Intense wildfire and volcanic eruption emit a large quantity of aerosol in a form of plume that triggers various social and climatic consequences. Accurate simulation of such explosive emission events and the prediction of their consequences require a knowledge of the plume top height that could be estimated in several different approaches. This paper presents the application of stereoscopic height estimation technique to the data acquired by the Second-generation Global Imager (SGLI) aboard the Global change observation mission – C (GCOM-C) satellite that collected more than 6 years of global wide-swath (1200km) two-directional measurements. The SGLI captured 5 volcanic plumes among 10 most explosive volcanic eruptions in the 5-year period from 2018 to 2023. Along with an intense wildfire plume, we applied to observed plumes the stereoscopic plume top height estimation based on the normalized cross correlation (NCC) template matching. The estimated plume top height agrees with previous studies in most cases, while estimation was challenging for a volcanic plume case with low contrast and limited plume-top texture. The error estimation shows that the precision is about 700m and the accuracy is likely better than 1400m.
This study demonstrates that the two-directional data of GCOM-C/SGLI (second-generation global imager) as a result of simultaneous polarized and un-polarized observations are useful to estimate the vertical information of biomass-burning aerosols (BBA). The vertical profiles of black carbon (BC) concentration simulated by the chemical transport model (CTM) are also useful for altitude information of the BBA. Comparison of the satellite products from SGLI observations with BC distribution from the CTM simulations reveals their mutual consistency. Using 3D visualization of the California forest fires as an example, this work discusses the effects of mountains and optical distance from satellites.
The Japanese space mission, JAXA/GCOM (Global Change Observation Mission-Climate)-C (SHIKISAI in Japanese), was launched in 2017, carrying the Second-Generation Global Imager (SGLI). The SGLI performs wide-swath multispectral measurements in 19 channels from near-ultraviolet to thermal infrared (IR), including red (674 nm designated as the PL1 band) and near-IR (869 nm; PL2 band) polarization channels. This work presents retrieval of Severe Biomass Burning Aerosols (SBBAs) generated by severe wildfires using the advantage of SGLI features. Namely, it is shown that simultaneous observation of polarization and radiance is useful not only for retrieval of optical properties but also vertical variation of SBBAs. The obtained results are validated by comparison with a meteorological regional model CTM.
Open burning of biomass occurs in many parts of the world and is a major environmental problem. This is because biomass combustion is a major source of greenhouse gases, reactive trace gases, and particulate matter emissions into the atmosphere. Emissions from combustion of biomass have the potential to impact local, regional, and global air quality issues and climate change. Satellite information on fire activity and vegetation productivity has been combined to create a data set of gas and aerosol emissions from fires. We used these emission data to obtain aerosol distributions of open burning origin by using a regional chemical transport model simulation. This study targets severe biomass burning aerosols in Sumatra Island in September 2019. We simulated the meteorological fields required for offline calculations of chemical transport models with the SCALE (Scalable Computing for Advanced Library and Environment) regional model. Simulation results were validated with biomass burning aerosol distributions derived from JAXA/GCOM-C/Second Generation Global Imager (SGLI) and aerosol optical thickness from the NASA/AErosol RObotic NETwork (AERONET). The biomass burning aerosol distribution was found to be well reproduced, but there was an underestimation in aerosol volume.
The number of severe wildfires has increased globally since 2019, occurring every day worldwide. Therefore, our previous studies have focused on the characterization of biomass burning aerosols derived from heavy wildfires. Serious aerosol events include not only biomass burning plumes, but also many other kinds of aerosol events such as desert dust storms and those derived from the combination of natural factors and human activities. This work proposes the use of polarization information for detecting severe aerosol events, using wildfire as an example. The Japanese mission JAXA/GCOM (Global Change Observation Mission-Climate)-C (SHIKISAI in Japanese), launched in 2017, carried a second-generation global imager (SGLI). The SGLI contains 19 channels from near-ultraviolet to thermal infrared (IR), including red (674 nm designated as the PL1 band) and near-IR (869 nm; PL2 band) polarization channels. This work intends to demonstrate the advantages of the SGLI, especially polarization information, in detecting and characterizing severe biomass burning aerosols.
The area around the Japanese Alps, which is the focus of this study, is located at the center of Japan's main island and surrounded by mountains with multiple basins. Here, we investigated the effect of mountains on aerosol blocking with respect to transboundary pollution and estimated the effect of the mountain source with respect to local pollution using observations and simulations. A regional chemical transport model was employed for the study. To investigate the effect of mountains, simulations were conducted with and without mountains. From the results of these simulations, we estimated the mountain effects. The presence of mountains was found to increase or decrease aerosol concentration in some cases. However, when averaged over the simulation period, the results showed that mountains effectively reduce aerosol concentrations. On the days when aerosol concentrations increased due to the mountain effect, meteorological conditions with high local emissions and the basin effect acted synergistically to accelerate the increase in aerosol concentrations.
Among future multi-directional polarimetric spaceborne missions that will advance cloud and aerosol studies, the Multiviewing, Multi-channel, Multi-polarisation Imager (3MI) on the MetOp Second Generation – A (MetOp-SG-A) satellite is a direct successor of the classic and successful design of Polarisation and Directionality of the Earth’s Reflectance (POLDER) sensors. The POLDER design comprises of three essential elements: a wide field-of-view lens, a rotating wheel holding spectral and polarizer filters, and a two-dimensional imaging sensor. This presentation demonstrates a new geometric calibration technique for an airborne prototype of the 3MI and other POLDER-like sensors. Geometric calibration is often challenging for an airborne sensor because it is frequently mounted to and dismounted from the aircraft. The rotation of the instrument with respect to the aircraft reference frame must be calibrated every time when the instrument is reinstalled, but the opportunity for a stable flight leg over ground control points is limited because of weather and air-traffic conditions. In addition, the precise aircraft position is often more difficult to obtain than the precise aircraft attitude. To mitigate this difficulty, our new technique derives the instrument rotation by detecting three natural angular features: rainbow, glory, and hot spot. These features are often observed during scientific data acquisitions over clouds and land surface, thus enable the direct validation of the geometric calibration quality for every eligible image under the actual acquisition condition. We present the automatic detection technique of these angular features in in-flight data and derived rotation angles and errors for the AEROCLO-SA field campaign.
The Multi-viewing, Multi-channel, Multi-polarization Imager (3MI) of the EUMETSAT Polar System - Second Generation (EPS-SG) is a radiometer dedicated to aerosol characterization for climate monitoring, air quality forecasting, and Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP). The 3MI aims to provide multi-spectral, multipolarization, and multi-angular images of the Earth upward radiances at the top of the atmosphere (TOA). This particular design, inspired from the POLarisation and Directionality of the Earth's Reflectances (POLDER) instrument, will lead to a better understanding of the microphysical properties of aerosols and clouds. In terms of design, the instrument's calibration will be done using natural targets, exclusively. This particular constraint requires to further study the already existing calibration techniques that were used on the predecessors of 3MI. The main reason is that the instrument will provide spectral bands (mainly in the short-wave infrared) that will require a reliable characterization. In this paper, we present the results based on measurements obtained with the Observing System Including PolaRisation in the Solar Infrared Spectrum (OSIRIS) instrument, a 3MI airborne simulator developed at the Laboratoire d'Optique Atmosphérique.
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