Hourly Mapping of the Layer Height of Thick Smoke Plumes Over the Western U.S. in 2020 Severe Fire Season

Zhendong Lu; Jun Wang; Xiaoguang Xu; Xi Chen; Shobha Kondragunta; Omar Torres; Eric M Wilcox; Jing Zeng

doi:10.3389/frsen.2021.766628

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Hourly Mapping of the Layer Height of Thick Smoke Plumes Over the Western U.S. in 2020 Severe Fire Season

Journal article

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Hourly Mapping of the Layer Height of Thick Smoke Plumes Over the Western U.S. in 2020 Severe Fire Season

Zhendong Lu, Jun Wang, Xiaoguang Xu, Xi Chen, Shobha Kondragunta, Omar Torres, Eric M Wilcox and Jing Zeng

Frontiers in Remote Sensing, Vol.2, 766628

10/25/2021

DOI: 10.3389/frsen.2021.766628

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Abstract

A series of huge smoke plume events from the largest wildfire season recorded in California’s modern history has occurred in 2020. Here, a research algorithm was modified to retrieve the aerosol optical centroid height (AOCH) and aerosol optical depth (AOD) from Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) measurements. The research focus is to gain insights of the algorithm’s feasibility in heavy smoke conditions to study the diurnal variation of AOCH; this is only made possible via EPIC due to its unique position at Lagrange-1 point and its equipment of O2 B-band at which the vegetated surface reflectance is low. Vicarious calibration is applied to the EPIC 443, 680 and 688 nm channels based on the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) observation. This new calibration leads to a better agreement of AOCH values between EPIC retrievals and the counterparts derived from the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) aerosol extinction vertical profile. The hourly variation of AOCH up to 0.45 km on September 7 is shown to have important implications for estimating hourly change of surface PM2.5, although more quantitative studies are needed in the future.

Details

Title: Subtitle: Hourly Mapping of the Layer Height of Thick Smoke Plumes Over the Western U.S. in 2020 Severe Fire Season
Creators: Zhendong Lu
Jun Wang
Xiaoguang Xu
Xi Chen
Shobha Kondragunta
Omar Torres
Eric M Wilcox
Jing Zeng
Resource Type: Journal article
Publication Details: Frontiers in Remote Sensing, Vol.2, 766628
DOI: 10.3389/frsen.2021.766628
ISSN: 2673-6187
eISSN: 2673-6187
Language: English
Date published: 10/25/2021
Academic Unit: Civil and Environmental Engineering; Iowa Technology Institute; Physics and Astronomy; Chemical and Biochemical Engineering
Record Identifier: 9984187038702771

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