Abstract View
A Novel Single-scattering Property Database of Irregular Aerosol Particles for Satellite-based Aerosol Remote Sensing
MASANORI SAITO, Ping Yang, Xu Liu, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Texas A&M University
Abstract Number: 509
Working Group: Satellite-Data and Environmental Health Applications
Abstract
Atmospheric aerosol particles associated with air pollution, dust storms, and volcanic eruptions have substantial impacts on Earth’s environment and human health. Satellite observations have been used to monitor the global distributions of aerosol particle characteristics such as aerosol optical depth (AOD). Recent studies have focused on the abundance of fine particles with a diameter less than 2.5 µm, which emphasizes the importance of size characterizations of aerosol particles. However, the complexity of aerosol optical and microphysical properties poses a significant challenge for a better understanding of the aerosol characteristics based on spaceborne observations. Aerosol optical properties such as the refractive index, which typical satellite-based aerosol retrieval approaches assumes to be constant, may have significant spatial and temporal variations. Majority of aerosol particles, in particular intermediate-to-large size particles, are non-spherical. To reliably monitor the global distribution of aerosol particles with satellite measurements, it is necessary to know the spectral single-scattering properties of various aerosol particles including their particle sizes, refractive indices, and shapes. This presentation reports on a single-scattering property database of various dust aerosol particles by using the physical-geometric optics method (PGOM) for large particle size domain and the invariant-imbedding T-matrix (II-TM) method for small to intermediate particle size domain. These two computational methods can compute reliable single-scattering properties including the values in the backscattering direction. Comparisons of the scattering properties between laboratory measurements and the present simulations show reasonable consistency. Furthermore, we apply the dust aerosol scattering properties to simulate various spaceborne satellite observations, including multiangle polarimetric observations, thermal infrared observations, and lidar observations. In this presentation, we will demonstrate the capability of current satellite observations with the scattering property database to infer aerosol optical properties including particle size and AOD.