Dust Observations and Climatology - Mineral Dust: A Key Player in the Earth System - page 147

Chapter 7
Dust Observations and Climatology

Isabelle Chiapello

Abstract Along with a growing research interest for aerosols, a variety of methods
have been developed in the last two decades to observe airborne mineral dust. Both
remote sensing from spaceborne sensors and associated ground-based networks
have played important roles. An increasing number of satellite sensors have
been used either singly or in association with models, aircraft and ground-based
measurements. The relevance of these techniques is to provide regional/global
pictures of dust storm activity, allowing significant progress in the identification
of dust sources, understanding of transport processes and assessment of variability
at different timescales, from the diurnal cycle to interannual changes. More recently
the development of lidar techniques has provided further advances in dust monitor-
ing. The vertical profiling allows a 4D view of dust properties, a crucial point for
progress on the assessment of aerosol radiative impact and aerosol-cloud interaction
research. The algorithms associated to advanced sensors dedicated to aerosols, as
well as the reliability of retrievals, have been improved in the last decade, giving
more detailed and accurate description of dust properties. This chapter provides a
brief review of the main observational techniques that have been used for dust survey
(Sect. 7.2 ) with a focus on remote sensing observations. Applications of these data
for research on dust source regions (Sect. 7.3.1 ), transport (Sect. 7.3.2 ), climatology
(Sect. 7.3.3 ) and vertical structure (Sect. 7.3.4 ) are presented. Historical context and
recent progress are shown alongside remaining limitations determining the needs
for future improvements.

Keywords Satellite ￿ Aerosol optical depth ￿ Total ozone mapping spectrometer ￿
Source regions ￿ Interannual variability ￿ Vertical structure ￿ Environmental

conditions ￿ Dust transport