Conference Agenda

As an essential component in the atmosphere, black carbon (BC) can affect regional and global climate, air quality, and human health. Biomass burning is an important source of BC aerosols, and biomass burning in East Asia is rather active. In this study, we analyze the biomass burning over East Asia in 2010 using MODIS satellite fire data. A global chemical transport model, GEOS-Chem, is used to simulate temporal and spatial variations of BC aerosols and impact of biomass burning on these variations through two numerical experiments: one with all BC emissions while the other without the biomass burning emissions.

The results show that the 2010 biomass burning over East Asia frequently occurred in northeast China, north China, northern India and indo-China Peninsula. In China, biomass burning mostly happened in summer and fall, while in Southeast Asia, biomass burning happened in spring and winter. GEOS-Chem can reasonably reproduce the temporal and spatial variations of BC. The surface concentrations of BC in China are high in the North China and Southwest basins. Such a spatial pattern is similar in four seasons, with seasonality that BC concentrations are the highest in winter, followed by autumn, spring and summer. Sensitivity analysis shows that the biomass burning in East Asia contributed 8.6% BC concentrations in East Asia. Based on the EOF decomposition and correlation analysis, the BC concentrations due to biomass burning in some parts of East Asia was significantly increased through transport of BC in the first mode at 850 hPa in spring and winter.

The Chinese second-generation Directional Polarization Camera (DPC-2) onboard the GF-5(02) satellite provides global multi-angle, multispectral polarization observations, effectively bridging the gap between POLDER/PARASOL and SPEXone/PACE. Using one year of DPC-2/GF-5(02) measurements, land-ocean aerosol products are generated by fully exploiting polarization and angular information to enhance sensitivity to aerosol properties. Ground-based observations from the AErosol RObotic NETwork (AERONET) are used to evaluate the retrieval accuracy of Aerosol Optical Depth at 550 nm (AOD550), Ångström Exponent between 440 nm and 670 nm (AE440-670), and Single Scattering Albedo at 440 nm (SSA440), demonstrating the stability and reliability of the retrievals. For AOD550, the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) and bias are 0.109 and -0.006 over land, and 0.071 and -0.001 over ocean. For AE440-670, the RMSE and bias are 0.488 and -0.151 over land, and 0.275 and -0.047 over ocean. For SSA440, the RMSE and bias are 0.044 and 0.003 over land, and 0.039 and 0.002 over ocean. Comparisons with mainstream satellite aerosol products indicate comparable and consistent accuracy. Overall, these results provide a coherent global characterization of aerosol distribution and properties, highlighting the strong potential of DPC-2/GF-5(02) for long-term aerosol monitoring and climate research.

This study involves remote sensing and Lidar-based data analysis to quantify the aerosol extinction profile under different urban patterns and seasons.

Direct and indirect climate forcing from Asian dust storms has been well documented, such as lifted dust aerosols becoming cloud-forming particles and changing radiation flux from surface to the top of atmosphere. However, whether such forcing becomes distinguished as related to dust origins remains unclear. Here we present a comparative analysis of historical dust storms in China originating in Mongolia and Xinjiang from 2016-2023, and determine their respective dominators by involving their individual and combined influence on dust storms. Most dust storms originated in Mongolia, with observed long-range transport and global scale development, in comparison to those originating in Xinjiang. During dust storms, cloud properties such as cloud droplet radius and cloud retrieval fraction liquid had nonlinear response, and a dominant role in 60.2% of the study area. Climate conditions such as surface thermal radiation and dewpoint temperature became dominated in periphery of dust storms. Xinjiang-originated dust storms, in contrast, were dominated by local aridity (65.2%). As the aridity decreased, dust storms were dominated by total precipitation, with increase from 0.5 up to 3.6, and the influence of surface heat flux decreased. Heat-flux-dominated regions encountered increased aridity, and the dominance of total precipitation was neutralized. These findings have important implication for global management and mitigation of Asian dust emissions.

The Arctic Observing Mission (AOM) is a satellite mission concept under study by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), in partnership with Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) and Natural Resources Canada (NRCan). AOM would use two satellites in a highly elliptical orbit (HEO) to enable frequent observations of meteorological variables, greenhouse gases (GHGs), space weather and air quality (AQ) over northern regions, reaching beyond the usable viewing range of geostationary satellites. These observations are important for operational activities, environmental monitoring and scientific research aligned with the Government of Canada priority of enhancing Arctic and northern situational awareness and security.

This study presents a hyperspectral remote sensing approach for monitoring global CO₂ point source emissions using China’s GF5 and ZY1 satellites. By applying the matched filter method in the 1.6 μm and 2.0 μm absorption band and the Integrated Mass Enhancement (IME) technique, this study successfully detects and quantifies emissions from multiple facilities within a single scene—demonstrated in a high-density industrial cluster in Xinjiang. Results show current systems can detect power plants with annual emissions above 2.90 MtCO₂, covering 6.74 GtCO₂/year globally across eight sectors. While power and chemical sectors are well captured, cement and petrochemical emissions remain poorly detected, highlighting the need for improved sensitivity to low-intensity sources.

Biomass burning releases a large amount of pollutants including carbon monoxide (CO), and generates secondary pollutants, e.g., ozone (O3). Both CO and O3 are major pollutants and can also significantly affect tropospheric chemistry. Understanding O3-CO relationship is important for evaluating transport and evolution of the pollutants in fire plumes. Here, we analyse the satellite remote sensing of fire count data from MODIS, satellite remote sensing of CO and O3 from AIRS, and the simulation of the global atmospheric chemistry model GEOS-Chem in the middle and lower troposphere during June and August of 2010. AIRS can capture fire-induced CO and O3 enhancements (ΔCO and ΔO3) well in fire-affected and fire-plume outflow regions. Two areas with high ΔCO and ΔO3 include central Africa and northwestern South America in the tropics, where the numbers of hotspots are the large in the MODIS fire data. AIRS CO and O3 in fire plumes are highly correlated in 850 hPa and 500 hPa. The GEOS-Chem simulation show CO and O3 enhancement in northwestern South America, but with lower ΔO3/ΔCO values. These findings highlight the importance of integrating satellite observations with atmospheric chemistry modelling on refining fire-affected air quality and tropospheric chemistry assessments.