You are on page 1of 7

Remote Sensing of Environment 169 (2015) 205211

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Remote Sensing of Environment


journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/rse

Detection of pollution outow from Mexico City using CALIPSO


lidar measurements
J. Kar a,b,, M.A. Vaughan b, Z. Liu a,b, A.H. Omar b, C.R. Trepte b, J. Tackett a,b, T.D. Fairlie b, R. Kowch a,b
a
b

Science Systems and Applications Inc., Hampton, VA, USA


NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA, USA

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 2 April 2015
Received in revised form 3 August 2015
Accepted 12 August 2015
Available online xxxx
Keywords:
CALIPSO lidar measurements
Mexico City aerosol
Regional scale pollution outow

a b s t r a c t
We present the evidence of regional scale outow of particulate pollution from Mexico City using measurements
from the space borne CALIPSO lidar. The vertically resolved results are presented for winter months when the
large scale biomass burning from nearby areas is minimized, and the aerosol loading is dominated by anthropogenic outow from the city. The particulate depolarization ratio in the outowing plume has high values and reects the inuence of mixing of the urban pollution with the ubiquitous dust around the city. This is consistent
with the results from previous eld campaigns in the city and leads to polluted dust being the dominant aerosol
subtype as identied by the CALIPSO algorithm. A rst order estimate of the mass ux on two episodes using the
aerosol extinction proles from CALIPSO indicates outow of several hundred tons per day.
2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
It is estimated that globally about 54% of world population lived in
urban conglomerations in 2014 which is projected to rise to 66% by
2050 (UN, 2014). The large number of megacities in the developing
world attests to this. Air quality in these megacities has come under
close scrutiny in recent years. In particular, surface ozone and aerosol
concentration levels have been observed to be very high in some of
these megacities which are both detrimental to human health. In fact,
megacities can inuence regional air quality by exporting various species
of gases and particulate matter and a pollution potential index has been
developed to gauge this inuence on the basis of three-dimensional
transport model simulations (Lawrence, Butler, Steinkamp, Gurjar, &
Lelieveld, 2007). There are important differences between export of gaseous species and aerosols as the latter undergo deposition processes and
are preferentially transported horizontally because of scavenging processes occurring during convective lofting (Kunkel, Tost, & Lawrence,
2013). Lagrangian simulations also indicate latitude to be the most important factor for the regional scale transport effects (Cassiani, Stohl, &
Eckhardt, 2013).
One of the largest megacities in the world is the Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA, 19.43N, 99.13W), which has some 20 million inhabitants and is the dominant source of anthropogenic pollution in the
region (Molina, Kolb, de Foy, Lamb, et al., 2007). The unique topography
of the area, with mountains on three sides of the city (~2200 m above

Corresponding author at: Science Systems and Applications Inc. (SSAI), NASA LaRC,
Hampton, VA 23681, USA.
E-mail address: jayanta.kar@nasa.gov (J. Kar).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2015.08.009
0034-4257/ 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

mean sea level), traps the pollution in the city during the early morning
hours and vents it in the afternoon through thermally driven processes
(de Foy, Burton, Ferrare, Hostetler, et al., 2006, 2011; de Foy, Varela,
Molina, & Molina, 2006; de Foy, Krotkov, Bei, Herndon, et al., 2009;
Molina et al., 2007; Molina, Madronich, Gaffney, Apel, et al., 2010). Additionally, MCMA is subject to emissions from the Popocatepatl volcano,
located south east of the city (de Foy et al., 2009; Raga, Kok,
Baumgardner, Baez, & Rosasa, 1999). As such the emissions and evolution of various constituents affecting the air quality in MCMA have
been the focus of several eld missions in the past two decades with coordinated airborne and ground measurements (Molina et al., 2007,
2010). In particular, the evolution of the gaseous and aerosol species
downwind from MCMA was studied extensively by the MIRAGE-Mex
and MILAGRO/INTEX-B eld missions (Molina et al., 2010). It has been
realized that MCMA potentially affects the air quality and tropospheric
chemistry in the region.
From the various eld missions and extensive ground based observations, the aerosol environment in MCMA has been determined to be
a complex mixture of dust, inorganic and organic matter with some
50% being secondary organic aerosols (de Foy et al., 2011). While
these special campaigns have contributed signicantly to our understanding of aerosol transport processes in MCMA, they are necessarily
limited in their scope, both spatially and temporally. A fuller and complementary perspective can be obtained from space borne instruments.
However the aerosols from MCMA and their evolution or export over
regional scales have not been studied extensively using satellite data
as of now. As part of the MILAGRO/INTEX-B campaign, aerosol optical
depth (AOD) retrieved from MODIS and OMI were used to compare
with the airborne measurements of the urban plume (Livingston,
Redemann, Russell, Torres, et al., 2009; Redemann, Zhang, Livingston,

