Sanat Kumar Das

Sanat Kumar Das
Associate Professor

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Previous appointments:

  • DST-SERB Ramanujan Fellow at Environmental Sciences Section, Bose Institute, Kolkata, India : 2013-2018
  • Visiting Scientist at Department of Physics, University of New Brunswick, Canada : March 2014
  • Visiting Scientist, Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University, Japan, during July-August 2014,sponsored by Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT)
  • Post Doctoral Fellow at Department of Atmospheric Sciences, National Taiwan University, Taiwan : 2011- 2013
  • Post Doctoral Fellow at National Atmospheric Research Laboratory, Gadanki, India : 2010 – 2011
  • Resident Scientist at Project Atmospheric Brown Cloud, UNEP Regional Resource Center for Asia and the Pacific (RRC.AP), Hanimaadhoo, Maldives : Feb 2010 – June 2010
  • Post Doctoral Fellow at Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, India : 2008 – 2010

    Extramural Funding:
    • Ramanujan Fellowship Research Grant by DST-SERB, Govt. of India on August 2018 (Completed)
    • Project to CSIR on “Physico-chemical factors influencing Aerosol Hygroscopicity during fog, its effect on Aerosol Radiative Properties and fog nowcasting: a study in the context of Regional Climate Change over Eastern India” (Ongoing)
    • Project to MOES regarding "Aerosol-Cloud-Precipitation interactions over tropical urban atmosphere in the Eastern India” (Under Review)
    • Project to INCOIS regarding Ocean-Atmosphere Interaction (Under Review)

Research interests:

My research works involve in investigations on optical and physical properties of aerosols, and their impact on perturbation in Earth’s radiation budget and alteration in cloud formation and thereby, changes in precipitation. The investigations are mainly included different types of ground-based instruments and space-borne sensors using different measurement techniques and innovative methodologies in various atmospheric conditions. A few types of aerosols present in elevated desert dust layer, biomass plume, winter haze can travel long distances and produce higher warming effects over the Himalayas and marine regions like the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea. On the other hand, they also participate in cloud formation processes and changes raindrop size distribution. Over Antarctica, a pristine region of our globe, rainrate has decreased vertically down due to warmed lower atmosphere, indicating a signature of global warming. The scenario becomes complicated due to changes in hygrowscopicity characters of aerosols. Fog is one such example of extreme weathers, which makes significant changes such characteristics of aerosol that thereby, effects not only radiation budget and cloud formation, but also impact strongly on human health due to drastically deteriorating breathing air quality. While long-range traveling, aerosols also carry a few living microbiomes having large impact of environmental as well as societal aspect, initiated recently at my lab.   


Achievements:

  1.      Evaporation of raindrops over Antarctica: An Indication of warming effects as climate change
  2.      Low-Altitude rainfall occurring over Eastern Antarctica is a signature of global warming
  3.      Quantification of liquid water content using a new approach of analysis method of rain-drops size distribution for different types of precipitation over hill-top region of Eastern Himalayas
  4.    Winter-time haze worsening the air quality over urban regions of Indo-Gangetic Basin from ‘moderate’ to ‘very poor’ that aggravates human health risk factors

 

Contact:

Address: Physical Sciences
Unified Academic Campus
Bose Institute
EN-80, Sector V
Bidhan Nagar
Kolkata - 700 091, India
E-Mail: sanat[at]jcbose.ac.in
Phone: +91-33-25693313

Research:

My group is trying to answer related to following issues (Broad area of Subject)

  1. Aerosol-induced Earth's Radiation Budget over the Himalayas(Sub:  Physics)
  2. Simulation of Cloud Microphysical Processes (Sub:  Physics)
  3. Satellite Retrieval of Aerosol Parameters over the Himalayas (Sub: Physics/Mathematics/Computer Science)
  4. Antarctic Aerosol effects on Polar Climate Change (Sub: Physics/Atmospheric Sciences) 
  5. Investigations on Microbial Aerosols (Sub: Life Sciences)


Publications:


