The influence of dust optical properties on the colour of simulated MSG-SEVIRI Desert Dust infrared imagery

Banks, Jamie R.; Schepanski, Kerstin; Heinold, Bernd; Hünerbein, Anja; Brindley, Helen E.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-9681-2018

Articles | Volume 18, issue 13

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-9681-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

The Saharan Aerosol Long-range Transport and Aerosol-Cloud-interaction...

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-9681-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 13

Research article

|

10 Jul 2018

Research article |

| 10 Jul 2018

The influence of dust optical properties on the colour of simulated MSG-SEVIRI Desert Dust infrared imagery

Jamie R. Banks, Kerstin Schepanski, Bernd Heinold, Anja Hünerbein, and Helen E. Brindley

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-9681-2018-supplement

Data sets

Supplementary material: Global scale variability of the mineral dust longwave refractive index: a new dataset of in situ measurements for climate modelling and remote sensing Claudia Di Biagio, Paola Formenti, Yves Balkanski, Lorenzo Caponi, Mathieu Cazaunau, Edouard Pangui, Emilie Journet, Sophie Nowak, Sandrine Caquineau, Meinrat O. Andreae, Konrad Kandler, Thuraya Saeed, Stuart Piketh, David Seibert, Earle Williams, and Jean-François Doussin https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-1901-2017-supplement

Short summary

Satellite observations are used to visualize dust storms over the Sahara, and specific infrared channel combinations can highlight dust with distinctive pink colours. Using output from a dust-atmosphere model to simulate satellite imagery, we explore the consequences of particle size, shape, and refractive index for the colour of dust in the imagery. Particles with a radius of ~ 1.5 microns perturb the colour the most and an assumption of spherical dust appears to be insufficient.