Natural and Anthropogenic Aerosols in the UTLS in Recent Decade: Sources and the Role of Monsoon Transport

Chin, Mian

Natural and Anthropogenic Aerosols in the UTLS in Recent Decade: Sources and the Role of Monsoon Transport

Monday, 19 March 2018: 11:45

Salon Vilaflor (Hotel Botanico)

Mian Chin¹, Huisheng Bian², Valentina Aquila³, Qian Tan⁴, Peter Richard Colarco⁵, John Philip Burrows⁶, Adam E Bourassa⁷, Landon A Rieger⁷, D A Degenstein⁷, Jean-Paul Vernier⁸ and Bengt G Martinsson⁹, (1)NASA Goddard SFC, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (2)Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology, Baltimore, MD, United States, (3)American University, Department of Environmental Science, Washington, DC, United States, (4)Bay Area Environmental Research Institute Moffett Field, Moffett Field, CA, United States, (5)NASA GSFC, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (6)University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany, (7)University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada, (8)Science Systems and Applications, Inc., Hampton, VA, United States, (9)Lund University, Lund, Sweden

Abstract:

We present our study of decadal variations of UTLS aerosols in terms of the origins and transport mechanisms through modeling and analysis of observations. We use the global model GEOS-5 that incorporates emissions from anthropogenic, biomass burning, volcanic, and other natural sources including dust and sea salt, to simulate the aerosols and track their origins. The model results are compared to satellite observations from CALIOP, OSIRIS, and Envisat instruments as well as aircraft observations. Although volcanic sources exerts large, sporadical perturbation to the UTLS aerosol composition, mainly due to the nature of volcanic eruptions and relatively high altitude injections, anthropogenic aerosols, not only from Asia but also from other regions, are transported from surface to high altitudes mainly via the monsoonal convective transport with well-organized seasonal cycles in the UT region. We estimate the relative contributions of natural and anthropogenic aerosols in the UTLS and discuss the implication of the continuous increase of Asian anthropogenic emissions.