Impact of Arabian Sea Pollutions on the Bay of Bengal Winter Monsoon Rains
T. N. Krishnamurti
1,*
, Arindam Chakraborty
1
, Andrew Martin
1
, William K Lau
2
, Yogesh Sud
2
and
Gregory Walker
2
1
Department of Meteorology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA.
2
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA.
*Corresponding author email: tnk@io.met.fsu.edu
Abstract
Accumulation of pollution over the southern Arabian Sea has been documented in numerous studies
that followed the INDOEX field project of 1992. In this paper we show several examples of this
feature from the MODIS/CALIPSO data sets. We identify this feature as the Bombay Plume that
makes its way into the Arabian Sea from the west coast of India. A second part of this work is on the
modeling of the impacts of pollutions. For this purpose we use a NASA Goddard Earth Observing
System (GEOS) model to carry out many comparative forecast experiments that include the
pollution based on MODIS and control runs that utilize climatological estimates of pollutions. The
model includes both the direct and indirect effects of aerosols. We noted that: a) The Arabian Sea
experience above normal rain during these periods for the MODIS experiments as compared to the
control. b) The most interesting feature in these results is the documentation of a divergent outflow
center, in the upper troposphere, over regions of the Arabian Sea pollutions when tropospheric
aerosol heating is noted. c) An important related feature is a compensating downward lobe with a
divergent inflow center over the Bay of Bengal. d) The presence of this downward lobe over the Bay
of Bengal shows a reduction of winter monsoon rains over the south-east coast of India. e) We also
show observational evidence of reduced winter monsoon rains over the south-east coast of India
Remote Sensing and Modeling of the Atmosphere, Oceans, and Interactions II,
edited by Tiruvalam N. Krishnamurti, B. N. Goswami, Akiyo Yatagai, Proc. of SPIE Vol. 7148,
71480D · © 2008 SPIE · CCC code: 0277-786X/08/$18 · doi: 10.1117/12.806393
Proc. of SPIE Vol. 7148 71480D-1
2008 SPIE Digital Library -- Subscriber Archive Copy