Initial approach in biomass burning aerosol transport tracking with CALIPSO and MODIS stallites, sunphotometer and a backscatter lidar system in Brazil

Abstract

Nowadays there is an increasing concern about the direct and indirect influence of the aerosols in the Earth’s radiative budget. Aerosols from biomass burning activities have been identified as a significant radiative forcing agent. A significant concentration quantity of aerosol particles observed in the atmosphere can be associated with intense anthropogenic biomass burning activity. The CALIPSO satellite and ground-based Lidar systems are indispensable to provide the vertical structure and optical properties of aerosol and clouds on global and local scale, respectively. The Brazilian mid-western region is one of the biggest producers of biomass burning in the whole continent. Aerosols from biomass burning can be transported to distances of hundreds or thousands of kilometers. It has been developed a computational routine to map the CALIPSO overpasses over the whole country in order to retrieve the total coverage taking special attention in the Brazilian AERONET sites. In this context, the measured data from AERONET, CALIPSO and MODIS Satellite and the MSP-Lidar system from Instituto de Pesquisas Energ´eticas e Nucleares (IPEN) can be used to map the aerosols biomass burning plumes transported from the mid-western to the southeastern region. In total 5 sites were chosen spanning from 0 to 23 South latitude and 46 to 60 West in longitude in coverage during 2007 and we were able to identify such transports during the months of August and September.