THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE OF CO₂, NO₂, SO₂ & CH₄ IN PUNJAB REGION, INDIA

Abstract. Anthropogenic activities have caused inferior quality of environment and threatens all living forms on the planet. Everyday human activities create havoc to earth’s climate. Any change in green-house gases affects the balance of earth’s ecosystem. The major concern of increased trace gases is their ability to trap sun’s energy, which is rising surface temperature. The rise in temperature is causing many extreme climatic events, melting of glaciers, uneven rainfall pattern, floods and droughts etc. The land of five rivers, Punjab is chosen as study area. The major green-house gases emission source is crop residue burning. This study forecast concentration of carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide and methane for year 2021–2025 using satellite data. The methodology involves time series analysis using linear regression for three different iterations with different training period. The results shows that maximum concentration for CO₂ in the year 2025 for 1st iteration is 424.46±5.58 ppm, 2nd iteration is 424.37±7.93ppm and 3rd iteration is 425.21±4.55ppm. The maximum concentration for SO₂ rises to 0.19±0.03 DU for 1st iteration, 0.18±0.02DU for 2nd iteration and 0.19±0.03DU for 3rd iteration. Similarly, NO₂ concentration rises to 24.45±2.56ppm for 1st iteration, 23.57±2.67ppm for 2nd and 26.85±2.99ppm for 3rd. Also, CH₄ concentration rises to 1933.44±12.00ppbv for 1st iteration, 1932±13.81ppbv for 2nd and 1934±12.02ppbv for 3rd iteration. The study further concluded that the type of aerosols in the study area can be majorly categorized in anthropogenic aerosols. They are evenly distributed in the other three categories.