Shubha Verma
Principal Investigator, Aerosols Air Pollution Climate Research Laboratory (ACRL), a facility of the Civil Engineering Department at IIT-Kharagpur

My group work mainly involves mathematical applications to solve Environmental pollution problems, specifically due to aerosols and air pollution. We execute aerosol simulations of physical, chemical, optical, and radiative properties and their transport and distribution to examine the complex unresolved issues related to aerosols-air pollution climate health interactions. These simulations are targeted to leading towards designing sustainable climate change mitigation measures. Simulations are done in regional-to-global scale chemical transport models ... executed in the computing facility of this Laboratory. We also learn through collaborative research tasks of mutual interest with various national/international organisations, and in particular with Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace (IPSL), Climate Modelling Centre (IPSL- CMC), Paris, France. To improve the representation of aerosol characteristics in the models, examine the dynamics of aerosol processes in the vicinity of changing seasonal, coastal, and diurnal meteorology, and monitor aerosols and air quality over the Indian region, we also execute field campaigns and ground-based observations.

My research work started with atmospheric modelling of aerosols and I think it corresponded to a few salient contributions in terms of modelling the aerosol distribution over the Indian subcontinent for the Indian Ocean Experiment (INDOEX), including the origin of their sources (region and source-sectors). This work involved implementing the tagged regions, (conceptualising a new technique of tagging regions by their distinct emission flux composition) in the general circulation model (GCM), and so-called design of “region-tagged simulations”. The mechanism of the lofted feature of aerosol transport and sources of their origin, the regional and intercontinental transport of aerosols, and further, the distribution of radiative forcing of aerosols by their emission sources were examined.

In recent past, this research group finished conducting a two-year campaign which involved simultaneous measurements of aerosol optical and chemical properties over eastern India in an urban atmosphere (at Kolkata) and a semi-urban atmosphere (Kharagpur). To the best of our information, these measurements provide first of a detailed study towards the understanding of aerosols in eastern India. Salient research questions which have been targeted to answer include, such as: why aerosols are in general high over the Indo-Gangetic plain? Why aerosol loading typically peaks to a large value over eastern India (see our manuscripts for details)? How do aerosols vary under inter-seasonal and sea-breeze influenced transport processes over eastern India? What leads to the temporal and vertical distribution of aerosol pollutants vary during winter and summer months? How do chemical characteristics of fine atmospheric particles over eastern India differ during winter and summer? There are many other unanswered questions which are further being explored and is under progress of manuscripts preparation.

This research group has recently
   ♦Designed and fabricated an Aerosol Sampler called as “Submicron Aerosol Sampler (SAS)” for a simultaneous but discrete collection of water-soluble inorganic ions and carbonaceous aerosols (discretely sampled for a better characterization) alongwith online flowrate measurements. This SAS has successfully been implemented for ambient aerosol measurements (refer to Priyadharshini et al., 2019).
   ♦Developed an algorithm which uses fuzzy C-mean clustering method to cluster the back trajectory data and emission flux mapping to locate sources of pollution and its chemical composition. This developed tool is useful for aerosols and air quality management strategies and mitigation measures (refer to Kumar and Verma, 2016).

There has been a strong urge to improve the prediction of aerosols in models over the Indian subcontinent. The inadequate performance of the aerosol model with respect to observations has been leading to limiting its application to pollution control sustainable measures. Our measurements data led to provide useful insights on aerosols, air pollutants, meteorological processes and emission sources. A constrained simulation approach has been designed for integrating measurements and modelling methods in a GCM. This approach has delivered an adequate prediction of aerosol species, both prognostically and diagnostically.

Further, the development of an aero-opt (Matlab package) useful to estimate concentration and optical properties of aerosol components from the limited available aerosol observations is under progress. This new aerosol model which is user-friendly and computationally less expensive will soon be delivered as free access for public usage.

Visit our published manuscripts and webpage to get a glimpse of our research contributions and collaborations!

We also participate in social activities related to Environmental pollution mitigation measures through public awareness, including delivering lectures at various social or academic platforms, and educating masses for the required individual-based self actions to mitigate pollution.

