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Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 94 (2013) 7180

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Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics

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Temporal and spatial variability of aerosol optical depth over South India as inferred from MODIS
T. Kiran Kumar a,n, Harish Gadhavi b, A. Jayaraman b, M.N. Sai Suman b, S. Vijaya Bhaskara Rao a
a b

Department of Physics, Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati, 517502 Andhra Pradesh, India ARTG, National Atmospheric Research Laboratory, Gadanki, 517112 Andhra Pradesh, India

a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history: Received 4 July 2011 Received in revised form 26 November 2012 Accepted 18 December 2012 Available online 7 January 2013 Keywords: AOD Peninsular India MODIS Spatial homogeneity

abstract
Aerosols play a very signicant role in determining earths climate, but to study their quantitative effect is a challenging task due to their high spatial and temporal variability. The data from MODIS on-board Terra satellite during 20012008 have been used to study the spatial and temporal variability of AOD and also to identify homogeneous aerosol regions over South India. In this study we found two distinct regions within the selected study region that are characterised by low and high coefcients of variation (COV) of AOD values. The region with low COV is characterised by high AOD and vice versa. The spatial correlation is found to be symmetric for in-land locations but skewed towards Bay of Bengal for coastal locations. The spatial correlation is found to be signicant for a radial distance of 150 km from the region of interest. & 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Aerosols play a signicant role in modulating the earths climate. They can scatter and absorb the incoming solar radiation and change earths radiation budget at the surface level and at the top of the atmosphere. Aerosols can also change micro-physical properties and life-time of the clouds and hence affect the earths radiation balance through clouds (Hansen and Lacis, 1990; Charlson et al., 1992; Haywood and Boucher, 2000). High aerosol concentration causes reduction in visibility and has adverse effect on human life due to poor air quality (Davidson et al., 2005). Residence time of aerosols in the atmosphere varies from a few hours to a couple of years depending upon the size of particles and altitude of occurrence. Aerosols in the stratosphere formed after a major volcanic eruption can have residence times on the order of a few years (Jayaraman et al., 1995), whereas aerosols in the free troposphere have residence times on the order of a week (Seinfeld and Pandis, 2006). Owing to short residence time in the troposphere, aerosols are not well mixed. Moorthy et al. (2005) and Jayaraman et al. (2006) carried out a eld campaign over South India where they found that aerosol mass varied over a factor of two from coastal regions to inland regions. For studies over large geographical areas encompassing inaccessible forests, mountains and oceans, it is important to obtain

Corresponding author. Tel./fax: 91 877 2248485. E-mail addresses: telekepalli@gmail.com, tkiran100@yahoo.com (T. Kiran Kumar). 1364-6826/$ - see front matter & 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jastp.2012.12.010

simultaneous measurements of aerosol properties, on a continuous basis, for which use of space-borne techniques are particularly suitable (King et al., 1992, 1999) as opposed to ground-based techniques. Technological developments over the past one and a half decade have made it possible to derive aerosol optical depth over land using space-borne instruments. In spite of these developments, we still need to rely on ground based observations to obtain their chemical properties, scattering coefcients, absorption coefcients and size distributions. When making such single point ground-based observations, it is important to know their representativeness for the region under consideration. In other words, what would be the area around a given place where one can consider aerosol properties to be homogeneous? Spatial distribution of aerosols over a few regions of the world has been studied by different researchers (Robles Gonzalez et al., 2003; Matsui et al., 2009; Koelemeijer et al., 2006; Gao and Washington, 2009; Moorthy et al., 2005; Jayaraman et al., 2006). However, only a few of them studied them from the perspective of spatial homogeneity. Anderson et al. (2003) have discussed homogeneity of aerosols over Asia from the measurements made using an airborne nephelometer during Aerosol Characterisation Experiment-Asia (ACE-Asia). Esselborn et al. (2009) have studied the spatial distribution of aerosols over Saharan region using airborne LIDAR. Such observations are limited to short periods and restricted to relatively small regions. In the present work we have tried to address this aspect using various statistical techniques on MODIS AOD data over South Indian region (8181N latitudes and 74841E longitudes) during an eight-year period between January 2001 and December 2008.

