干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

It is nontrivial to extract the dust top height (DTH) accurately from passive instruments over land due to the complexity of the surface conditions. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) deep blue (DB) algorithm can be used to infer the aerosol optical depth (AOD) over high-reflective surfaces. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) can simultaneously obtain the DTH and optical depth information. This study focuses on the synergistic use of AIRS observations and MODIS DB results for improving the DTH by using a stable relationship between the AIRS infrared and MODIS DB AODs. A one-dimensional variational (1DVAR) algorithm is applied to extract the DTH from AIRS. Simulation experiments indicate that when the uncertainty of the dust optical depth decreases from 50% to 20%, the improvement of the DTH retrieval accuracy from AIRS reaches 200 m for most of the assumed dust conditions. For two cases over the Taklimakan Desert, the results are compared against Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) measurements. The results confirm that the MODIS DB product could help extract the DTH over land from AIRS.