DW BUREAU / Chandigarh The new year may not come bearing good news for Punjab. In 2023, aerosol pollution in Punjab is anticipated to rise by 20% and continue to remain in the "highly vulnerable" red zone for aerosol pollution. High aerosol amounts include particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) among other pollutants as well as sea salt, dust, black and organic carbon. If inhaled they can be harmful to people's health. Aerosol optical depth (AOD) is the quantitative estimate of the aerosol present in the atmosphere and it can be used as a proxy measurement of PM2.5. The present study - A deep insight into state-level aerosol pollution in India - by researchers Dr Abhijit Chatterjee Associate Professor and his PhD scholar Monami Dutta from Bose Institute, Kolkata, provides a national scenario of aerosol pollution with the long-term (2005?2019) trend, source apportionment, and future scenario (2023) for various Indian states. Punjab currently falls under the red category which is the highly vulnerable zone with AOD over 0.5. Aerosol pollution is expected to rise by 20% further pushing the AOD higher within the vulnerable (red) zone in 2023. The values of AOD range from 0 and 1. 0 indicates a crystal-clear sky with maximum visibility whereas a value of 1 indicates very hazy conditions. AOD values less than 0.3 fall under the green zone (safe), 0.3-0.4 is blue zone (less vulnerable), 0.4-0.5 is orange (vulnerable) while over 0.5 is the red zone (highly vulnerable). Dr Abhijit Chatterjee, Principal author of this study and Associate Professor of Environmental Sciences at Bose Institute said, "In the past, all the states in the Indo Gangetic Plain (IGP) were already in the highly vulnerable zone in the context of air pollution. Among all the states in the IGP, the highest increase in AOD is projected for Punjab (approximately 20% rise in AOD with respect to 2019). Since in the last phase it was observed that crop residue burning is the major source of air pollution, restriction of this is highly recommended." Among major aerosol pollution sources for Punjab from 2005 to 2009, the study found that vehicular emissions were the highest followed by solid fuel burning and thermal power plant (TPP) emissions. However, between 2010 and 2014, crop residue burning became the second biggest source of aerosol pollution. In the follow up years from 2015 and 2019, crop residue burning became the biggest source contribution to aerosol pollution around (34-35%) emissions followed by TPPs (20-25%) and vehicular emissions (17-18%). "The emissions from TPPs also increased massively from 12 to 15% in Phase-1 to 20?25% from 2015-2019. The positive side of this narrative is that vehicular emissions (30?32% in 2005-2009 to 17?18% in 2015-2019) and solid fuel burning both decreased over the years," said Monami Dutta, first-author of the study and Senior Research Fellow, Bose Institute, Kolkata. (editor@dailyworld.in)