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2. Site description We have selected a region of study bounded between the coordinates (81N, 741E) and (181N, 841E) with the National Atmospheric Research Laboratory, Gadanki (13.181N, 79.481E), at the centre of this region. At this location, several ground based instruments viz., sun photometers, pyranometer, aethalometer, nephelometer, aerodynamic particle sizer, trace gas analysers, VHF and UHF atmospheric radars, various LIDARs, and several other supporting instruments like automated weather station, etc. are available. The study region includes the entire Indian peninsula to the south of the Vindhya Range (with an average elevation of 427 m) of hills located in central India and geographically demarcating North and South India. This region is surrounded by Arabian Sea on west, Indian Ocean on south and Bay of Bengal in the east. The geography of South India is diverse, encompassing two mountain ranges viz. Western Ghats and Eastern Ghats, and the Deccan Plateau which is a vast elevated land area with widely varying terrain features and making up majority of southern India. It is located between three hill ranges and extends over eight states of the Indian Union. The region of current study consists of ve states viz. Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala and Goa, and a union territoryPondicherry. The climate of the study region can be divided into three zones viz., (1) Tropical Wet, (2) Tropical Dry and (3) Semi-Arid regions according to Koppen classication (Lohmann et al., 1993). These climate zones are shown in blue, light blue and orange colours correspondingly in Fig. 1. The tropical wet climate, also known as tropical monsoon climate, covers regions experiencing persistent high average monthly temperatures (i.e., greater than 18 1C). The regions of south-west lowlands near Malabar Coast and the western coast experience this type of climate resulting in a heavy seasonal rainfall of about 2000 mm annually, most of which occurs between May and November. In contrast, most of the inland peninsular India experiences tropical dry climate. The

winter and summer are long and dry with mean monthly temperatures always greater than 18 1C. Summer is very hot. The rainy season (monsoon) lasts from June to September. The annual rainfall here ranges from 750 mm to 1500 mm. Rest of the region is semi-arid. In the semi-arid region, moisture loss through evapotranspiration exceeds the precipitation. The region south to the tropic of cancer and east of Western Ghats, Karnataka, inland Tamil Nadu and western Andhra Pradesh, experiences this type of climate. The annual rainfall, most of which occurs between October and November, in this region is less than 750 mm. Consequently, this region is drought prone. In the semi-arid region, the period between March and May is hot and dry. Mean monthly temperatures are nearly 32 1C. Though December is the coldest month, average temperature is between 20 1C and 24 1C for this month. About 233 million people live in this region, constituting nearly 23% of the total population of India. Agriculture is the main economic activity here. Main anthropogenic sources of aerosols in the South India are the use of fossil fuels like coal, diesel, petrol, etc. (used for transportation and electricity generation), biomass burning for cooking in rural areas, agricultural waste-burning, forest res and emissions from small industries e.g., brick kilns.

3. Data and methodology Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) onboard the Terra and Aqua satellite of NASA, USA, has 36 spectral bands (ranging from 620 nm to 14385 nm). In the current study we have used Terra MODIS data owing to its longer time record. Terra crosses the equator from north to south at 10:30 h local time. MODIS has a viewing swath of 2330 km and covers nearly the whole globe in one day. The radiance data are processed by the MODIS team for AOD retrievals and made available on their website (MODIS Website, 2011). The MODIS data are categorised into three levels (Savtchenko et al., 2004). Level 1 dataset consists of reectance values but no derived parameters. Level 2 dataset consists of retrieved parameters for each swath. The spatial resolution of MODIS Level 2 aerosol product is 10 km at nadir (middle of the swath) and up to 40 km at edges of the scan. Level 3 dataset consists of daily global gridded data of aerosol parameters at a resolution of 11 11 ( $ 110 km). Level 2 data after gridding them at a resolution of 0.41 0.41 ( $ 40 km) is used for the present study. From time to time MODIS team updates its algorithm for the retrieval of different parameters. The dataset generated using a particular algorithm is called a collection. In the present study we have used the collection 5 (C005) data (Levy et al., 2007b). MODIS AOD is provided for cloud-free pixels only. However, when cloud cover lls only a part of pixel such a pixel can be misunderstood as clear sky and may have wrong values. Therefore, we have ltered and removed all the MODIS AOD values greater than one pixels to avoid cloudy pixels. Though this approach does not fully guarantee cloud-free AOD and there exists a possibility of throwing away genuine AOD values of a high AOD event, there were merely 5128 instances of AOD greater than 1 for the entire period forming only 0.72% of all available data points. Moreover pixels having AOD 4 1 were found in majority during monsoon season which is a rainy and cloudy season for the Indian region. MODIS algorithm for AOD retrieval makes use of several assumptions with regard to aerosols and surface properties which may not be valid universally. Therefore MODIS retrieved AOD was compared to available ground based AOD measurements made during 2009 using a sunphotometer (Prede Co. Ltd., Japan) over Gadanki as a check on the performance of MODIS algorithm. The

