TY - JOUR
T1 - Interpretation of Aura satellite observations of CO and aerosol index related to the December 2006 Australia fires
AU - Luo, Mingzhao
AU - Boxe, Christopher
AU - Jiang, Jonathan
AU - Nassar, Ray
AU - Livesey, Nathaniel
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to thank the helpful discussions on this work with Drs. Jennifer Logan, Jimmie Lopez, Line Jourdain, Lenny Pfister and O. Torres. J. H. Jiang acknowledges the support from the NASA ACMAP program. The research described in this paper was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Funding at the University of Toronto was provided by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada .
PY - 2010/12
Y1 - 2010/12
N2 - Enhanced carbon monoxide (CO) in the upper troposphere (UT) is shown by nearly collocated Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) and Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) measurements near and down-wind from the known wildfire region of SE Australia from December 12th-19th, 2006. Enhanced ultraviolet (UV) aerosol index (AI) derived from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) measurements correlates with these high CO concentrations. The Hybrid Single Particle Langrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) model back trajectories trace selected air parcels, where TES observes enhanced CO in the upper and lower troposphere, to the SE Australia fire region as their initial location. Simultaneously, they show a lack of vertical advection along their tracks. TES retrieved CO vertical profiles in the higher and lower southern latitudes are examined together with the averaging kernels and show that TES CO retrievals are most sensitive at approximately 300-400. hPa. The enhanced CO observed by TES in the upper (215. hPa) and lower (681. hPa) troposphere are, therefore, influenced by mid-tropospheric CO. GEOS-Chem model simulations with an 8-day emission inventory, as the wildfire source over Australia, are sampled to the TES/MLS observation times and locations. These simulations only show CO enhancements in the lower troposphere near and down-wind from the wildfire region of SE Australia with drastic underestimates of UT CO plumes. Although CloudSat along-track ice-water content curtains are examined to see whether possible vertical convection events can explain the high UT CO values, sparse observations of collocated Aura CO and CloudSat along-track ice-water content measurements for the single event precludes any conclusive correlation. Vertical convection that uplifts the fire-induced CO (i.e., most notably referred to as pyro-cumulonimbus (pyroCb)) may provide an explanation for the incongruence between these simulations and the TES/MLS observations of enhanced CO in the UT.
AB - Enhanced carbon monoxide (CO) in the upper troposphere (UT) is shown by nearly collocated Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) and Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) measurements near and down-wind from the known wildfire region of SE Australia from December 12th-19th, 2006. Enhanced ultraviolet (UV) aerosol index (AI) derived from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) measurements correlates with these high CO concentrations. The Hybrid Single Particle Langrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) model back trajectories trace selected air parcels, where TES observes enhanced CO in the upper and lower troposphere, to the SE Australia fire region as their initial location. Simultaneously, they show a lack of vertical advection along their tracks. TES retrieved CO vertical profiles in the higher and lower southern latitudes are examined together with the averaging kernels and show that TES CO retrievals are most sensitive at approximately 300-400. hPa. The enhanced CO observed by TES in the upper (215. hPa) and lower (681. hPa) troposphere are, therefore, influenced by mid-tropospheric CO. GEOS-Chem model simulations with an 8-day emission inventory, as the wildfire source over Australia, are sampled to the TES/MLS observation times and locations. These simulations only show CO enhancements in the lower troposphere near and down-wind from the wildfire region of SE Australia with drastic underestimates of UT CO plumes. Although CloudSat along-track ice-water content curtains are examined to see whether possible vertical convection events can explain the high UT CO values, sparse observations of collocated Aura CO and CloudSat along-track ice-water content measurements for the single event precludes any conclusive correlation. Vertical convection that uplifts the fire-induced CO (i.e., most notably referred to as pyro-cumulonimbus (pyroCb)) may provide an explanation for the incongruence between these simulations and the TES/MLS observations of enhanced CO in the UT.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.rse.2010.07.003
DO - 10.1016/j.rse.2010.07.003
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:77956878131
SN - 0034-4257
VL - 114
SP - 2853
EP - 2862
JO - Remote Sensing of Environment
JF - Remote Sensing of Environment
IS - 12
ER -