206

J. Kar et al. / Remote Sensing of Environment 169 (2015) 205211

Russell, et al., 2009). However no vertical information about the aerosol


plume could be obtained from these total column passive sensor retrievals. Space borne lidars can provide highly accurate vertically resolved measurements of aerosol loading in both the troposphere and
stratosphere. The Cloud Aerosol Lidar Infrared Pathnder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) mission has been providing high quality vertically
resolved measurements of atmospheric particulates globally since June
2006 (Winker, Pelon, Coakley, Ackerman, et al., 2010). In this paper we
use the CALIPSO measurements near MCMA to characterize the
regional-scale pollution outow from the city. The MCMA region is
also subject to emissions from intense biomass burning that takes
place in spring every year in the Yucatan peninsula (Yokelson,
Urbanski, Atlas, Toohey, et al., 2007). In order to delineate primarily
the anthropogenic inuence, we restrict our study to the dry winter
months, from November to February, when the biomass burning inuences are at their minimum. During winter the cloud occurrences are
also expected to be lower than in summer, providing relatively more
clear sky aerosol observations. Further, anthropogenic pollution levels
also reach a maximum during winter with more frequent thermal inversions (Molina et al., 2007). Modeling efforts also indicate the potential for more downwind export in winter (Kunkel et al., 2013). In this
short note, we use the CALIPSO lidar measurements to derive the optical
properties in the winter outow and also provide a rst order estimate
of the amount of outow.

2. Data
We use the global aerosol products retrieved from measurements of
the Cloud Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) instrument aboard the CALIPSO satellite since 2006 (Winker, Hunt, & McGill,
2007; Winker et al., 2010). The primary level 1 measurements are the
attenuated backscatter proles, polarized parallel and perpendicular
to the transmitted laser pulses at 532 nm and the total attenuated backscatter proles (i.e., parallel and perpendicular components combined)
at 1064 nm. In this study we use the level 2 5-km resolution layer products and prole products from versions 3.01 (June 13, 2006 to October
31, 2011) and 3.02 (November 1, 2011 to February 28, 2013) of the
CALIPSO data (Vaughan, Pitts, Trepte, Winker, et al., 2014). With respect
to earlier releases, this version provides signicant improvements in the
areas of aerosol layer detection, boundary layer cloud clearing and
cloud-aerosol discrimination. The CALIOP level 2 data, which are derived from the level 1 data using a number of complex algorithms
(Liu, Vaughan, Winker, Kittaka, et al., 2009; Omar, Winker, Kittaka,
Vaughan, et al., 2009; Vaughan, Powell, Kuehn, Young, et al., 2009;
Winker, Vaughan, Omar, Hu, et al., 2009; Young & Vaughan, 2009),
have been assessed in a number of papers. McGill, Vaughan, Trepte,
Hart, et al. (2007) evaluated the minimum detectable backscatter coefcient for the CALIPSO retrieval scheme, and found it to be in excellent
agreement with theoretical values predicted prior to launch. Rogers,
Vaughan, Hostetler, Burton, et al. (2014) conducted an in-depth study
evaluating all aspects of the CALIPSO aerosol layer products, and found
that while the CALIPSO layer detection scheme works well during
nighttime measurements, its daytime performance is (as expected)
somewhat degraded by the lower signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) that
typify daytime measurements (Hunt et al., 2009). Accurate backscatter and extinction retrievals of aerosols within these layers in
the CALIPSO algorithm depends upon the selection of the aerosol
layers as one of six subtypes which is done using their optical properties and surface characteristics (Omar et al., 2009). The CALIPSO aerosol
subtypes have been compared with corresponding aerosol types derived from AERONET data (Mielonen, Arola, Komppula, Kukkonen,
et al., 2009; Misra, Tripathi, Kaul, & Welton, 2013) and from high
spectral resolution lidar (HSRL) measurements (Burton et al.,
2013) with overall good agreement but with some deviations for
smoke and polluted dust.

