Quantifying the climatological cloud-free shortwave direct radiative forcing of mineral dust aerosol over the Red Sea

Abstract:

While there have been a number of campaigns designed to probe dust-climate interactions over much of the world, relatively little attention has been paid to the Red Sea. Because of the remoteness of the area, satellite retrievals provide a crucial tool for assessing aerosol loading over the Sea. However, agreement between aerosol properties inferred from measurements from different instruments, and even in some cases from the same measurements using different retrieval algorithms can be poor, particularly in the case of mineral dust. Ground based measurements, which can be used to evaluate retrievals, are thus highly desirable. Here we take advantage of ship-based hand-held sun-photometer (microtops) observations gathered within the framework of NASA Aerosol Maritime Network from a series of cruises, which took place across the Red Sea during 2011 and 2013. To our knowledge these data represent the first set of detailed aerosol measurements from the Sea. They thus provide a unique opportunity to assess the performance of satellite retrieval algorithms in this region.

Here we used the microtops measurements to evaluate the performance of co-located satellite retrievals from the Spinning Enhanced Visible and InfraRed Imager (SEVIRI) and the MODerate Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS). Both algorithms show good agreement with the ship-based measurements and with each other, although it appears that the MODIS cloud detection scheme in particular is rather conservative. The stand alone Rapid Radiative Transfer Model (RRTM) driven by reanalysis meteorological fields is used to estimate the cloud-free aerosol direct radiative effect at the surface and TOA along the ship tracks. The TOA effects are compared to co-located measurements from the Geostationary Earth Radiation Budget (GERB) instrument. Having evaluated both the quality of the retrievals and the ability of the model to capture the associated radiative effect, we will present a climatology of aerosol loading over the Red Sea using 5 years of SEVIRI data. We use this climatology to simulate the associated cloud-free direct radiative effect due to aerosol in order to quantify the climatological impact of aerosol on the radiative energy budget of the region.