National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has set up an "AERONET" (AErosol RObotic NETwork) station at Karunya University here to study the air quality of Western Ghats in this region.
The University had signed an agreement with the Office of International and Interagency Relations, NASA, in this regard and the project was started and managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, a University release said here today.
The program consists of a federation of ground-based remote sensing AERONET network and provides continuous database of aerosol optical, microphysical and radiative properties for aerosol research.
The network partners of AERONET are GFGC, Photons (France), RIMA (Spain), CSIRO (Australia), AEROCAN (Canada).
The spectral aerosol optical depth, inversion products and precipitable water are some data monitored by the Cimel sunphotometer. It measures sun and sky radiances at a number of fixed wavelengths within the visible and near infrared spectrum, the release said.
AERONET instruments are used to characterize aerosol optical properties, to validate satellite-based measurements of aerosols and for synergism with satellite observations and climate change. The MODIS (Terra and Aqua) derived aerosol optical depths can be validated using the ground-based measurements obtained from AERONET, it said.
Around 600 instruments had been set up all over the world since 1993 and AERONET stations are presently operational at IIT-Kanpur, BIT-Jaipur and IITM-Pune.
