Applications of acoustic sounder in environmental impact assessment program over India

Abstract

The entire progress by the mankind has resulted in the environmental degradation which has finally led to global warming. Under such a situation, the entire world is concerned to control the environment in its true perspective and to take effective measures in the development while protecting the environment. In this direction Environmental Impact Assessment is a prerequisite for any project (expansion or proposed project) related to an industry or activity. A mathematical modeling is very important tool to know the Ground level concentration (GLC) and to run the model site specific data is required. Sodar offers the most convenient way to get a high resolution data on continuous basis. The sodar data is far better than the techniques like radiosonde, which offers only two profile in 24 hrs and that too at 0530 hrs and 1730 hrs only. Many other investigations have relied to use only the surface based data or the tower data, extended for computing mixing height etc on theoretical basis. These data sets suffer or have large errors due to many assumptions. The merit of using sodar data to derive air pollution meteorological data of mixing height and stability class are discussed in comparison with conventional data realized from tower and radiosonde measurements in India. It has been suggested to utilize the realistic surface based data in redesigning the chimney height for reducing the surface air-pollution.