Fig. 1. Koppen Climate Classication of South India with blue, light blue and orange regions representing tropical wet, tropical dry and semi-arid regions, respectively. Source ORNL DAAC (2011). (For interpretation of the references to colour in this gure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

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Prede sunphotometer is an automated instrument which measures both direct solar radiation and scattered sky radiation at xed angles at seven wavelengths viz., 310 nm, 400 nm, 500 nm, 675 nm, 870 nm, 940 nm and 1020 nm. Two of these wavelengths viz., 310 nm and 940 nm are not used for AOD derivation owing to high absorption by ozone and water vapour at these wavelengths. The instrument makes the direct radiation measurement every minute and scattered radiation measurements every 10 min. The calculations of AOD are carried out using a software package SKYRAD which is based on the algorithm of Nakajima et al. (1996). The overall error of sunphotometer AOD is around 6% at 500 nm and less than 8% for other wavelengths for a typical atmospheric condition encountered over Gadanki. The error in sunphotometer AOD is estimated based on forward propagation of known errors in its input. The algorithm uses ratio of diffuse to direct irradiance for retrieval of various aerosol optical properties, including aerosol optical depth. The software has a feature that estimates error on retrieved aerosol optical depth. If the retrieval error is more than 10% for a data point, output for that data point is not used for any analysis. This feature effectively removes the cloud contaminated data points. The performance of cloud screening in this manner is further checked by independently running cloud screening algorithm based on Kaufman et al. (2006). In addition, data are manually checked for cloud contamination before using them for further analysis. AOD values at 550 nm for sunphotometer are estimated by linear interpolation of logarithm of AODs at 500 and 675 nm on a logarithmic wavelength scale.

Various statistical methods are used to study spatial and temporal variability of aerosols over the study region. A brief overview of these methods is provided here. Coefcient of variation (COV) is used to analyse the temporal variability of aerosol optical depth. COV is the ratio of standard deviation to the mean of the dataset. Other measures of dispersion such as standard deviation, variance or median absolute deviation may obscure the variability in regions of low AOD but COV normalises them and makes them comparable across regions with different magnitudes of AOD. We have selected a few locations and correlated the AOD of the respective locations with all the other grid boxes in the region to study the scale of spatial homogeneity in AOD. Correlation coefcient is expected to be high within a homogeneous region and decreases as homogeneity breaks down. Auto-regression is a technique which involves correlating a time series data with itself after introducing some time delay. We have used this technique to learn about the seasonal cycle of the AOD. 3.1. Validation of MODIS AOD over Gadanki Extensive validation of the MODIS AOD has been done using AERONET stations (Holben et al., 2001; Remer et al., 2005; Levy et al., 2010; Hyer et al., 2011). Accuracy of MODIS AOD as reported by MODIS atmospheric science team is 0.03 7 0.05nAOD over oceans and 0.05 7 0.15nAOD over land (Remer et al., 2005). Some of the studies comparing ground-based AOD observations from India to MODIS are listed in Table 1. As evident, relatively few

Table 1 List of past studies comparing MODIS AOD with ground based data in Indian sub-continent. Sl.No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Site Arabian Sea Kharagpur Kanpur Kanpur Kanpur Ahmedabad Kanpur Gadanki Researcher Aloysius et al. (2004) Aloysius et al. (2008a) Aloysius et al. (2008b) Tripathi et al. (2005) Jethwa et al. (2007a,b) Misra et al. (2008) Prasad and Singh (2007) Present study Study period (platform) 2002 (Terra) 2004 (Terra) 2004 (Terra) 2004 (Terra) 20012005 (Terra) 20022005 (Aqua) 20012004 winter summer (Terra) 2009 (Terra) Correlation coefcient 0.96 0.69 0.69 0.61a 0.69b 0.54 0.68 0.71 Slope 1.1 0.98 0.69 0.67 0.69a 0.8b 0.51 0.48 0.75 Remarks Modis underestimated AOD by 0.03 Modis overestimated AOD by 0.12 Accuracy is (0.12 7 0.11) Accuracy is 7 0.2

For all the values comparisons were made at 550 nm wavelength band.
a b

Comparison was made at 440 nm wavelength band. Comparison was made at 660 nm wavelength band.