Acknowledgements: To My Mentors, Collaborators, and all Students, and Research staff of this group

Sanhita Ghosh, Ph.D. student
Area of Research: Aerosol emissions over India and their impact on climate
I graduated with honours in Physics and post-graduated in Environmental science from The University of Burdwan. I completed my M.Tech in Remote sensing and GIS from SRM University, before joining as a research fellow over here. I am under the NCAP- COALESCE project, presently working on modeling for black carbon (BC) aerosol properties with a regional climate model, CHIMERE. At the starting of my Ph.D, I worked on constraining the existing BC inventory over India, reducing uncertainties in simulated BC properties, such as, surface concentration, AOD etc. I am interested to study the climatic impacts as well as the health related issues due to BC pollution over the Indian subcontinent. Beside research, I love to participate in activities, such as, cleaning of our locality, tree plantation, creating awareness among people against pollution etc.

Sauvik Santra, Ph.D. student
Sauvik Santra completed his Master of Technology in Water Resources Engineering from Indian Institution of Engineering Science and Technology (IIEST), Shibpur. After completing his Masters, he developed an interest in modeling the impact of Air pollution on the hydrological cycle. He is currently working as a Research Scholar at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur, where his primary objective is to evaluate the direct and indirect effect of anthropogenic aerosols on the climate change.

Kanishtha Dubey, Ph.D. student
Area of Research: Source of aerosol pollutants and mitigation strategy
I am a Ph.D. student working with a focus on source apportionment of aerosols and their mitigation strategies. I am also looking into the chemical characterization of fine atmospheric aerosols. I earned a Master's degree in Environmental Engineering from SRM Institute of science and technology and a Bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering from Bhilai Institute of Technology. My M.Tech. research work includes measurement and source apportionment of Organochlorine Pesticides in the atmosphere of Tamil Nadu.

K. Soma Sekhara Rao, Ph.D. student (joint supervision)
Area of Research: Air pollution

Dipu Kumar, Ph.D. student
Area of research: Atmospheric pollution and Hydrological Cycle
"I have completed my Master of Technology degree in Hydroinformatics Engineering from NIT Agartala in 2017. Currently I am working as a Ph.D research scholar at IIT Kharagpur with primary objective of evaluating the effect of air pollution on the Hydrological Cycle."

Rajshri Chaurasia, Ph.D. student
I am a PhD scholar and the broad area of my research is the overall assessment of health impacts due to aerosols and aerosol experiments for their evaluation and mitigation strategy. I have completed my M.Tech degree from IIT(ISM) Dhanbad and my dissertation topic was "Utilisation of mining waste as a sink for carbon sequestration". I have done my bachelor's degree in Civil engineering from Government Engineering College Bilaspur.

Valasani Srilekha, Ph.D. student
Area of research: Atmospheric Pollution: Mitigation
I am a Research Scholar having more interest to work on Sustainable materials that can help in reduction of atmospheric pollution. My current research work focuses mainly on Developing a reduction technology for aerosol pollutants. I earned my Master’s degree in Environmental engineering from National Institute of technology Warangal in 2020 and my Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur in 2018. My Master’s research work was on Utilisation of Biomedical waste Incinerator Bottom Ash as a Construction material and that of B.tech was on Development of Management plan for eco-safe Idol Immersion in Nagpur Lakes.

Shubham Patel, Ph.D. student
Area of research: Will be updated soon

Vyasnavi kk, Ph.D. student
Area of research: Will be updated soon

Shamjas Ibrahim V P, M.Tech student
Area of research: Will be updated soon

Rhitamvar Ray, B.tech in EE Project Engineer, Civil Engg. Dept. IITKGP, Project: NCAP-COALESCE

My field of work are as follows: ♦ Administration of Windows, Linux & unix system . ♦ Configuration of numerical models in systems. ♦ Modification of numerical models. ♦ Simulation on numerical models ♦ Programming ♦ PPT creation as user guide ♦ Data mining ♦ Trainning other on running simulations. ♦ Management of purchase works.

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