Satellite Remote Sensing of a Multipollutant Air Quality Health Index Randall Martin, Dalhousie and Harvard-Smithsonian Aaron van Donkelaar, Lok Lamsal, Dalhousie University Xiong Liu, NASA Goddard
Multipollutant Air Quality Health Index (AQHI) Satellite Observations Provide Context to Ground-Based Measurements Insufficient In Situ Measurements for Exposure Assessment Multipollutant Air Quality Health Index (AQHI) Use Canadian AQHI (Stieb et al., JAWMA, 2008) AQHI Excess Mortality Risk (%)
Challenging to Infer Boundary Layer Ozone Concentration Strong Rayleigh Scattering Weak Thermal Contrast O3 Aerosol NO2 O3 0.30 0.36 0.43 0.52 0.62 0.75 2.2 4.7 9.6 Vertical Profile Affects Boundary-Layer Information in Satellite Obs Normalized GEOS-Chem Summer Mean Profiles over North America O3 Aerosol Extinction S(z) = shape factor C(z) = concentration Ω = column NO2 Martin, AE, 2008
General Approach to Estimate Surface Concentration Coincident GEOS-Chem Profile Daily Observed Column In Situ GEOS-Chem MODIS/MISR AOD OMI NO2 (DOMINO) OMI O3 (Xiong Liu) Actual approach (not shown) exploits sub-grid satellite information to improve profile estimate S → Surface Concentration Ω → Tropospheric column
Satellite-derived Partial AQHI Significant Spatial Correlation from NO2 and PM2.5 (OMI-derived NO2, MODIS/MISR-derived PM2.5) Mean over Jun – Aug 2005 y=1.4x-0.57 r=0.87 Satellite-derived Partial AQHI In Situ Partial AQHI Partial AQHI (NO2 and PM2.5)
Evaluation of Surface O3 Estimate with AQ Network GEOS-Chem simulates strong correlation (r=0.9) between tropospheric O3 Column and surface O3 concentration during summer OMI-Derived Surface O3 for North America (Jun – Aug 2005) Mar 30 r=0.77 y=0.89 + 20.0 O3 Mixing Ratio (ppbv)
Satellite-derived AQHI Significant Spatial Correlation in Satellite-derived and In Situ AQHI (OMI-derived NO2 and O3, MODIS/MISR-derived PM2.5) Mean values over June – August 2005 for North America Satellite-derived AQHI r=0.85 y=1.1x+0.47 March 29 calc In Situ AQHI 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5 5.5 6 AQHI
Significant Correlation of Satellite-derived and In Situ AQHI Jun – Aug 2005 April 2 Correlation Coefficient
Aerosol Size-Dependent Below-Cloud Scavenging Betty Croft, Randall Martin, Dalhousie University Ulrike Lohmann, Sylvaine Ferrachat, ETH Philip Stier, Oxford University Sabine Wurzler, LANUV, Germany Hans Feichter, Max Plank Rebecca Posselt, Meteoswiss
Below-Cloud Aerosol Scavenging by Precipitation Varies with Size Aerosol Collection Efficiency Implemented into ECHAM5-HAM GCM Reduces global mean AOD by 15% Changes dust & sea-salt mass burdens by 10-30% vs fixed model approach Croft et al., ACPD, 2009
Encouraging Prospects for Satellite Remote Sensing of Air Quality Modeling Challenges: Continue to develop simulation of vertical profile Comprehensive assimilation capability Implications of Size-Resolved Aerosol-Scavenging for GEOS-Chem