Assessment of dust size retrievals based on AERONET: a case study of radiative closure from visible‐near‐infrared to thermal infrared

Zheng, J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3886-7913, Zhang, Z. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9491-1654, DeSouza‐Machado, S., Ryder, C. L. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9892-6113, Garnier, A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2324-131X, Di Biagio, C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8273-6211, Yang, P. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6803-9903, Welton, E. J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0208-4861, Yu, H., Barreto, A. and Gonzalez, M. Y. (2024) Assessment of dust size retrievals based on AERONET: a case study of radiative closure from visible‐near‐infrared to thermal infrared. Geophysical Research Letters, 51 (4). e2023GL106808. ISSN 1944-8007 doi: 10.1029/2023gl106808

Abstract/Summary

Super‐coarse dust particles (diameters >10 μm) are evidenced to be more abundant in the atmosphere than model estimates and contribute significantly to the dust climate impacts. Since super‐coarse dust accounts for less dust extinction in the visible‐to‐near‐infrared (VIS‐NIR) than in the thermal infrared (TIR) spectral regime, they are suspected to be underestimated by remote sensing instruments operates only in VIS‐NIR, including Aerosol Robotic Networks (AERONET), a widely used data set for dust model validation. In this study, we perform a radiative closure assessment using the AERONET‐retrieved size distribution in comparison with the collocated Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) TIR observations with comprehensive uncertainty analysis. The consistently warm bias in the comparisons suggests a potential underestimation of super‐coarse dust in the AERONET retrievals due to the limited VIS‐NIR sensitivity. An extra super‐coarse mode included in the AERONET‐retrieved size distribution helps improve the TIR closure without deteriorating the retrieval accuracy in the VIS‐NIR.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/115547
Identification Number/DOI	10.1029/2023gl106808
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Uncontrolled Keywords	General Earth and Planetary Sciences, Geophysics
Publisher	American Geophysical Union (AGU)
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