Remote Sensing of Wildfire Smoke Plume Height from Satellites and Airborne Sensors during the FIREX-AQ/ER-2 Field Campaign

Information of the height at which smoke from wildfires is injected into the atmosphere is crucial for accurately modeling its transport and assessing its potential downwind effects. As part of the joint NASA/NOAA FIREX-AQ field campaign in August 2019, the NASA ER-2 high-altitude research aircraft flew two instruments that provide unique perspectives on smoke plume structure and height. The Cloud Physics Lidar (CPL) is a three-channel backscatter lidar with polarization that reports extremely accurate plume-top height, plume thickness, and particle non-sphericity. This is similar to the information from the spaceborne Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) instrument on the CALIPSO satellite. The Airborne Multiangle SpectroPolarimetric Imager (AirMSPI) on the ER-2 allows for the derivation of smoke plume height using a stereo photogrammetric technique. This is similar to the stereo plume heights available from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument that has been operational on the NASA Terra satellite since 2000. We will describe initial results regarding smoke plume injection height as observed from CPL and AirMSPI on the ER-2 in comparison with near-coincident satellite retrievals from CALIOP and MISR. This information can be used to evaluate model performance and help improve smoke injection parameterizations.