CALIPSO Recordings and Categorization of Atmospheric Aerosols over the Urmia Lake

The Urmia Lake is suffering from a severe drought scenario that started in recent decades. The lake has lost almost 88% of its surface area in comparison to its value in 1995. This has left a bed of salt around the lake, that has the potential to disperse a significant amount of aerosols (dust and salt) into the atmosphere. We use the recordings of the CALIPSO satellite to investigate the optical parameters of atmospheric aerosols over the Urmia Lake. For this purpose, the aerosol optical depth (AOD) and the particulate depolarization ratio (PDR) at 532 nm have been selected from the whole available recordings of the CALIPSO. To distinguish between the atmospheric particles which are originating from the lake bed and those that are transported from the surrounding sources to the lake area, the PDR has been categorized for two altitude ranges, i.e., from the ground level up to 2 km above the mean sea level (amsl) and above 3 km amsl. Investigating the variations of the PDR at these two altitude ranges, provides information about the type of atmospheric particles at different times of the year. Although it is not easy to distinguish between the transported dust layers and atmospheric particles from the lake bed, it seems that the Urmia Lake is mostly active in the driest times of the year, i.e., June to October. Also, it seems that the particles which are originating from the lake, are mostly dry salt particles, where their corresponding PDR is 0.16 ± 0.05.

Abstract licence: CC BY

20 more references, whose wording the paper’s licence keeps private.

A person counts once a day per paper. We keep no cookie and no address: a reader is a hash that changes every day. Any month under five reads shows no number.