The tenth IMSC, Beijing, China, 2007 - International Meetings on ...

A 50-member ensemble is produced with the ECHAM5/MPI-OM model to study
dynamical modes under an increase in CO2 concentration. <strong>The</strong> mode with the largest spatial
scale is found over and in the Southern Ocean. It is essentially zonally symmetric. An increase
in CO2 concentration produces a temperature increase in the Southern subtropics and
consequently a strengthening of the meridional temperature gradient. <strong>The</strong> latter leads to
changes in the midlatitude westerlies and the surface zonal wind stress. <strong>The</strong> wind stress
changes strengthen the northward Ekman transports that transport the cold polar water into
the midlatitude Southern Ocean, whereby further maintaining the meridional temperature
gradient. <strong>The</strong> relation of this mode to the Antarctic Oscillation, the dominant Southern
Hemispheric mode under the control condition (i.e. pre-industrial CO2 concentration), is
studied in the phase space spanned by the leading EOFs.
Verification of Biomass Burning Aerosols by Using GOES-12
Speaker: Jian Zeng
Jian Zeng
Earth Resources Technology Inc.
Jian.Zeng@noaa.gov
Biomass burning impacts the climate system on local, regional and global radiation
budget. High aerosol concentrations caused by biomass burning outbreaks are able to
provoke damaging impact on human life. An algorithm has been developed to automatically
detect aerosols and track long-range transport of smoke plumes associated with biomass
burning. Two major schemes are applied in the algorithm, the source scheme and the pattern
recognition scheme. This algorithm combines GOES observations of fire hot spots with
aerosol optical depth maps in the source scheme to find the smoke aerosols most possibly
caused by the fire sources. Secondly apply the pattern recognition technique to identify smoke
plumes that drifted away from the source region. Once the optical depths due to smoke
aerosols are separated from other types of aerosols, they are converted to smoke
concentrations using mass extinction coefficient of 7.8 m2/g and assuming that aerosols are
confined to the lowest 5 km of the atmosphere. <strong>The</strong> algorithm was applied to the biomass
burning episodes during September 1-15, 2006 and evaluated using Ozone Monitoring
Instrument (OMI) absorption aerosol optical depth product and HYSPLIT model analysis. We
will present algorithm description, evaluation, and its potential impact on climate.
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