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Abstract

The anthroposphere over the Indo-Gangetic Plain has witnessed multi-fold growth in terms of agricultural production accompanied by rapid urbanization over the past six decades. This has ensured food security for more than billions of people, but the present scale of emissions associated with activities like post-harvest agricultural waste burning as well as open burning of biofuel for domestic heating, cooking and waste disposal frequently triggers extreme air pollution events every year, in particular during the post-monsoon and winter season. In this presentation I shall review research conducted over the past decade aimed at unravelling some of the complex interplays between emissions and meteorology leading to the build up of the severe air pollution episodes using tools developed by my laboratory. These include molecular chemical fingerprinting of air pollution sources for quantitative source apportionment, compilation of regionally representative emission inventories and the application of ambient mass spectrometry for chemical speciation of gases and fine mode aerosol. I show that it is not just the general increase in air pollutant concentrations but also increase in specific ambient air toxics that aggravates the health risks for the exposed population. Further, open burning of solid fuels for heating purposes results in a strong temperature induced emission feedback that aggravates the wintertime fog. Based on the spatio-temporal occurrence of the emissions, I shall also share evidence based mitigation suggestions for air quality improvement, highlighting intervention strategies for their potential impact with specific focus on the sectoral coupling between various sectors for maximizing air quality gains.