A critical look at the spaceborne observations of aerosol column properties and vertical height during the 2018 summertime dust outbreak over Central Asia

Central Asia is located in the interior of Eurasian dryland belt and has a diversity of dust sources of both natural and anthropogenic origin, including one of the most active sources of salt dust storms formed over the dried seabed of Aral Sea. Space-based aerosol monitoring over Central Asia is challenging due to the lack of ground measurements for algorithm development and validation, the bright surface reflectivity which invalidates the traditional Dark Target-based approach, and frequent cloud cover accompanying dust outbreaks. As satellite aerosol algorithms are usually validated using data from elsewhere and optimized for global performance, their performance over Central Asia has rarely been evaluated directly. This study takes a critical look at the cross-sensor consistency and multi-sensor synergy in observing the presence, column properties, and aerosol layer height (ALH) of multiple dust events in Central Asia during May 2018, including one of the worst salt dust storms in recent history. The aerosol products analyzed in this work include the UVAI products from OMI, OMPS, TROPOMI and EPIC/DSCOVR, the AOD products from MODIS deep blue, MODIS MAIAC, VIIRS deep blue, VIIRS EPS, and MISR, as well as the ALH derived from CALIPSO and MISR. Model simulations from two global reanalyses, MERRA2 and CAMSRA, will also be compared against the satellite observations.