Solar Multi-Spectral Radiometric Observations of Atmospheric Optical Thickness over Pasarlapudi Gas Well Blow-Out Site in India

Multi-spectrai observations of solar radiation using a Volz sun-photometer have been carried out during February 24-March 2, 1995 in the vicinity of the blow-out of the gas well at Pasarlapudi, Andhra Pradesh, India. These unique and special observations have been utilized to study the aerosol, Rayleigh molecular and gaseous optical thicknesses. The re-sults of the analysis of the observations indicated, besides low gas concentrations well below their background values, sig-nificant variations in aerosol optical thickness (AOT) at visible and neat-infrared wavelength regions. The wavelength de-pendence of AOT revealed wide variations in the Junge aerosol size exponent from 0.98 to 6.70 indicating the presence of both sub-micron and coarse-mode aerosol particles over the observational site. A close correspondence between AOT and surface-level meteorological parameters during the period of observations was also noticed.