Fig. 2. (a) Scatter plot between sunphotometer and MODIS AOD (550 nm) and (b) frequency distribution of difference of AOD between sunphotometer and MODIS.

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studies that compare MODIS AOD with ground-based AOD over South India are available. MODIS algorithm involves certain assumptions which are region specic and in the absence of validation particularly over South India, it cannot be ascertained whether the accuracy of MODIS product reported elsewhere is applicable over South India. Validation of satellite products with ground based observations has its own limitations. For example satellite views a large area and hence geophysical parameter reported is averaged over the eld of view of the satellite. Ground based instrumentation often has a very narrow eld of view and hence geophysical parameter derived by such an instrument could represent only a point in the eld of view of a satellite. This limitation can partly be mitigated by time averaging ground data for a period appropriate for spatial resolution of satellite data (Ichoku et al., 2002). We have compared ground based sunphotometer AOD over Gadanki averaged over one-hour around satellite overpass time to MODIS Terra AOD during the year 2009. MODIS AOD was spatially averaged over grid box 0.41 0.41 centred on Gadanki for

this comparison. Scatter plot between AODs from sunphotometer and MODIS is shown in Fig. 2. The least squares t line through data points has a slope of 0.76 and its ordinate intercept is close to zero. Similar results have been reported by other researchers over Kanpur and Ahmedabad (Table 1). The slope of least-square-t line implies that MODIS AODs are on an average 24% lower compared to sunphotometer AODs. One reason for this could be use of inappropriate aerosol model in the MODIS retrieval. Essentially, the MODIS sensor sees scattered light and links it to AOD assuming region specic aerosol model. However, for absorbing type of aerosols, scattered light will be less when compared to that of scattering type of aerosols for the same AOD values. In the present study theModerate Absorbing Aerosol model is used (Remer et al., 2005; Levy et al., 2007a). The single scattering albedo of the model is 0.9 which is constant throughout a year and common over major part of Asia. For absorbing aerosols if the algorithm considers scattering nature of aerosols, it will wrongly assign smaller value of AOD to match calculated radiance with observed radiance leading to underestimation of the retrieved AOD. Hence a higher absorbing type of model may be appropriate for South India. The correlation coefcient between sunphotometer AOD and MODIS AOD is found to be 0.7. Such a high correlation is indicative of the fact that seasonal variability in AOD is well captured in MODIS in spite of differences in absolute values. A histogram of difference (AODsun-photometer AODMODIS) is shown in Fig. 2b. The peak of histogram is found to be between 0 and 0.1. More than 75% of the data points are found to be lying between 0.1 and 0.2. The difference between sunphotometer AOD and MODIS AOD is not found to be season dependent. Although there could be a difference between sunphotometer AOD and MODIS AOD, as long as seasonal and spatial variability is captured correctly, it will not have a bearing on the analysis of COV and correlation coefcient. Therefore, no attempt was made to normalise or correct MODIS AOD for further analysis. Hereafter, in this manuscript AOD means MODIS AOD unless stated otherwise. 3.2. Results and discussion

Fig. 3. Frequency distribution of AOD for peninsular India at 550 nm from MODIS Terra satellite.

The outcome of the analysis in terms of seasonality and spatial homogeneity has been described in this section.

Fig. 4. Frequency distribution of AOD for peninsular India at 550 nm from MODIS Terra satellite for different seasons.

