HR: 10:45h
AN: A11G-02    [PDF]
TI: A long term record of aerosol absorption from TOMS observations
AU: Syniuk, A
AF: University of Maryland, Baltimore County, 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, md 21250 United States
AU: * Torres, O
AF: University of Maryland, Baltimore County, 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, md 21250 United States
AU: Bhartia, P
AF: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 916, Greenbelt, MD 20771 United States
AB: The discovery of the TOMS capability to detect the presence of absorbing aerosols made possible, for the first time in the history of aerosol sensing from space, the observation of the spatial and temporal variability of carbonaceous and mineral aerosols, over the oceans and the continents. In spite of its qualitative nature, the TOMS aerosol index has been found to be a very useful tool in a variety of applications. In addition to the Aerosol Index product, an inversion procedure was developed to transform the information content of the aerosol index into physically meaningful aerosol parameters: aerosol optical depth and single scattering albedo. Thus, the long term record (1979-1993, 1996-present) of TOMS near UV observations has been used to produce the only global data set on aerosol absorption. The TOMS global climatological record of aerosol absorption optical will be presented and discussed. The results presented here constitute the first long-term nearly global climatological record of aerosol absorption optical depth over both land and water surfaces over regions and times (1979 to present) where ground-based observations are not available.
DE: 0305 Aerosols and particles (0345, 4801)
DE: 0345 Pollution--urban and regional (0305)
DE: 0368 Troposphere--constituent transport and chemistry
DE: 1600 GLOBAL CHANGE (New category)
DE: 1640 Remote sensing
SC: Atmospheric Sciences [A]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting