A41F-3110:
Comparison of Dust and Smoke over the Tropical Atlantic Ocean from MODIS and CALIOP Remote Sensing Observations
Thursday, 18 December 2014
Yan Zhang1,2, Hongbin Yu1,3, Mian Chin1, Luke Ellison1 and Maksym Petrenko1, (1)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (2)GESTAR/MSU, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (3)University of Maryland College Park, College Park, MD, United States
Abstract:
A complex mixture of dust and smoke transported from North Africa over the tropical Atlantic Ocean in the boreal winter poses a big challenge to aerosol characterization and assessment of their climate impacts from satellite remote sensing observations. In this study, we characterize dust and smoke aerosol with an integration of multiple sensors (MODIS, AIRS, CALIOP). We analyzed the aerosol optical depth (AOD) and fine-mode fraction from MODIS and CO from AIRS during January 25 - 31 in year 2008 off the coast of West Africa. We found that the multi-sensor satellite measurements well capture the evolution of dust and smoke mixture in space and time as revealed by ground and aircraft-based measurements during the SAMUM-2 campaign. We then carried out a multiyear (2006-2013) comparative analysis of wintertime dust AODs over the eastern tropical Atlantic Ocean based on MODIS and CALIOP observations. We will discuss the consistence and inconsistence between MODIS and CALIOP in terms of sub-regions, aerosol loading, and aerosol vertical distribution in the presentation.
