Seminar: Using both shortwave and longwave remote sensing techniques to understand the properties and radiative effects of dust aerosols

Abstract

Mineral dust is one of the most abundant types of aerosols in the atmosphere. It is recognized as an integral component of the Earth system that influences weather and climate via a suite of complex interactions with the energy, water, and carbon cycles. Dust storms cause detrimental losses of human life and economic activities through degrading air quality, spreading diseases, disrupting transportation, and reducing efficiency of solar power generation. Dust aerosols play a significant role in Earth’s radiative budget through their radiative effects in both solar shortwave (SW) and thermal infrared (TIR) longwave (LW) spectral regions. At present and in the near future, satellite remote sensing is the only means to monitor dust-related weather activities and infer dust aerosol properties quantitatively on a regional to global scale.

In this presentation, I will first provide a brief overview of the remote sensing techniques to retrieve the microphysical and optical properties of aerosols, from passive radiometric (i.e., MODIS-like) and polarimetric (i.e., POLDER-like) based techniques to active lidars (i.e., CALIOP-like). Then I will introduce the recent advances in thermal infrared (TIR) based dust remote sensing techniques, including a novel method to retrieve dust optical depth and particle size using the combination of TIR and lidar observations. Finally, I will discuss the gap between the SW (UV to NIR) and LW based dust remote sensing techniques and how the combination both SW and LW observation may help us better constrain dust properties, in particular the dust particle size and LW dust DRE.