As is often the case in the winter, a thick river of haze
hovered over the Indo-Gangetic Plain in January 2013, casting a
gray pall over northern India and Bangladesh. On January 11, the
Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s
Aqua satellite captured this image of haze hugging the Himalayas
and spilling out into the Ganges delta and Bengal Sea. The haze
likely resulted from a combination of urban and industrial
pollution, agricultural fires, and a regional meteorological
phenomenon known as a temperature inversion. Usually the air
higher in the atmosphere is cooler than the air near the
surface, a situation that allows warm air to rise and disperse
pollutants. However, cold air often settles over northern India
in the winter, trapping warmer air—and pollution—close to the
surface, where it has the greatest impact on human health. Air
quality has emerged as a significant problem for India and
Bangladesh in the past decade. A study conducted by Tel Aviv
University researchers and publish