Exploring aerosols near clouds with high-spatial-resolution aircraft remote sensing during SEAC4 RS

Journal of Geophysical Research. Atmospheres : JGR
Robert S SpencerSteven Platnick

Abstract

Since aerosols are important to our climate system, we seek to observe the variability of aerosol properties within cloud systems. When applied to the satellite-borne Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), the Dark Target (DT) retrieval algorithm provides global aerosol optical depth (AOD at 0.55 μm) in cloud-free scenes. Since MODIS' resolution (500 m pixels, 3 km or 10 km product) is too coarse for studying near-cloud aerosol, we ported the DT algorithm to the high-resolution (~50 m pixels) enhanced-MODIS Airborne Simulator (eMAS), which flew on the high-altitude ER-2 during the Studies of Emissions, Atmospheric Composition, Clouds and Climate Coupling by Regional Surveys (SEAC4RS) Airborne Science Campaign over the U.S. in 2013. We find that even with aggressive cloud screening, the ~0.5 km eMAS retrievals show enhanced AOD, especially within 6 km of a detected cloud. To determine the cause of the enhanced AOD, we analyze additional eMAS products (cloud retrievals and degraded-resolution AOD), co-registered Cloud Physics Lidar (CPL) profiles, MODIS aerosol retrievals, and ground-based Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) observations. We also define spatial metrics to indicate local cloud distributions near each...Continue Reading

References

Jun 25, 2002·Applied Optics·Matthew McGillBeat Schmid
Jan 25, 2014·Science·Daniel RosenfeldLeo Donner
May 26, 2016·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·John H SeinfeldRobert Wood
Jan 1, 2017·IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing : a Publication of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society·Steven PlatnickJérôme Riedi
Sep 27, 2017·Journal of Geophysical Research. Atmospheres : JGR·T VárnaiT F Eck
Aug 24, 2016·Journal of Geophysical Research. Atmospheres : JGR·Guoyong WenRobert Levy

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