Scientists at the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B) have
developed a satellite-based fog monitoring system with the ultimate goal
of integrating the fog information to air, rail and vehicular
transportation management to ensure safe travel.
"The Indo-Gangetic
Plains covering northern India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh is
subjected to dense haze/fog during winter months severely impacting on
air, rail and vehicular traffic," Ritesh Gautam, assistant professor at
the IIT's Centres for Resources Engineering and Climate Studies, told
IANS in an email.
"We have developed this system for monitoring
and dissemination of fog information to government agencies and also to
the general public."
Formerly a research scientist at the Climate
and Radiation Laboratory of Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Centre in the
US, Gautam said the fog monitoring system was developed with the help of
his students Reema Chourey, Dinesh Patil, Sarwar Rizvi and Manoj Singh.
According
to Gautam, the system uses in-house developed software to automatically
process data from the Nasa satellites (Terra and Aqua MODIS) and
produces daily maps of fog and low cloud regions for the Indo-Gangetic
Plains at a moderately high resolution.
He said his team was
presently testing retrievals and processing of fog-related parameters
from geostationary satellites, such as India's own INSAT satellites,
"for near-real time continuous monitoring of fog, water vapor and
aerosols over south Asia".
"This satellite monitoring system is
quite complex but I am glad that we have developed the capability and
are moving forward," Gautam said. "It can also be used to monitor dust
storms, biomass burning events, cyclones and monsoon clouds."
In
addition to datasets obtained from both polar orbiting and geostationary
satellites, the IIT team is also working on integrating surface-based
meteorological and pollution related measurements, he said.
According
to Gautam, his team has also analyzed spatial and temporal variation
and trends of fog occurrence frequency over the entire Indo-Gangetic
Plains along with trends in pollution for the winter season
(December-January).
"We have found a highly interesting trend
where the long-term satellite data analysis suggests a
statistically-significant increasing fog frequency trend over the
eastern parts of the Gangetic Plains (parts of Bihar and West Bengal),"
Gautam said.
"This is in sharp contrast over the western regions
of the Gangetic Plains (such as Delhi), where a decreasing trend in fog
frequency is found."
The upward trend in fogginess over eastern
Indo-Gangetic Plains is found to be strongly coincident with upward
trend in pollution, suggesting that increasing winter-time pollution
over this region could be linked to increasing fogginess.
While
the focus of media is mostly centered over Delhi, Gautam said the
increasing fog over eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains was not usually
reported.
However, long term analysis of satellite data by the IIT
team has found that "most of northern India is subjected to severe and
persistent fog and pollution haze events during the winter months".
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