资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

The Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory (CLARREO) satellite mission observes hyperspectral Earth reflected solar (RS) and emitted infrared radiance (IR). Such measurements span an additional dimension on spectrally dependent scattering and absorption of dust, the critical signals for particle size. Through a suite of observation system simulation experiments (OSSEs), this study assesses the capability of CLARREO's measurements for recovering size-dependent dust emissions in GEOS-Chem chemistry transport model (CTM). To this end, another CTM (Flow-following finite-volume Icosahedral Model-Chem, or FIM-Chem) is used for the nature run to simulate CLARREO spectral radiances. The spectral signals are then used for analyzing the sensitivities and error characteristics of dust optical depth (DOD) under three observations scenarios (IR only, RS only, and combined IR and RS) using an optimal estimation technique. Next, these synthetic data are assimilated into GEOS-Chem adjoint model to constrain dust emissions of four particle sizes with radii from 0.1m to 6.0m. The OSSEs results indicate (1) the IR spectra are most sensitive to dust of the third size bin (1.8-3.0m) and least sensitive to the smallest bin (0.1-1.0m); (2) the RS spectra are most sensitive to dust of the smallest size bin and the sensitivity decreases as dust size increases; (3) combining IR and RS spectra can fully characterize DOD across all sizes, providing the best constraints for size-resolved dust emissions; and (4) CLARREO data fail to constrain the spatial distribution of dust sources due to its narrow swath and joint observations from CLARREO-calibrated sensors with wide swath are desirable.

Plain Language Summary Wind-blown dust particles have a wide range of sizes. This study examines the potential of using measurements in the solar and infrared spectrum from space to characterize and derive the loading and emission of these dust particles in different sizes. The study is important because the climate effect of dust is very uncertain. The study shows that the future satellite missions that measure the solar and infrared spectrum at the same time with high spectral resolution can be used to quantify dust emissions in different sizes and thereby helping to reduce uncertainties in climate predictions.