Research Projects

Dust is one of most important sources of aerosol burden (by mass) across the globe; about 80% of contribution to the global aerosol loading comes from dust. The low latitude deserts of Africa and Asia also known as the dust belt are the major sources of the dust for the entire world consists of the Sahara, arid and semiarid regions of Arabia and central Asia, Taklamakan and Gobi in East Asia. Dust emanated over the distant source regions enters in the Indian subcontinent region through long range transport, and substantially modulate the weather pattern and air quality of the region through its direct and indirect impact on the atmosphere. In recent years several researchers b) focused on the impact of dust in modulating weather and climate patterns in South Asian region at various scales ranging from climate to short term (about 2 weeks or so). However, our present understanding of interlinking of dust with weather and climate have been improved substantially, nevertheless, concrete efforts are required to quantify the impact of dust on weather and climate. Such efforts may be employed based on synergistic use of satellite, ground based data sets and model simulations.