Aerosol Spatial and Temporal Variations Over a Coastal Area: Implications for Geostationary Satellite Measurements

Coastal area is of great interest to the community of air pollution and climate change studies. The dispersion of air pollutants is strongly influenced by complex coastal meteorology, such as land-sea breeze circulations interacting sometimes with mountain-valley circulations. On the other hand, radiatively active air pollutants, like aerosols, could influence the coastal meteorology and hence feed back on the atmospheric dispersion. Coastal area is also an interface for impacts of air pollution on coastal ocean ecosystems. In this study, we look into spatial and temporal variations of aerosol optical depth (AOD) over southern California by examining high-resolution Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model simulations, and Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) measurements, and the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) retrievals. Both model simulations and observations show that aerosol has large spatial and temporal variations. Autocorrelation analyses of AOD suggest that these variations can be adequately (r >0.9) captured by satellite observations with time resolution on an order of 1-2 hours and spatial resolution of 4-7 km. Both model and observations show substantial day-to-day variation of aerosols over the region, which is mainly determined by the evolution of land-sea breeze circulations interacting with mountain flows. Modeling the feedbacks of aerosols on coastal meteorology and air quality requires high-resolution measurements from a geostationary orbit as a constraint.