3. Results
3.1. Examples of pollution outow in CALIPSO measurements
Fig. 1 shows two examples of CALIPSO browse images of attenuated
total backscatter measurements at 532 nm in the vicinity of MCMA on
December 25, 2008 and December 4, 2012 respectively, with arrows
marking the position closest to MCMA. The CALIPSO orbit tracks are
also shown, with the closest distance between MCMA and the
CALIPSO transect being ~ 100 km in both examples. The large highaltitude plumes of high backscatter can be clearly seen extending over
large distances from MCMA (extended yellow-orange features).
On December 25, 2008, the plume extends mostly northward with a
thinner plume extending to south. On the other hand for December 4,
2012, most of the plume seems to be extending to the south of the
city. Because other strong sources of particulate matter are absent at
this time of the year, these are likely to be signatures of anthropogenic
pollution outow from the city itself, possibly with some contribution
from the Popocatpetl volcano. As can be seen, distinct outow plumes
reach altitudes of up to ~5 km, and are lofted several kilometers above
the mountainous terrain. Pollution from MCMA area gets vented by
thermally induced winds and convection acting like an air-pump
and then advected away by synoptic winds (de Foy et al., 2006, 2011).
In the CALIPSO algorithm scene classication algorithms, optical properties such as volume depolarization ratio and attenuated backscatter
color ratio are used in conjunction with spatial information to distinguish aerosol layers from clouds (Liu et al., 2009). The vertical feature
masks in the bottom panels of Fig. 1 indicate that in each case the
outowing plumes are aerosol layers with a few cloud layers embedded
in them. These strong aerosol plumes are clearly detected in the
CALIPSO data in the winter months of every year on transects passing
in the vicinity of MCMA, which implies that this is a robust, persistent
phenomenon and not an artifact of the measurements as such. In principle, if these plumes represent pollution outow from the MCMA region, they should be observable during other seasons as well.
However, overlying clouds during summer and biomass burning emissions during spring transported from the Yucatan province may not
allow for unambiguous identication of these plumes.
Figs. 2 and 3 show the back trajectories for air parcels initiated along
the CALIPSO transects on the two event days that can be traced back to
within 20 km of MCMA within about 2460 h. These trajectories were
driven by GEOS5 winds (Reinecker, Suarez, Todling, Bacmeister, et al.,
2008) and calculated using the NASA Langley Trajectory Model
(LaTM) (Fairlie, Szykman, Gilliland, Pierce, et al., 2009; Pierce & Fairlie,
1993). The trajectories are color coded according to their initial altitudes
which are given in the legend in the inset of the gures. For the event on
Dec. 25, 2008, a signicant part of the high altitude aerosol plume can be
traced to the vicinity of MCMA. The air parcels spent a long time near
the city which would allow the pollution to be picked up. For the
event on Dec. 4, 2012, a stronger north-easterly ow prevailed and a
smaller part of the high altitude aerosol plume can be directly related
to locations within 20 km of the city.
3.2. Optical properties of the outow
Retrieved optical properties of the outow are shown in Fig. 4a with
height-latitude cross sections of particulate depolarization ratio at
532 nm, an indicator of particle shape. We have used all data within a
coincidence strip between 98 W and 100 W for the winter months (November through February) between 2007 and 2012 for this plot. The
data was limited to nighttime transects only as the signal-to-noise ratios
are signicantly worse during the daytime because of the solar background illumination. For this plot, we have calculated the particulate depolarization ratio as [p / (T p)], where p is the perpendicular
backscatter coefcient and T is the total backscatter coefcient as available in the CALIPSO prole products. We also calculate the uncertainty

