Three Dimensional Monitoring of the Asian Dust by the COMS/GOCI and CALIPSO Satellites Observation Data

Detailed 3 dimensional structure of Asian dust plume has been analyzed from the retrieved aerosol data from two different satellites which are the Korea`s geostationary satellite, namely the Communication, Ocean, Meteorological Satellite (COMS) spacecraft launched in 2010, and the NASA`s Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO). COMS spacecraft provides the first time resolved aerial aerosol maps by the systematically well-calibrated multispectral measurements from the Geostationary Ocean Color Imager (GOCI) instrument. GOCI data are used here to evaluate intensity, spatial distribution, and long-range transport of Asian dust plume during 1~2 May 2011. We found that the strong Asian dust plume showing AOT of 2~5 was lofted to the altitude around 2~4 km above the Earth`s surface and transported over Yellow Sea with a speed of about 25 km/hr. The CALIPSO extinction coefficient and particulate depolarization ratio (PDR) profiles confirmed that nonspherical dust particles were enriched in the dust plume. This study is a first example of quantitative integration of GOCI and CALIOP measurements for clarifying the overall structure of an Asian dust event.