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3.3. Temporal variability Frequency distribution of AOD over the study region for the entire period from 2001 to 2008 is shown in Fig. 3 and the frequency distribution of AOD for different seasons is shown in Fig. 4. The peak of the histogram lies between 0.2 and 0.3. Number of data points available during monsoon (JunSep) months is less due to higher number of cloudy days in this season. During summer (MarMay) and monsoon seasons AOD histogram peak is between 0.3 and 0.4, whereas during winter (OctFeb) histogram peak is located between 0.2 and 0.3. Annual variability and monthly statistics of AOD over Gadanki are shown in Fig. 5. The whiskers represent 5th and 95th percentile of the AOD data. AOD over Gadanki is low during winter (Nov, Dec, Jan and Feb) and high during summer (Mar, Apr and May). During monsoon months, available number of observations is less; AOD values are found to be generally high. Auto-regression has been applied to the time series of AOD over Gadanki for various intervals starting from 1 day to 720 days (Fig. 6). The correlation coefcient decreases sharply for the rst 5 days and then slowly for further increase in the interval. It becomes zero at the interval of approximately 90 days and lowest (negative) at the interval of 180 days. Increase in correlation coefcient at an interval of about 365 days and negative correlation at exactly half of this interval are indicative of annual cycle in AOD values. Auto-regression curve over an oceanic location is shown in Fig. 7. Over the ocean we do not see an annual cyclic variation in the values of AOD. We calculated coefcient of variation (COV) as described in Anderson et al. (2003) for individual grid-boxes in time domain for a period of 8 years i.e., 20012008. COV is found to be high over part of central peninsular India and low over Bay of Bengal, Arabian Sea, east coast of peninsular India, northern part of the peninsular India and over a small region between 101 and 111 latitudes over peninsular India. Annual variation of AOD values at two locations, one in high COV region and another in low COV region is shown in Fig. 8. It is found that the high COV region has low AOD throughout the year and vice versa. Saha et al. (2005) have found similar results from ground-based measurements. They have reported AOD over four places from groundbased measurements namely, Vishakhapatnam (17.71N, 83.391E), Mysore (12.31N, 76.71E), Trivandrum (8.51N, 76.91E) and Minicoy (8.21N, 731E). Vishakhapatnam is in low COV region and the mean AOD at 500 nm is 0.45 whereas Mysore and Trivandrum are in high COV region. Minicoy is an island in low COV region in

Fig. 6. (a) Auto-regression of AOD over Gadanki and (b) auto-regression of AOD over Indian Ocean (51N, 781E).

Fig. 5. Box plot showing mean monthly variations of AOD over Gadanki for a period from 2001 to 2008.

Fig. 7. Coefcient of variation of AOD for all the grid points in South India for a period from 2001 to 2008. Location of Gadanki is shown with asterisk (n) symbol.

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Arabian Sea. Gadanki is at the border of low and high COV regions and mean AOD for the year is 0.3. Thus, regions with high AOD have less variability (seasonal or otherwise) compared to regions

with low AOD, where pollution outow or change in wind direction can easily increase AOD load temporarily and hence can provide more variability.

Fig. 8. Inter-annual variation of AOD for two locations: (a) location with low COV and (b) location with high COV.

Fig. 9. Coefcient of variation of AOD for all the grid points for different seasons in South India.

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As noted earlier, some places can have a systematic annual variation. To remove the effect of annual variation of AOD on COV values, COV is also calculated for four seasons namely summer, monsoon, post-monsoon and winter (Fig. 9). Overall spatial pattern of COV remains the same but during summer COV values are low whereas during monsoon and winter COV values are high. Though there is decrease in COV over land, COV over Bay of Bengal is increased during summer. Low COV values during summer months over peninsular India are indicate that from year to year and within summer season (March, April, May) there is less variability in AOD values. During summer months, wind direction changes from easterly to westerly over peninsular India. This may result in less transport and stagnation and hence less variability in AOD. Using a similar argument one would expect less COV during post-monsoon season also as wind direction changes from westerly to easterly during post-monsoon season. As expected, we nd the spatial extent of high COV values shrinking except in the region surrounding 14.51N, 77.51E co-ordinates which has higher COV compared to summer months. High values of COV over central part of peninsular India for different seasons and for total data set indicate that inter-annual variability is higher than the annual variability of AOD or at least of the same magnitude. High COV values during monsoon are expected because rain may washout aerosols and can drive AOD quite low temporarily. On the whole, we observe that the oceanic region shows very less variability. If the transport of aerosols from a region to a remote region would have been the reason for AOD variability, we expect similar variability over ocean as well as land which are down-wind to polluted region. But since we nd

very different variability characteristics over ocean and land, there is reason to believe that besides transport of aerosols, some other factors might also be responsible over land regions. One such factor could be biogenic aerosols from plants and trees, as plants and trees have seasonal owering, loss of leaves and a growth pattern. 3.4. Spatial distribution of aerosols To study the spatial homogeneity of AOD, we correlated AOD over a few selected places with AOD over rest of the grid points. The four places we selected are Gadanki, representing a rural place with high AOD, Bengaluru (12.951N, 77.61E) urban region with low AOD, Chennai (131N, 80.21E) urban place with high AOD and Udumalpettai (10.61N, 77.251E), a rural place with low AOD. Contour plots of correlation coefcients for these places are shown in Fig. 10. In Fig. 10, it can be seen that the correlation coefcient decreases gradually as we go away from the place of interest. The correlation was greater than 0.8 for a grid box of approximately 1.51 1.51. This feature gives a clear indication that aerosols can be considered homogeneous for a region of 100 150 km under normal atmospheric conditions. The correlation coefcient reduces to 0.7 for radial distances greater than 200 km and reduces to 0.6 for radial distances greater than 250 km. Unlike inland stations Bengaluru and Udumalpettai, regions of high correlation coefcient around Gadanki and Chennai are not symmetric but skewed towards Bay of Bengal. The reason could be transport of aerosols from peninsular India towards the Bay of Bengal (Niranjan et al., 2005; 2008). We plotted spatial

Fig. 10. Spatial correlation of AOD for the four reference regions (Gadanki, Bengaluru, Chennai and Udumalpettai).

