The South Asian monsoon—pollution pump and purifier

Abstract

South Asian monsoon and pollution Air pollution is growing fastest in monsoon-impacted South Asia. During the dry winter monsoon, the fumes disperse toward the Indian Ocean, creating a vast pollution haze. The fate of these fumes during the wet summer monsoon has been unclear. Lelieveld et al. performed atmospheric chemistry measurements by aircraft in the Oxidation Mechanism Observations campaign, sampling the summer monsoon outflow in the upper troposphere between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. The measurements, supported by model calculations, show that the monsoon sustains a remarkably efficient cleansing mechanism in which contaminants are rapidly oxidized and deposited on Earth's surface. However, some pollutants are lofted above the monsoon clouds and chemically processed in a reactive reservoir before being redistributed globally, including to the stratosphere. Science , this issue p. 270