A21E-3082:
The Impacts of Oceanic Bubbles on the Elevated Southern Oceans Anomaly (ESOA) Over High Latitude Oceans
Tuesday, 16 December 2014
Matt Christensen, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND, United States, Jianglong Zhang, U of N Dakota-Atmos Sciences, Grand Forks, ND, United States, Jeffrey S. Reid, Marine Meteorology Division, Monterey, CA, United States and Edward J. Hyer, Naval Research Laboratory, Marine Meteorology Division, Monterey, CA, United States
Abstract:
Oceanic bubbles, which originate from breaking waves, can reflect solar radiation and thus introduce perturbations to ocean surface reflectance patterns. Unlike whitecaps, which are also generated from breaking waves, the impacts of oceanic bubbles on atmospheric aerosol retrievals have yet to receive attention from the community. In this study, a linked oceanic and atmospheric radiative transfer model is constructed. The linked radiative transfer system is validated through inter-comparison with MODIS radiance data and is further applied for evaluating the potential uncertainties in satellite aerosol optical depth retrievals due to oceanic bubbles. An emphasis of the study is to explore the contribution of oceanic bubbles to the Elevated Southern Oceans Anomaly (ESOA), a band of unusually high AOD values present in the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) aerosol products over high latitude southern oceans. Past studies suggest that the greatest part of the ESOA feature is from cloud contamination but that clouds cannot explain the entire observed AOD anomaly. This study examines the linkage between the ESOA phenomenon and oceanic bubbles.
