Biodiversity
Climate Change
2009 JAMEX/TIGERZ/RAJO-MEGHA Field Deployment in South Asia
Chemical composition and aerosol size distribution of the middle mountain range in the Nepal Himalayas during the 2009 pre-monsoon season were studied. A field experiment was jointly conducted by the Kathmandu University, Tribhuvan University, Duke University, and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), during the pre-monsoon season of 2009. The SMART-COMMIT team from GSFC, with the help of Nepali and Indian scientists, set up 11 observation sites throughout Nepal and Northern India. Equipped with weather transmitters, sun photometers, and broadband radiometers, these sites at different elevations (from 465 m in Hetauda to 3670 m in Langtang) and locations, along with the AERONET deployments under the TIGERZ mission, will help to characterize the vertical and spatial distributions of aerosols in the region. The measured aerosol information from this experiment can then be used to refine climate modeling for investigating the role played by aerosols in the regional climate.