Intense dust and extremely fresh biomass burning outbreak in Barcelona, Spain: Characterization of their optical properties and estimation of their direct radiative forcing

Sicard, M.
Mallet, M.
Garcıa-Vizcaıno, D.
Comeŕon, A.
Rocadenbosch, F.
Dubuisson, P.
Muñoz-Porcar, C.

Open link

Publication date

January 2012

DOI

10.1088/1748-9326/7/3/034016

Publisher

IOP Publishing

Abstract

International audienceAn extremely fresh smoke plume (<5 h) was transported over Barcelona on 23 July 2009, just 5 h after an intense Saharan dust event finalized. Both events were observed by sun-photometer, lidar and satellite systems. Results indicate surprisingly large absorption of mixed dust particles (SSA ~ 0.83 ± 0.04) with lower SSA than that observed for smoke (0.86 ± 0.04) particles at 440 nm. Our investigation shows that dust particles may have mixed during their transport with anthropogenic and smoke particles. Dust and smoke layers are observed between 1-6 and 1-4 km, with associated lidar ratios at 532 nm of 51 and 36 sr, respectively. Due to low SSAs and moderate surface albedos, shortwave (SW) radiative forcing calculations...