We have modeled irradiated planets located near a dM5 and a G2 primary star. The impinging radiation field was explicitly included in the solution of the radiative transfer equation and in the computation of the atmospheric structure. We find that large errors in both the thermal and reflected flux will result from models which do not include the impinging radiation in a self-consistent manner....

Many alpine areas are experiencing deglaciation, biogeochemical changes driven by temperature rise, and changes in atmospheric deposition. There is mounting evidence that the water quality of alpine streams may be related to these changes, including rising atmospheric deposition of carbon (C) and nutrients. Given that barren alpine soils can be severely C limited, atmospheric deposition sources...

Asian dust or yellow sand events in East Asia are a major issue of environmental contamination and human health, causing increasing concern. A high amount of dust particles, especially called as particulate matter 10 (PM10), is transported by the wind from the arid and semi-arid tracks to the Korean peninsula, bringing a bacterial population that alters the terrestrial and atmospheric microbial...

The Panoramic Cameras on NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers have each returned more than 17,000 images of their calibration targets. In order to make optimal use of this data set for reflectance calibration, a correction must be made for the presence of air fall dust. Here we present an improved dust correction procedure based on a two-layer scattering model, and we present a dust reflectance spect...

Due to rapid industrialization and urbanization lead atmospheric deposition of heavy metals and dust load to become a global problem. We investigated the deposition of dust and heavy metals (Pb, Cd, Ni, Zn, Mn and Cu) at selected urban and sub-urban sites of Varanasi, India. Dustfall samples from different sampling location were collected and selected heavy metals viz. Pb, Cd, Cr, Ni, Zn, Mn an...

The columnar properties of atmospheric aerosol (size distributions, single scattering albedo and asymmetry parameter) are investigated based on sun/sky photometer measurements obtained during August 2003 at Granada (37.181N, 3.581W, 680m a.s.l.), southeastern Spain. Also, we compute and analyze the average aerosol radiative forcing under two different atmospheric situations that occurred during...

Dust devils occur in arid climates on the Earth and ubiquitously on Mars, where they likely dominate the supply of atmospheric dust and influence climate. Martian dust devils have been studied with a combination of orbiting and landed spacecraft, while most studies of terrestrial dust devils have involved manned monitoring of field sites, which can be costly both in time and personnel. As an al...

[1] The Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) instrument operated as an atmospheric lidar system as well as an altimeter, detecting absorptive clouds in northern latitudes shortly after orbit insertion in October 1997 and reflective clouds over the north polar cap at the start of the Science Phasing Orbits in March 1998. Global cloud measurements commenced with the primary mapping mission in Marc...

In this study we attempted to better quantify radiative effects of dust over the Arabian Peninsula and their dependence on input parameters. For this purpose we have developed a stand-alone column radiation transport model coupled with the Mie, T-matrix and geometric optics calculations and driven by reanalysis meteorological fields and atmospheric composition. Numerical experiments were carrie...

Mineral dust aerosol is created by wind erosion of soil particles. In addition to its direct radiative effect, dust aerosol mediates ocean carbon uptake and the chemical cycles of other aerosols like sulfates. Dust observations during the past decade span measurements of local concentration and deposition to global satellite retrievals of aerosol optical thickness [Prospero et al., 2002]. Measu...