An air pollution monitoring system, part of the Modelling of Atmospheric Pollution and Networking (MAPAN) of the Union Ministry of Earth Sciences, was inaugurated by Andhra University Vice-Chancellor G.S.N. Raju at the university’s Department of Meteorology and Oceanography.
The university is implementing the project in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) in Pune, Head and Principal Investigator of the project K.V.S.R. Prasad has said. The Rs. 1-crore system would continuously measure the atmospheric pollutants -- carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, oxides of nitrogen, ozone, particulate matter, black carbon, methane and total non-methane hydrocarbons and weather parameters like air temperature, solar radiation, wind speed, wind direction and relative humidity.
The data from stations installed at Pune, Chennai, Jabalpur, Hyderabad, Delhi, Srinagar and Udaipur has been transferred online to a server at IITM for further processing and analysis, according to Prof. Prasad. According to the data seen, AU campus is a tolerable area since the mean value of pollutants on the AU campus is under the acceptable value.