  1. Shahina Raushan Saikh and Sanat Kumar Das; "Fog-Induced Alteration in Airborne Microbial Community: a Study over Central Indo-Gangetic Plain in India", Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 2023.
  2. A. Roy, A. Chatterjee, C. Sarkar, Sanat Kumar Das, S. K. Ghosh, S. Raha, "A study on aerosol-cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) activation over eastern Himalaya in India", Atmospheric Research, Volume 189, 1 June 2017, Pages 69-81, ISSN 0169-8095.
  3. Sanat Kumar Das, A. Chatterjee, S. K. Ghosh, S. Raha, "An integrated campaign for investigation of winter-time continental haze over Indo-Gangetic Basin and its radiative effects", Science of The Total Environment, 533, 15, 370-382, 2015.
  4. Sanat Kumar Das, A. Chatterjee, S. K. Ghosh, S. Raha, "Fog-Induced Changes in Optical and Physical Properties of Transported Aerosols over Sundarban, India",  Aerosol and Air Quality Research, 2015.
  5. Sanat Kumar Das, J. P. Chen, M. V. Ratnam and A. Jayaraman, “Investigation of Radiative effects of the optically thick dust layer the Indian tropical region”, Ann. Geophys., 31, 647-663, 2013.


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Recognition:

  • Ramanujan Fellow,
  • Member of DST-FIST subject expert committee - Earth & Atmospheric Sciences Areas,
  • Institute of Repute (IoR) under the National Clean Air Mission, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change; and Central Pollution Control Board,

Teaching:

MSc.- Ph. D. SEM II : Electrodynamics II

Ph. D. Course Work : Statistical Analysis and Atmospheric Physics

Students:

Image Name Designation Department Campus Contact number Email
profile image Abu Mushtaque Junior Research Fellow Environmental Science Section Unified abu.mushtaque786@gmail.com
profile image Antara Pramanick Junior Research Fellow Environmental Science Section Unified antarastb@gmail.com
profile image Jashvant Kumar Prasad Junior Research Fellow Environmental Science Section Centenary jashvantkumarprasad@gmail.com
profile image Shahina Raushan Saikh Senior Research Fellow Environmental Science Section Unified shahina@jcbose.ac.in

Former:



Chayan Roychoudhury

Guest Research Worker. 

Research topic: Polar precipitation and air quality.

INSPIRE Fellowship 2020

Present Address:

Chemical and Environmental Engineering

University of Arizona, USA

Group News:

Research News

  • The detail of next ship cruise expedition on 'Investigation of Microbial Aerosol' over Indian Ocean is given below

  • JRF opening 1. Two in atmospheric Sciences on 'Radiative Effects of Black carbon over Himalayas', and 'Desert Dust effects on Phytoplankton blooming over Arabian Sea and its feedback on marine Environment' 2. One in Interdisciplinary Science on 'Investigation on Microbial Aerosols'. Applicants having UGC/CSIR NET fellowships in Physics, Atmospheric/Marine Sciences related subjects, Life Science are encouraged to apply these posts and may contact me before apply. 
  • Associate Professor from Nov, 2020
  • Shahina Raushan Saikh joins as JRF working on 'Role of Bio-Aerosols in Bio-Precipitation' on Nov, 2020
  • Selected a Member of DST-FIST Subject Expert Committee - Earth & Atmospheric Sciences Areas
  • Delivered an invited talk on "Atmospheric Aerosols: Are they really so important for the world?" as a delegate speaker in the one week national level Faculty Development Program "Recent Advancements In Physics" (RAIP), 2020 during 4th -8th September, 2020, organized by the Department of Applied Science (Physics), RCC Institute of Information Technology, Kolkata, W. B, India
  • Chayan Roychoudhury joins University of Arizona, USA on Aug, 2020
  • Leading an Integrated Field Campaign from the Himalayas to Sundarban mangrove forests (4th Jan - 20th Jan, 2020) on identification of most preferable transport medium of 'foreign' atmospheric microbes as a part of our project on the subject "Atmosphere-Biosphere Interaction". Sampling sites are Darjeeling - the Himalayan station; Siliguri - the foot-hill station; Malda - an urban site; Kolkata - A metropolitan site, and Sundarban - the mangrove forest site.
  • Ship-borne Experiment during 26 Jan -18 Feb, 2019 over the Arabian Sea on-board Sagar Sampada
  • Visit to the Darjeeling Lab of Bose Institute during 3-10 Jan 2019
  • Popular talk for school students on "Warming Cryosphere :  Atmospheric Investigations over Antarctica" on 20 Dec 2018
  • Brain-Storm Meeting at NARL, Gadanki during 19-20 Nov 2018
  • Invited talk in Air Pollution Extremes Workshop organised by the Columbia University, New York, USA during 30 Oct- 05 Nov 2018
  • Ship-bone Experiment during  27 June - 12 July 2018 over the Bay of Bengal on-board Sagar Manjusha