National Carbonaceous Aerosols Programme

• Aerosol is a system of colloidal particles dispersed in the atmospheric gases. It may be of natural or anthropogenic origin.
• It may have influence on climate directly through scattering and absorbing radiation, and indirectly through acting as cloud condensation nuclei or modifying the optical properties and lifetime of clouds.
• In India, systematic investigations of the physical and chemical properties of aerosols, their temporal heterogeneities, spectral characteristics and size distribution have been carried out extensively since the 1980s at different distinct geographical regions as part of different national programmes such as the I-MAP (Indian Middle Atmosphere Programme), and later under the ISRO-GBP (Indian Space Research Organization’s Geosphere Biosphere Programme).

Black Carbon Research Initiative

• The ISROGBP (mentioned in above note) in its annual review meeting in 1998 recognized the importance of Black Carbon aerosols on the climate system and it was decided to pursue studies of Black Carbon in subsequent years.
• In view of this, a multi-institutional and multi-agency Science Plan has been launched in Ministry of Environment in association with Ministry of Earth Sciences, Indian Space Research Organization, Ministry of Science and Technology and other associated agencies, to monitor aerosols and assess its impacts through various modeling techniques.