Hourly Smoke AOCH Retrievals from Geostationary Satellites in the Contiguous United States: Synergy of TEMPO and GOES-R

The fine particles with aerodynamical diameter less than 2.5 micrometers or PM2.5 have been found to cause a variety of health problems. Therefore, monitoring surface PM2.5 pollution is essential for protection of public health, especially during fire season when wildfire smoke can influence broad areas through transport. The aerosol optical centroid height (AOCH) of smoke plume retrieved from passive satellite measurements has been found to be an essential parameter to regulate surface PM2.5. Surface PM2.5 can be lower for higher AOCH due to more particles lofted into higher altitude (Chen et al., 2021, Lu et al., 2021). Focusing on monitoring major air pollutants across the contiguous U.S. (CONUS) every daylight hour at high spatial resolution, Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring Pollution (TEMPO), was launched in April 2023 into a geostationary orbit at ~92˚W. Two 2D detectors onboard TEMPO images UV and visible (VIS) spectral range at 290-490 nm and 540-740 nm with 0.6 nm spectral resolution for each geospatial scene. The TEMPO measurements in UV, blue and O2 B (688 nm) absorption bands can be used to retrieve UVAI, AOD and AOCH of smoke plume, similar as the algorithm we developed for TROPOMI (Chen et al, 2021). Considering the 16-channel Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) onboard GOES-West and GOES-East can measure the CONUS in VIS, near-infrared (NIR) and thermal infrared bands every 10 minutes, in this study we combine the synergistic ABI measurements from GOES-R and TEMPO measurements to conducted advanced aerosol retrievals of AOCH and fine mode AOD information to better constrain surface PM2.5, especially under the smoky conditions. The NIR measurements from ABI help to get the surface information and screen out cloudy pixels. The synergistic ABI and TEMPO measurements in the same visible channels (469 and 639 nm) from different viewing geometries provide the potential to retrieve fine mode aerosols using multi-angle measurements. This new algorithm is tested for some smoke plume cases, and the AOD and AOCH retrievals are validated using ground-based AERONET and MPLNET measurements.