Climatology and classification of aerosols based on optical properties over selected stations in Iraq
Kifah B.AL-Taie, Jasim M. Rajab, Ali M. Al-Salihi
Abstract
Atmospheric aerosol plays an important role in the earth's radiation budget, air quality and human health. The aerosol optical depth (AOD) and Angstrom exponent (AE) data are extracted from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectoradiometer (MODIS) with resolution of 1° × 1°covering seven selected regions in Iraq: Mosul, Sulaimaniyah, Rutba, Baghdad, Nukhayb, Nasiriyah and Basra for the period (2001-2018), in order to earn the detailed knowledge of aerosols behavior and classification for each season. The Results indicates high variability in (AOD) ranging from (0.05-0.9) with highest values occurred during June-April (0.92, 0.90) in Basra and Nukhuyb respectively, whereas the minimum values were observed during October-November (0.051, 0.055) over Sulaimaniyah and Mosul respectively. The AE records exhibit an opposite behavior to AOD, and highest AE values occurred during winter and autumn which indicates dominant fine particles, and lowest values observed during spring and summer due to dominant coarse particles for whole study area except Nukhayb. Appropriate thresholds for AOD and AE have been employed to classify the aerosol type into maritime, dust, urban, desert dust, biomass burning and the residual cases that do not belong to the threshold used are considered as mixture type for all regions.