Anthropogenic and Volcanic Contributions to the Decadal Variations of Aerosols in the Upper Troposphere and Lower Stratosphere

Mian Chin1, Thomas L Diehl2, Huisheng Bian3, Dr. Valentina Aquila4, Peter Richard Colarco5, John Philip Burrows FRS6, Dr. Nickolay Anatoly Krotkov1, Jean-Paul Vernier7, Zifeng Lu8, David G Streets9, Hugh C Pumphrey10 and William George Read11, (1)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (2)NASA GSFC, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (3)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Atmospheric Chemistry and Dynamics Laboratory (Code 614), Greenbelt, MD, United States, (4)NASA GSFC, Greenbelt, United States, (5)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Atmospheric Chemistry and Dynamics Laboratory, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (6)University of Bremen, Institute of Environmental Physics (IUP), Bremen, Germany, (7)Science Systems and Applications, Inc., Hampton, VA, United States, (8)Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, United States, (9)Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL, United States, (10)University of Edinburgh, School of Geosciences, Edinburgh, United Kingdom, (11)Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, United States
Abstract:
We investigate the anthropogenic and volcanic contributions to sulfate aerosol in the stratosphere through modeling and analysis of satellite data. We use a global model GOCART to simulate SO2 and sulfate aerosol in the period of 2000 to 2010, during which a numerous volcanic eruptions occurred although nothing like the magnitudes of El Chichon or Pinatubo. We compare the model results with the column SO2 data from OMI and stratospheric SO2 data from MLS instrument on Aura satellite and the aerosol vertical profiles from the SCIAMACHY instrument on Envisat and the CALIOP instrument on CALIPSO satellites. Finally, we will assess the relative contributions of volcanic aerosols vs. anthropogenic aerosols to the observed decadal stratospheric aerosol trends.
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