NASA finds excessive pollution over Bihar
MIL/Agencies, Jan 29, 2005. NASA's release
Patna - A NASA research team, examining air pollution levels over the Indian subcontinent, has found an immense pollution pool over Bihar. This is about five times more than those typically found over Los Angeles. The team concluded that over pollution must be having a tremendous impact on the local climate and public health.
"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," NASA said in a release.
The discovery was made by researchers analysing four years of data collected by the Multi-angle Imaging Spectro-Radiometer (MISR) onboard the Terra satellite, the flagship of NASA's Earth Observing System Programme.
"This study is the most comprehensive and detailed examination of industrial, smoke and other air pollution particles over the Indian subcontinent to date, and reveals how topography, meteorology and human activity help determine where these particles are concentrated," said Larry Di Girolamo, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a co-investigator on the MISR mission.
While high pollution levels were found over much of India, a concentrated pool of particles was discovered over Bihar.
Researchers attributed the Bihar pollution pool to the inefficient burning of a variety of biofuels during cooking and other domestic use.
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