Development of an Operational Multi-sensor and Multi-channel Aerosol Assimilation Package

Accurate aerosol and visibility forecasts are critical to both civilian and military applications. To improve the Navy's electro-optical propagation forecast capability, the world's first operational aerosol assimilation model was developed for improving the short and long-term forecasts of NAAPS through the assimilation of the over-water MODIS aerosol products. In this project, the capability of over-land aerosol data assimilation was studied, a multi-sensor data assimilation technique was evaluated, and a prototype of a system that assimilates MODIS fine model aerosol optical depth ratio was developed for improving model representation of aerosol speciation. Extending beyond the scope of this study, a 3-D aerosol assimilation package was constructed, which is designed to improve the accuracy of NAAPS aerosol vertical profiles by assimilating data from CALIPSO. With knowledge gained from the multi-sensor analysis, the long-term aerosol trend was also studied for climate related applications. This research project yielded a total often authored or coauthored peer-reviewed journal papers and more than twenty conference presentations.