J. Kar et al. / Remote Sensing of Environment 169 (2015) 205211

207

Fig. 1. Examples of aerosol outow from Mexico City area in CALIPSO lidar data on two different days. The top panels show the 532 nm total attenuated backscatter measured by the lidar
and the bottom panels show the vertical feature masks. The corresponding CALIPSO transects are shown in the insets in the top panels.

in the particulate depolarization ratio by propagating the uncertainties using the above equation. To ensure reliable retrievals, the
data were ltered using the extinction quality control (ext_qc) parameter reported in the CALIPSO level 2 data products. Only those
data for which the initial estimate of lidar ratio generated a stable extinction solution (ext_qc = 0) or for which lidar ratio estimates
could be made directly from the data (ext_qc = 1) or where the
aerosol layer is opaque (ext_qc = 16) were used (Young &
Vaughan, 2009). This ltering criterion removes about 2% of the

proles within the coincidence box. Data points where the extinction uncertainty calculation diverged (indicated by a value of 99.99
for the estimated uncertainty) were also rejected. Further, only the
depolarization data with a threshold on the estimated relative uncertainty (500%) was used. This threshold was used to include data
with lower depolarization ratios with relatively higher uncertainty,
which would otherwise be preferentially removed. After application
of all the lters, approximately 95% of the proles remain. The lidar
data were binned in 0.25 in latitude.

Fig. 2. Back trajectory paths for parcels that can be traced to within 20 km of Mexico City and were subsequently sampled by CALIPSO on December 25, 2008. The initial altitudes
corresponding to the colored trajectories are given in the legend. (For interpretation of the references to color in this gure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
This plot was generated using Google Earth imagery (data LDEO-Columbia, NSF, NOAA, image Landsat, data SIO, NOAA, U.S. Navy, NGA, and GEBCO).

208

J. Kar et al. / Remote Sensing of Environment 169 (2015) 205211

Fig. 3. Back trajectory paths for parcels that can be traced to within 20 km of Mexico City and were subsequently sampled by CALIPSO on December 4, 2012. The initial altitudes corresponding to the colored trajectories are given in the legend. (For interpretation of the references to color in this gure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
This plot was generated using Google Earth imagery (data LDEO-Columbia, NSF, NOAA, image Landsat, data SIO, NOAA, U.S. Navy, NGA, and GEBCO).

The aerosol particulate depolarization ratio clearly shows enhanced


values (~0.2) in the plume heading northward and also to some extent
to the south albeit with lower values, as compared to the valleys and
over the oceanic areas to the south of MCMA (the location of MCMA is

Fig. 4. a) Height latitude distribution of particulate depolarization ratio and b) Variation of


particulate depolarization ratio along the outow.

marked by a vertical line in Fig. 4a). Note in particular the difference


in depolarization as a function of height near 22N with the low
depolarizing aerosols near the ground over valley areas and high
depolarizing aerosols aloft. The outow from MCMA as seen in the generally enhanced particulate depolarization ratios can extend up to 25
28N, thus reaching the coastal areas of Texas, and once again indicating
the regional inuence of the outow from MCMA. CALIPSO lidar measurements thus conrm and extend the results from the several eld
missions carried out over the MCMA region (Molina et al., 2007, 2010;
Voss, Zaveri, Flocke, Mao, et al., 2010). Fig. 4b shows the mean particulate depolarization ratio between 2.55 km and 98W100W as a function of latitude in the outow. There is a tendency for increasing
depolarization as the plume evolves away from the MCMA region in
the northward direction. The reason for this is not entirely clear at this
time. In general with aging, the aerosol particles in the plume may be
expected to become more spherical by chemical processing or mixing
with other aerosols injected locally during the transport. The increasing
tendency in depolarization may imply that the pollution (mostly spherical particles) originating from Mexico City becomes thinner as the
plume is transported further north and dusty non-spherical particles
generated locally along the transport path become more signicant, although the extinction values (see Fig. 8) suggest that the aerosol loading
is very small at high altitudes in the downwind region. In absence of signicant mixing (Voss et al., 2010), it is also possible that the spherical
particles in the plume from Mexico City may fall off faster than the
dusty non-spherical particles, resulting in increased overall depolarization as the plume transports away from MCMA. Such a shape dependent
segregation has been observed in the Saharan Air Layer (SAL) from
CALIPSO data (Yang, Marshak, Varnai, Kalashnikova, & Kostinski,
2012). In contrast the aerosols transported towards the south seem to
decrease in depolarization, which may be understood in terms of hydration as the transects approach the ocean quickly in this direction.
Fig. 5 shows the histogram of mean particulate depolarization ratio
in the vicinity of MCMA. Here we have used a coincidence box of 19
20N and 98.5W99.5W and altitudes of 2.55 km. The particle depolarization ratio distribution shows a rather broad peak near 0.10.15.
The generally high values of the aerosol depolarization ratio in the outow plume indicate the presence of non-spherical particles like dust in
the vicinity of MCMA and are quite consistent with previous measurements. Using the NASA Langley airborne High Spectral Resolution
Lidar (HSRL) measurements as part of the MILAGRO (Megacity Initiative: Local and Global Research Observations) campaign, Rogers, Hair,

