Introduction

Anthropogenic climate change is a serious global issue that requires international cooperation
and solutions1. The main culprit is CO2 emissions due to human activities. The atmospheric
CO2 loading has increased by 50% over the last four decades, resulting in a 1K rise in global
temperatures2. As a result, global efforts to reduce emissions are now being considered and
implemented, including the Paris Agreement3. Although the greenhouse effect of GHGs is
well comprehended, the climate effects of aerosols are less well understood. This contributes
to large uncertainties in, for example, radiative forcing4. Overall, aerosols cool the climate.
This is either done by interactions with sunlight or indirectly through aerosol-cloud
interactions. The eradication of shortwave radiation by aerosol particles reduces surface-
reaching solar radiation. The magnitude of this extinction is proportional to the columnar
loading of aerosols, resulting in a decrease in longwave radiation emitted by the earth's
surface. As a result, global warming is obscured (the total warming is reduced). This
contributes to cumulative climate cooling. Because of the complexity of aerosol composition
and lifecycles, the amplitude of this aerosol-induced cooling effect remains incredibly
uncertain.
Co-emitted "climate cooling" aerosols are substantially more short-lived and so will decline
more quickly5. They will be decreased because of climate change mitigation measures, which
naturally target emissions of longer-lived greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4, and N2O). Demasking
the aerosol cooling will result in net climatic warming, thus negating the intended effect. This
effect of mitigation has so far garnered little attention in the field of climate policy.
Numerous negative consequences, including disruption of the planet's biogeochemical cycles,
would result from this unanticipated warming and changes in the earth's radiative budget.
Both politicians and scientists are interested in the empirical assessment of aerosol demasking
in this situation.
The most current IPCC report1 summarizes our understanding of the relative contribution of
GHGs and aerosols to the radiative forcing of climate change. According to the study, the
total radiative forcing has increased from pre-industrial times to the present by +4.1 W m -2
(0.8 W m-2), with CO2 forcing accounting for 2.1 W m-2 and non-CO2 forcing for 2 W m-2.
There is substantially greater uncertainty surrounding the predicted force caused by the
increase in aerosols, which is -1.4 W m-2 (0 to -2.8 W m-2). There is a lack of direct
observational evidence on this aerosol filtering effect. The COVID lockdown in South Asia
accidentally led to a demasking experiment, which gave rise to a chance to control this
process.
Aerosol emissions are also significantly influenced by GHG emission sources, including
transportation, industry, and agriculture. Aerosol emissions are the biggest environmental
issue on the planet and reducing emissions from these industries can have a huge positive
impact on climate change issues. . Losing aerosols also means losing a potent climate-
6–9

cooling agent, which has thus far helped to lessen or cover up the climatic warming brought
on by GHG. Aerosols have a short atmospheric lifetime compared to major anthropogenic
GHGs, which can range from ten years to more than a century (e.g., CO 2, CH4, and N2O).
This means that when we reduce emissions, the aerosols and their cooling influence on the
climate will vanish quickly. Whereas the effects of GHGs on the climate will last for decades.
Reduced climatic warming would result from a decrease in the light-absorbing component of
aerosols like black carbon (BC). The demasking effect of lowering aerosols would, however,
have the overall effect of increasing heat for a few decades until the mitigation effect of
longer-lived GHG takes over. This issue must be considered while carefully crafting a policy
to mitigate climate change. There aren't enough observational restrictions.
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus illness (COVID-19) a
pandemic on March 11, 202010 as a result of the disease's 2019 breakout and swift global
expansion. Globally, tight limitations were imposed, with most impacted nations instituting
lockdowns and behavioural limitations, such as relegating the general populace to their
homes. As a result, the levels of some archetypal short-lived manmade air pollutants, such as
PM2.5 (fine particulate matter) and NOX (NO + NO2), decreased in the impacted areas10-16.
Long-lived GHG levels, nevertheless, remained significantly less agitated. This is a one-of-a-
kind chance to empirically research and limit the effects of caused by human activity
comparatively short-lived aerosols on the local climate—a large-scale "geophysical
experiment." We concentrate on South Asia's high pollution levels because there, significant
aerosol-induced anthropogenic climate masking effects are anticipated.
By comparing the radiation balance and aerosol loadings across the whole South Asian
region even during COVID-19 slow-down period to earlier years, this study investigates the
aerosol masking effect. Our study's geographic scope is South Asia (SA; 0-35°N and 60-
95°E), which encompasses Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India. Additionally, we examine the
shifts over the Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP; 20-30°N and 75-84°E), a vast area with a
population of over 650 million people that encompasses eastern Pakistan, all of north India,
and western Bangladesh. The IGP is South Asia's largest, most polluted region (and perhaps
the world). We depend on satellite data for both the columnar loading of aerosols and top-of-
the-atmosphere radiative forcing because there aren't enough ground-based data points
available.
Over 15 years of ground-based data at the Maldives Climate Observatory at Hanimaadhoo
(MCOH; 6.77° N, 73.18° E), a local receptor site for aerosols and air pollution 17,18, provide
confidence in the conclusions drawn from satellite observations. Air masses from megacities
including Mumbai, Kolkata, and Dhaka were among the air masses that originated at MCOH
89% of the time during the March to May period that this study was focused on
(Supplementary Fig.1) (Fig. 1 A-C). Aerosol number density, chemical composition,
including that of black carbon, radiation fluxes, scattering, and absorption coefficient of
aerosols are among the observations. To compare with satellite predictions of radiative
forcing, we also rely on a radiative forcing model 19. While most of our conclusions about the
demasking of aerosol forcing are dependent on direct observations, we combine MCOH data
with model-estimated forcing to evaluate the factors causing the observed changes.