The temporal distributions of meteorological drivers and air pollutants over Dibrugarh, a location in the upper Brahmaputra basin, are studied using observations, models and reanalysis data. The study aims to assess the performance of the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with chemistry (WRF-Chem), the WRF coupled with Sulfur Transport dEposition Model (WRF-STEM), and Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) model over Dibrugarh for the first time. The meteorological variables and air pollutants viz., black carbon(BC), carbon monoxide(CO), sulphur dioxide(SO₂), Ozone(O₃), and oxides of Nitrogen(NO_x) obtained from WRF-Chem, WRF-STEM and CAMS are evaluated with observations. The source region tagged CO simulated by WRF-STEM delineate the regional contribution of CO. The principal source region of anthropogenic CO over Dibrugarh is North-Eastern India with a 59% contribution followed by that from China (17%), Indo-Gangetic Plains (14%), Bangladesh (6%), other parts of India (3%) and other regions (1%). Further, the BC-CO regression analysis is used to delineate the local emission sources. The BC-CO correlations estimated from models (0.99 for WRF-Chem, 0.96 for WRF-STEM, 0.89 for CAMS), and reanalysis (0.8 for Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2 (MERRA2) are maximum in pre-monsoon whereas surface observations show highest correlations (0.81) in winter. In pre-monsoon season, 90% of the modeled CO is due to biomass burning over Dibrugarh.

Intensive fire ignition and cracker work activities takes place during the festival of light called Diwali in India, celebrated for a period of few days in the month of October or November every year. The firecracker releases several pollutants [such as particulate matter (PM), black carbon (BC), organics, trace gases] near the surface. The effect of firecrackers on the atmospheric constituents is evaluated over Dibrugarh by monitoring the concentrations of PM, PM10 (particle radius ≤10 µm), PM2.5 (particle radius ≤2.5 µm) and BC during the Diwali and post-Diwali days (5 days after the Diwali Festival) in the years 2009 and 2010. Monthly average concentrations of each species except for the Diwali and post Diwali days is considered as the background concentrations. The concentration levels of the pollutants as recorded on the Diwali days are found to be a number of times higher (5.33 and 2.50 times for PM10, 5.74 and 2.65 times for PM2.5, 1.21 and 1.66 times for BC for the year 2009 and 2010, respectively) than the background levels at the peak hours of the fire work activity. To delineate the contribution of fireworks to the high concentrations of the species we performed air mass back trajectory analysis using the NOAA–HYSPLIT model in order to examine the existence of the transported aerosols. The ten day accumulated MODIS fire maps are also analyzed to mark out the contribution of aerosols from biomass burning. These analyses reveal that the higher concentrations of near surface aerosols including BC during the festival is due to the local effect of firework activities, neither because of long–range transport nor due to biomass burning activities. However, the higher concentration of pollutants for short periods has not degraded air quality substantially to cause health risks to people exposed to the festival in this environment