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Fig. 11. Correlation of AOD over Gadanki with other grid boxes for different seasons with wind from NCEP-NCAR reanalysis data overplotted.

in Fig. 12. To generate this plot we have used AOD values at its original resolution that is at 0.11 0.11 instead of 0.41 0.41. A high correlation (r 4 0.92) was found up to 11 11 resolution. This observation suggests that AOD retrieved at 11 11 resolution can be used to represent any location inside that grid. This information will also help in cloudaerosol interaction study as simultaneous aerosol and cloud measurements at a given place cannot be obtained. An aerosol measurement taken at a nearby cloud free region will help us to have some idea of cloud aerosol interaction at a place covered by clouds. Knowledge of spatial homogeneity of aerosols will guide us in proper usage of data provided by different satellites at different resolutions. The spatial averaging of AOD to less than 11 11 resolution would be ideal. However one should remember that this is a region specic feature and may vary for other regions.

4. Conclusions
Fig. 12. Correlation of AOD at a resolution of 0.11 0.11 over Gadanki with AOD averaged to lower resolutions.

correlations with respect to Gadanki for four seasons namely summer, monsoon, post-monsoon and winter to see the inuence of seasons on homogeneity (Fig. 11). We noticed that correlation of AOD over Gadanki and Bay of Bengal has vanished during the post-monsoon. Average correlation coefcient of AOD for different years as a function of distance in degrees with respect to Gadanki is shown

The average MODIS AOD over grid box 0.41 0.41 centred at Gadanki is compared with the ground based 1 h-average sunphotometer AOD. The intercept of the least squares t line of the points is almost zero but slope of the line is 0.7, which means MODIS AOD over South India might be an underestimate of actual AOD. This may be because of less absorbing type of aerosol model being used in retrieval of MODIS AOD. However, correlation coefcient between sunphotometer AOD and MODIS AOD is 0.7, which indicates that the seasonal variations are well captured in MODIS AOD. AOD over Gadanki has a robust seasonal cycle with

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low AOD values during winter (Nov, Dec, Jan and Feb) and high AOD values during pre-monsoon months (Mar, Apr and May). Similar seasonal cycle could not be seen for oceanic locations using the auto-regression technique. During monsoon months, available numbers of observations are less but AODs values are generally high. Coefcient of variation has been calculated for each grid box in the region of interest, and it is found that the high COV region has low AOD throughout the year and vice versa. Gadanki is at the border of low and high COV region with annual mean AOD equal to 0.3. In other words, region with high AOD has less seasonal or other variability compared to regions with low AOD, where pollution outow or change in wind direction can easily increase AOD load temporarily and can provide more variability. Low COV values during summer months over peninsular India indicate that from year to year and within summer season (March, April, May) there is less variability in AOD values. High values of COV over central part of peninsular India for different seasons and for total data set indicate higher interannual variability compared to intra-annual variability of AOD or of similar magnitude in the least. The correlation was greater than 0.8 for a grid box of approximately 1.51 1.51. This feature gives a clear indication that aerosols can be considered homogeneous for this region for an area of radius 100150 km under normal atmospheric conditions. Unlike inland stations, Bengaluru and Udumalpettai, regions of high correlation coefcients around Gadanki and Chennai are not symmetric but skewed towards Bay of Bengal. The reason may be the transport of aerosols from peninsular India towards the Bay of Bengal.

Acknowledgement Authors gratefully acknowledge the MODIS mission scientists and associated NASA personnel for the production of the data used in this research effort. Authors acknowledge helpful discussion with Lorraine Remer regarding MODIS products. One of the authors (T. Kiran Kumar) thanks Advanced Centre for Atmospheric Sciences for junior research fellowship and laboratory facilities in carrying out this work. Authors thank T.V.C. Sarma for language editing of the manuscript. They thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions to improve the manuscript. References
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