Topic 2c - Atmosphere: applications

One of the projects I'm currently working on is the Monitoring Atmospheric Composition and
Climate project, which is currently in its third phase. MACC establishes preoperational
services for what will become the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service in 2015.

What MACC does is to take all available satellite information regarding atmospheric
composition, aerosols and trace gases, elaborate it with the aid of a powerful computer to
produce then an analysis of the state of the atmospheric composition. And from that, to do a
prediction up to five days ahead of what the state of the atmosphere will be.

Here's a picture illustrating an aerosol forecast, so this is a model simulation, which is based
on data from the MODIS sensor of aerosol optical depth that are elaborated. And then the
model adds information to the satellite data by then giving us details about the various
aerosol species.

For example, here you see some biomass burning over Africa, desert dust here into the
Mediterranean and going off to the Atlantic. You see marine aerosols, sea salt, quite a bit in
the Southern Hemisphere. You even see this nice feature, like a cyclone. And then you see
also the sulphates and more anthropogenic aerosols.

And this is what MACC produces. And along with this, we have also prediction of other
constituents. For example, carbon monoxide, CO, NO2, and ozone, and also carbon dioxide
and methane.

Some instruments, for example, the so-called imagers, they look at the refracted solar
radiation and they sense mainly clouds, aerosols. They can give information about surface
characteristics, surface albedo, and those are the visible imagers.

Then you have a set of still passive sensors that instead measure if you want the temperature
of the planet. And they also-- because they sense the emitted radiation, but in the infrared
spectrum. So this is not the visible part, but the infrared part.

And some trace gases, you can see the signature of these gases in the infrared part, for
example, CO2, CO, and ozone, and other trace gases, methane. So you use the infrared part
of the spectrum to sense the atmosphere. You can also go to microwave wavelengths, and
you also get other information about other parameters, including precipitation, for example.

So aerosols are interacting with the radiation that comes from the sun to the earth, also with
the radiation that comes from the earth and is emitted back to space. And because of this, it's
possible to sense them from satellites, because satellites sense the radiation. And then you
can infer properties about the aerosols through analysis of this radiation that this satellite
has sensed.

And that is extremely important in my job, which is that of predicting the aerosol state with
few days ahead. And I use the satellite information, the observations derived from the
satellite to initialise the model and constrain the model, so that the prediction is as accurate
as possible or as close as possible to current observations of the state of the aerosols in the
 atmospheres. And a similar thing is applied to other trace gases, ozone, carbon
monoxide, as well as observing wildfires and emissions of carbon dioxide and biomass burning
from fires. So it's the same principle.