Assessment of Dust Size Retrievals Based on AERONET: A Case Study of Radiative Closure From VisibleNearInfrared to Thermal Infrared Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • AbstractSupercoarse dust particles (diameters >10m) are evidenced to be more abundant in the atmosphere than model estimates and contribute significantly to the dust climate impacts. Since supercoarse dust accounts for less dust extinction in the visibletonearinfrared (VISNIR) than in the thermal infrared (TIR) spectral regime, they are suspected to be underestimated by remote sensing instruments operates only in VISNIR, including Aerosol Robotic Networks (AERONET), a widely used data set for dust model validation. In this study, we perform a radiative closure assessment using the AERONETretrieved size distribution in comparison with the collocated Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) TIR observations with comprehensive uncertainty analysis. The consistently warm bias in the comparisons suggests a potential underestimation of supercoarse dust in the AERONET retrievals due to the limited VISNIR sensitivity. An extra supercoarse mode included in the AERONETretrieved size distribution helps improve the TIR closure without deteriorating the retrieval accuracy in the VISNIR.

published proceedings

  • Geophysical Research Letters

altmetric score

  • 0.75

author list (cited authors)

  • Zheng, J., Zhang, Z., DeSouzaMachado, S., Ryder, C. L., Garnier, A., Di Biagio, C., ... Gonzalez, M. Y.

citation count

  • 0

complete list of authors

  • Zheng, Jianyu||Zhang, Zhibo||DeSouza‐Machado, Sergio||Ryder, Claire L||Garnier, Anne||Di Biagio, Claudia||Yang, Ping||Welton, Ellsworth J||Yu, Hongbin||Barreto, Africa||Gonzalez, Margarita Y

publication date

  • February 2024