HR: 1340h
AN: A33A-0871    [Abstracts]
TI: Aerosol Effects on the Surface Radiation Budget over the Indian Monsoon Region
AU: * Liu, H
EM: hql@atmos.umd.edu
AF: Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 United States
AU: Wonsick, M
EM: mwonsick@atmos.umd.edu
AF: Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 United States
AU: Pinker, R T
EM: pinker@atmos.umd.edu
AF: Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 United States
AB: Southwest Asia is a region with the heaviest aerosol burden in the world. Dominated by the mixture of mineral dust and industrial pollution, aerosol plumes can spread over most of the North Indian Ocean. The high aerosol levels affect the amount of solar radiation that reaches the surface and this can lead to changes in the hydrological cycle. During the Indian Ocean Experiment (INDOEX) it was shown that mean clear sky solar radiative heating at the ocean surface decreased by up-to 30 Wm-2. Such changes would affect the surface energy budget and the release of latent heat into the atmosphere. To estimate the impact of aerosols over India and the adjoining regions it is necessary to use satellite observations. While most of the globe has been covered for about twenty years with satellite observations that depict the diurnal cycle, over India, there is a gap in observations from geostationary satellites. Recently, this has been changed. Meteosat-5 has been moved over India during INDOEX around 1998 and observations continue. Also, large scale information on aerosols is becoming available from a variety of sources. In this study used will be aerosol information as merged from three independent sources, namely, GOCART model simulations, MODIS retrievals, and AERONET observations. Data from METEOSAT-5 for one full annual cycle spanning the period from August 2002 to July 2003 will be used for estimating the surface radiative fluxes and the effects of aerosols at regional scale. Monsoon regions are of particular interest to the scientific objectives of the WCRP Coordinated Enhanced Observing Period (CEOP) and as such, this study can contribute to its objectives.
DE: 0305 Aerosols and particles (0345, 4801, 4906)
DE: 0360 Radiation: transmission and scattering
SC: Atmospheric Sciences [A]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005