干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

We have inferred the most probable height distribution in a set of eleven areas of desert dust aerosol plumes over the eastern tropical and subtropical Atlantic Ocean using multispectral outgoing reflected radiance data collected during the Mediterranean Israeli Dust Experiment (MEIDEX), conducted on board the STS-107 space shuttle mission, from 16 January to 1 February 2003. It is shown that one can remotely infer the average height distribution of desert aerosol plumes from space in a specified atmospheric volume, if one has available calibrated, simultaneous, and co located radiances in the UV, the visible, and the NIR.