Atmospheric air pollution levels can aid enhancing rainfall, urban flood forecasts : IIT-Madras study

Chennai, Oct 5 (UNI) An IIT-Madras-led international study has found that atmospheric air pollution could play a critical role in improving the forecasting of rainfall and urban floods. The study shows that explicitly accounting for atmospheric aerosols-tiny particles suspended in the air that can influence cloud formation and rainfall-can substantially improve simulations of extreme rainfall and the resulting urban flooding. The researchers used Chennai's December 2015 extreme rains and flooding event as a case study. By incorporating aerosols and cloud condensation nuclei (CCN), particles around which cloud droplets form, into high-resolution atmospheric simulations, they investigated how changes in atmospheric aerosol…