NASA Airborne Field Campaigns to Improve Aerosol Speciation from Satellites, and ultimately, from Models

Radiative Forcing estimates of different aerosol components (e.g., sulfate, BC, OA, SOA, nitrate or mineral dust) show a large spread between models [Myhre et al., 2013]. This is caused in part by differences in methods for estimating aerosol properties (e.g., emissions, transport, chemistry, deposition, optical properties). We plan to demonstrate that aerosol optical retrievals from passive satellites such as the A-Train’s POLDER (Polarization and Directionality of Earth’s Reflectances) [Hasekamp et al., 2011], combined with airborne optical and chemical aerosol characterization (e.g., SEAC⁴RS, ORACLES), are able to help constrain modeled aerosol speciation.