Characterization of Long-Range Transport of Biomass Burning Aerosols Using Raman Lidar, Satellite Retrieval, Back Trajectory, and a Global Model

Late summer Raman lidar measurements at NASA GSFC revealed a distinct aerosol plume at 3km altitude on August 26, 2013 which showed a gradual subsidence and merge with the boundary layer aerosol on August 27-28. The subsequent analysis using the Multi-Angle Implementation of Atmospheric Correction (MAIAC) aerosol data from MODIS on Terra and Aqua, GOCART and backtrajectories revealed a complex relationship with fires in Yosemite (CA) and Wyoming/Idaho. This talk will provide a brief overview of current MAIAC smoke/dust retrieval capabilities followed by a systematic description of modeling results constrained by MAIAC and lidar data.