to sustain a healthy environment. However, unfavorable meteorological conditions can render atmospheric oxidative processes ineffective or even destructive. The resulting airborne concentrations of partially oxidized pollutants and oxidizing intermediates can have both acute and chronic detrimental impacts on human health, agricultural productivity, and natural ecosystem sustainability. The future build-up of populated and industrialized regions and a potentially warmer climate may combine to create these highly undesirable atmospheric conditions, both more frequently and over much larger areas, in the future. Understanding the basic chemical and physical processes that define the capacity of an airshed to maintain acceptable air quality remains a high priority.

Seasonal to Interannual Variability Research on seasonal-to-interannual climate variability has entered a new age with the recent prediction of the evolution of the El Nio - Southern Oscillation (ENSO) many months in advance. The success of the El Nio forecasts set the stage for other major advances on seasonal-to-interannual time scales. In particular, we are poised to make significant advances in understanding the variability of the monsoons, determining the role of land-surface and atmospheric moisture and energy exchanges in governing variability, downscaling climate predictions for improved regional assessments, and incorporating terrestrial hydrology into predictive models. Longer-Term Variability The historical and paleoclimatic records contribute strong evidence of variability on decadal to century time scales, including abrupt climate transitions on time scales of one to ten years. Tree rings, ice cores, corals and lake sediments provide a rich record with the potential to help define the nature of global and regional variability. These longer records help define the nature of the sensitivity of the coupled Earth system. Remarkable progress has occurred over the last decade in developing coupled Earth system models. These models, constrained by global-scale observational records, are helping to document the mechanisms of Earth system variability.

As we begin to include additional major components of the Earth system in coupled and integrated models, unique opportunities will arise to assess predictability over a wider range of time and space scales. Currently, interest is focused on the regional impact of climate change over the next few decades and the possibility of abrupt climate change.

Time and Space Variability in air quality Air pollution estimates at high spatial-temporal scales are critically important for enforcing air quality regulations and to protect human health. The limited coverage of air pollution monitoring and conventional methods of monitoring air pollution restrict our ability to do so. Therefore, we should focus on multiple strategies to generate spatially detailed estimates of air pollution including the following: Satellite remote sensing Real time mobile sampling spatially detailed passive sampling

Satellite remote sensing: satellite remote sensing has been advanced considerably in terms of spatial-temporal coverage. The moderate resolution radio spectrometer (MODIS) onboard Terra and Aqua satellite have a daily global coverage at 250m resolution. We should compute aerosol optical depth (AOD) using MODIS data and relate it with the ground measurements of airborne particulates by federal regulator methods (FRM).

Figure 1: AOD and Average PM2.5 at 5 km resolution in Delhi, India. Source: Kumar et al. 2007a

Recent work suggests a significant positive association between AOD estimates from Terra and Aqua and ground measurements of airborne particles 2.5m (PM2.5) and 10m (PM10) in aerodynamic diameter (Figure 1 and 2). There are two major challenges in using AOD as an indirect measure of air quality. First, aerosols are suspended and liquid particles in the air and can easily be influenced by weather conditions. Therefore, it is critically important to correct AOD for local weather conditions. After correcting for weather conditions, AOD is left with the columnar estimates of human induced air pollution and can be used to generate continuous surface of air pollution to estimate personal ambient exposure by linking these surface with the time-activity diaries

Figure 2: 5km AOD and Average PM10 in Delhi, India, July December 2003. Source: Kumar et al. 2007b.

Figure 4: 113 air pollution monitoring stations where PM2.5 and PM10 data were monitored from July-December 2003. Source: Kumar et al. 2007.

Image right: This image from Aura's Ozone Monitoring Instrument shows the amount of nitrogen dioxide in the atmosphere over the eastern United States on January 29, 2005. Air quality alerts were issued for Michigan during this period. Nitrogen dioxide leads to the formation of ozone in the lower atmosphere. Red areas show high levels; the purple areas are regions of clouds that block the instrument's view of nitrogen dioxide below. Credit: NASA Aura

Image left: Ozone damage on a cutleaf coneflower produces purple spots, or stippling, on the upper surface of the leaf. Credit: Jeannie Allen/SSAI

Image above: Global maps of ozone levels over a month show ground-level ozone (orange) streaming from the United States, Europe and China (lower panel, July 2005) and ozone from biomass burning in the equatorial zone (upper panel, October 2004). Credit: NASA Aura

One of the more difficult aspects of monitoring air quality is the amount of variability in ozone concentrations with time and location. The variable nature of the amount of ozone in the air we breathe is one of the reasons why having an ozone monitoring garden is so interesting. Plants in such a garden in one location may exhibit ozone damage, while plants in another location nearby may show no signs of ozone damage at all, even within a single neighborhood. By investigating ozone monitoring gardens, students and citizens alike can learn more about the air in their own neighborhoods.