OMI, TROPOMI, and EarthCare: data synergy to further characterize global trends, transport pathways, and radiative impacts of UV-absorbing aerosols

The instruments on board the EarthCARE mission reveal the vertical structure of complex aerosol and cloud layers in stunning detail and are lending new insights for better characterization of both composition and the radiative impact of aerosol plumes. The Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) on board ESA’s Sentinel 5-Precursor (S5P) satellite has, since its launch in 2017, delivered the highest spatial resolution of daily global measurements for a suite of trace gases together with information about the presence and height of UV-absorbing aerosols at 3.5 x 5 km. This work primarily utilizes the Aerosol Index (AER_AI) data which is well-suited to provide information about the horizontal extent ultraviolet (UV) absorbing aerosol plumes including desert dust, biomass burning smoke, and volcanic ash. Together with its predecessor the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI), the readily combined OMI-TROPOMI AER_AI datasets provide an invaluable temporal extension to the 7-year TROPOMI data record extending back more than twenty-one years covering 2004 to present. Despite a lower spatial resolution (13 x 24 km), OMI data linked with TROPOMI provides valuable information about seasonal and interannual cycling of global and regional amounts of UV-absorbing aerosols, particularly those arising from desert dust and biomass burning smoke emission. In this work we present the OMI-TROPOMI data record as well as some case study examples with collocated EarthCARE vertical cross sections. The case studies focus on known global aerosol emission and plume transport regions including Saharan dust outflow over the Atlantic and biomass burning smoke over southern hemispheric ocean basins as zoom-in examples of how well the ATLID derived EarthCARE data about aerosol optical properties can be applied to the horizontal plume extent as identified by OMI and TROPOMI. Lastly, the recently improved Aerosol Height Layer (AER_LH) data from TROPOMI will be shown in conjunction over these regions of interest to test the synergetic added-value of applying EarthCARE identified optical properties and layer height information to the OMI-TROPOMI UV Absorbing Aerosol Index data. Finally, a brief summary will be given to show how TROPOMI aerosol data fits together with the planned data products from recently launched Sentinel-4 and Sentinel-5 missions.