Environmental Snapshots for Satellite Multi-Angle Aerosol Retrieval Validation During the ACE-Asia Field Campaign

On five occasions spanning the ACE-Asia field experiment in spring 2001, the multi-angle imaging MISR instrument, flying aboard the NASA Earth Observing System s Terra satellite, took quarter-kilometer data over a 400-km-wide swath, coincident with high-quality observations by multiple instruments on two or more participating surface and airborne platforms. The cases capture a range of clean, polluted, and dusty aerosol conditions. They represent some of the best opportunities during ACE- Asia for comparative studies among intensive and extensive aerosol observations in their environmental context. We inter-compare related measurements and discuss the implications of apparent discrepancies for each case, at a level of detail appropriate to the analysis of satellite observations. With a three-stage optical modeling process, we synthesize data from multiple sources into layer-by-layer snapshots that summarize what we know about the state of the atmosphere and surface at key locations during each event, to be used for satellite vicarious calibration and aerosol retrieval validation. Aerosols within a few kilometers of the surface were composed primarily of pollution and Asian dust mixtures, as expected. Accumulation and coarse-mode particle size distributions varied little among the events studied, but column aerosol optical depth changed by more than a factor of four, and the near-surface proportion of dust ranged from about 25% to 50%. The amount of absorbing material in the sub-micron fraction was highest when near-surface winds crossed Beijing and the Korean Peninsula, and was considerably lower for all other cases. Ambiguities remain in segregating size distributions by composition; having simultaneous single scattering albedo measurements at more than a single wavelength would significantly reduce the resulting optical model uncertainties, as would integral constraints from surface and atmospheric radiative flux observations. The consistency of component particle micro-physical properties among the five events, even in this relatively complex aerosol environment, suggests that global, satellite-derived maps of aerosol-air-mass-type extent, combined with targeted in situ measurements, can provide a detailed global picture of aerosol behavior. Further joint satellite and in situ analysis is needed to assess the spatial variability of both intensive and extensive aerosol properties within aerosol air masses in two spatial dimensions.