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Ionic composition of wet precipitation over the southern slope of central Himalayas, Nepal

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Abstract

Severe atmospheric pollution transported to Himalayas from South Asia may affect fragile ecosystem and can be harmful for human health in the region. In order to understand the atmospheric chemistry in the southern slope of central Himalayas, where the data is limited, precipitation has been sampled at four sites: Kathmandu (1,314 m), Dhunche (2,065 m), Dimsa (3,078 m), and Gosainkunda (4,417 m) in Nepal for over a 1-year period characterized by an urban, rural, and remote sites, respectively. HCO3 − is the dominant anion, while the NH4 + is the dominant cation in precipitation at the four sites. Generally, most of ions (e.g., SO4 2−, NO3 −, NH4 +, HCO3 −, and Ca2+) have higher concentrations in urban site compared to the rural sites. Neutralization factor calculation showed that precipitation in the region is highly neutralized by NH4 + and Ca2+. Empirical orthogonal function and correlation analysis indicated that the precipitation chemistry was mostly influenced by crustal, anthropogenic, and marine sources in Nepal. Among different sites, urban area was mostly influenced by anthropogenic inputs and crustal dusts, whereas remote sites were mostly from marine and crustal sources. Seasonal variations show higher ionic concentrations during non-monsoon seasons mainly due to limited precipitation amount. On the other hand, lower ionic concentrations were observed during monsoon season when higher amount of precipitation washes out aerosols. Thus, precipitation chemistry from this work can provide a useful database to evaluate atmospheric environment and its impacts on ecosystem in the southern slope of central Himalayas, Nepal.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 41225002, 41201057, and 41201074), the Strategic Priority Research Program (B) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant no. XDB03030504), and Academy of Finland (264307). We are also thankful to our staffs at the four stations for their hard work during the collection of precipitation samples. We are grateful to the comments provided by the anonymous reviewers from which we were most benefited.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Tibetan Environment Changes and Land Surface Processes, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, PO Box 2871, Beijing, 100101, China

    Lekhendra Tripathee, Shichang Kang, Jie Huang, Zoe Lucia Lüthi & Junming Guo

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Lekhendra Tripathee, Zoe Lucia Lüthi & Junming Guo

  3. State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Shichang Kang

  4. Laboratory of Green Chemistry, Lappeenranta University of Technology, Mikkeli, Finland

    Lekhendra Tripathee, Jie Huang, Mika Sillanpää, Chhatra Mani Sharma & Junming Guo

  5. Human and Natural Resources Studies Centre, Kathmandu University, PO Box 6250, Kathmandu, Nepal

    Chhatra Mani Sharma

  6. School of Environmental Science and Management, Pokhara University, Pokhara, Nepal

    Rukumesh Paudyal

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  1. Lekhendra Tripathee
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Correspondence to Shichang Kang.

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Tripathee, L., Kang, S., Huang, J. et al. Ionic composition of wet precipitation over the southern slope of central Himalayas, Nepal. Environ Sci Pollut Res 21, 2677–2687 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-013-2197-5

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