Spatiotemporal distribution of air pollutants during a heat wave-induced forest fire event in Uttarakhand.

Prevailing dry conditions and rainfall deficit during the spring season in North India led to heat wave conditions which resulted in widespread and intense forest fire events in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand during April 16-30, 2022. A total of 7589 active fires were detected by VIIRS during the second half of April 2022 compared to 1558 during the first half. The TROPOMI observed total column values of CO and NO increased by 4.

Source apportionment of carbon monoxide over India: a quantitative analysis using MOZART-4.

MOZART-4 chemistry transport model has been used to examine the contribution of carbon monoxide (CO) from different source regions/types by tagging their emissions in model simulations. These simulations are made using tagged tracer approach to estimate the relative contribution of different geographical regions and different emission sources, such as anthropogenic or biomass burning to the CO concentration at the surface, in the planetary boundary layer (PBL), and in the free troposphere (FT) over the Indian sub-continent. The CO budget analyses highlight the significant contribution of the Indian emissions on surface CO and influence of chemical production on the free tropospheric CO concentration.