MISR Data Reveal Immense Pollution Pool over Bihar, India

Scientists studying satellite data have discovered an immense wintertime pool of pollution over the northern Indian state of Bihar. The discovery was made by researchers analyzing four years of data collected by the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR). Prior to the MISR study, atmospheric models had predicted a tongue of pollution extending across the middle of India. The MISR observations, however, show the pollution lies much farther north.

While high pollution levels were found over much of India, a concentrated pool of particles was discovered over Bihar, a largely rural area with a high population density. Blanketing around 100 million people, primarily in the Ganges Valley, the pollution levels are about five times larger than those typically found over Los Angeles and can affect both human health and local climate. A large source contributing to the Bihar pollution pool is the inefficient burning of a variety of biofuels during cooking and other domestic use. Particles in the smoke remain close to the ground, trapped by valley walls, and unable to mix upward because of a high-pressure system that dominates the region during winter.

MISR was built and is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, for NASA's Office of Earth Science, Washington, DC. The Terra satellite is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology.

Image credit: NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL, MISR Team.
Text acknowledgment: Graham Bothwell (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), Larry Di Girolamo (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), James E. Kloeppel (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)