Climate Studies to Benefit from 12 Years of Satellite Aerosol Data
Desert dust blown from the Western Sahara towards the Canary Islands, seen in this 300-m resolution Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) image. The wind can move between 60 and 200 million tonnes of fine dust up from the Sahara each year. (ESA)
Aerosols, very small particles suspended in the air, play an important role in the global climate balance and in regulating climate change. They are one of the greatest sources of uncertainty in climate change models. ESA’s GlobAerosol project has been making the most of European satellite capabilities to monitor them.
Using data from the Along Track Scanning Radiometer-2 on the ERS-2 satellite, the Advanced Along Track Scanning Radiometer and the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer on Envisat and the Spinning Enhanced Visible & InfraRed Imager (SEVIRI) instrument on the Meteosat Second Generation, GlobAerosol has produced a global aerosol dataset going back to 1995. The full dataset is available on the GlobAerosol website.
Some aerosols occur naturally, originating from sea-spray, wind-blown dust, volcanic eruptions and biochemical emissions from oceans and forests, while others are produced through emissions from industrial pollution, fossil-fuel burning, man-made forest fires and agriculture. (more…)
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