High-Resolution Dust Plume Heights, Winds, and Transport Information from 12 Years of MISR Data

Obtaining detailed information on plume heights and wind speeds for significant dust outbreaks can be challenging due to the relative inaccessibility of many of the important global dust source regions and the hazards of making in situ measurements in the midst of a dust storm. However, this information is vital for parameterizing dust emission schemes and constraining dispersion and long-range transport models that are used to predict the climatic and human health effects of transported dust. We will describe the use of data from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on the polar orbiting Terra satellite to retrieve plume top heights and instantaneous wind velocities for a number of regions around the globe, including the Bodélé Depression in northern Africa, the Taklamakan and Gobi Deserts in Asia, and the Syrian Desert on the Arabian Peninsula. MISR retrievals have a spatial resolution of 1.1 km, with an estimated height uncertainty of 200 m and a wind speed uncertainty of 2 m/s. We will discuss comparisons between MISR and other remote sensing retrieval approaches, as well as comparisons with the meteorological analysis fields used by aerosol transport and dispersion models.