Impact of monsoon transitions on the physical and optical properties of aerosols

Project Atmospheric Brown Cloud ( ABC- Asia) has focused on measuring the anthropogenic influence of aerosols, including black carbon, to determine the extent of sunlight dimming and radiative forcing over the Asian region. As part of this project, an observatory was built in the Republic of Maldives for the long- term monitoring of climate. An inaugural campaign was conducted to investigate the influence of the shifting monsoon seasons on aerosols and climate change. The presence of black carbon and other anthropogenic aerosols over the Indian Ocean varies with the cyclic nature of the Indian Monsoon. Roughly every 6 months, the winds change directions from southwest to northeast or vice versa. From June to October the wet monsoon brings clean air into the region from the Southern Hemisphere. Conversely, the dry monsoon brings polluted air from the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia from November through April. As a result, the region becomes charged with black carbon and other anthropogenic pollutants during the dry monsoon. In 2004 the transition between the clean and polluted seasons resulted in nearly an order of magnitude increase of scattering and absorbing aerosols. The change was foreshadowed with small events over a 1 month period prior to the abrupt arrival of pollution over a period of a few days as air from India and Southeast Asia arrived in the Maldives at the surface level. The new, polluted aerosol was characteristically darker since the black carbon concentration increased more substantially than the overall aerosol scattering. As a result, the aerosol coalbedo at a wavelength of 550 nm showed an increase from an average of 0.028 to 0.07. Black carbon mass concentrations increased by an order of magnitude from 0.03 to 0.47 mu g/m(3). These measurements suggest a large increase in the aerosol radiative forcing of the region with the arrival of the dry monsoon.