Aerosols Optical Depth spatial variation over the Amazon basin during winter. Comparison with AOD summer behavior over the Caribbean islands

Natural Atmospheric particles have important effects on climate and human health. Desert dust particles, a major part of them present the ability to be transported over long distances and impact large regions of the earth. The development of space-borne passive remote sensing of dust and their ground validations allow us to approach the dust physical characteristics on a large scale. Here we were interested to the Saharan dust transport and characteristics over French Guiana. First, we have tried to found relationships between the mass concentration repartition of different sites (closer to land interior/closer to the coast). We chose two sites separated by near 100 km on the coast, Cayenne and Sinnamary, and a site in the land interior, Rochambeau. We used a set PM10 measured mass concentration to calculate the ground spatial variability. For the same time and over the same geographical points we studied the spatial variability of the data MODIS pictures of the Aerosols Optical Depth. We compared the ground based results and the satellite one to obtain the correlation existing between low atmospheric PM10 measures and upper level AOD. We used the same approach over central Atlantic during summer dust period. A discussion about the behavior of the AOD spatial variability of the summer dust transport over the Caribbean islands and the winter transport over South America is finally led.