J. Kar et al. / Remote Sensing of Environment 169 (2015) 205211

209

Fig. 5. Histogram of particulate depolarization ratio in the vicinity of MCMA.

Fig. 7. Histogram of particulate color ratio in the vicinity of MCMA.

Hostetler, Ferrare, et al. (2009) found evidence of two distinct aerosol


types in the MCMA outow region with particulate depolarization ratios
of ~0.1 and ~0.2 in the two types, which is similar to the CALIPSO measurements shown here. In general, Rogers et al. (2009) infer a nonspherical component in most of their measurements. de Foy et al.
(2011) also found signicant impact of dust in the MCMA region.
While the urban aerosols and biomass burning smoke particles have
low depolarization ratios near the sources, the aerosols rapidly mix
with mainly dust as the plume evolves into a mixed aerosol type (within
~10 h). The resulting depolarization ratio of the mixed plume is ~0.1 (de
Foy et al., 2011), similar to the depolarization ratios observed in the outow plume observed by CALIPSO (Fig. 4). Note also that the generally
high depolarization ratio implies that the aerosols are probably not
dominated by volcanic inputsin general MCMA is subject to SO2 emissions from the Popocatpetl volcano near the city and the sulfates
resulting from these emissions are likely to have low depolarization ratios (de Foy et al., 2009).
Figs. 6 shows the corresponding distribution of the particulate color
ratio near MCMA. The particulate color ratio (ratio of backscatter at
1064 nm/532 nm) is an indicator of particle size and was calculated
on a prole-by-prole basis and later averaged. In addition to the quality assurance lters employed for 532 nm data as described above, similar lters (ext_qc = 0, 1 or 16) were used for the 1064 nm data. The
color ratios tend to show somewhat lower values in the outow
plume as compared to the oceanic areas (below ~ 1 km) to the south

of MCMA, although patches of high values can be discerned in the


north. This is consistent with the fact that marine aerosols are generally
coarser compared to the anthropogenic particles.
Fig. 7 shows the histogram of the particulate color ratio near MCMA
for the same coincidence box as in Fig. 5 (i.e., 1920N and 98.5W
99.5W and altitudes 2.55 km). The particulate color ratio has a
sharp peak near 0.70.8 suggesting that smaller particles dominate
the size distribution during the winter months. This color ratio distribution is generally consistent with the backscatter color ratios for mixed
plumes (biomass burning smoke with dust) measured by the HSRL during the MILAGRO mission in March 2006 (de Foy et al., 2011). Note that
de Foy et al.(2011) dene the backscatter color ratio (ratio of backscatter at 532 nm to the backscatter at 1064 nm) as the inverse of the color
ratio dened here, so the relatively high backscatter color ratio measured by HSRL for the mixed plumes correspond to low color ratios in
CALIPSO retrievals.
Fig. 8 shows the height latitude distribution of the 532 nm extinction
coefcients in the outow. The extinction coefcient is an extensive
property that depends on both aerosol type and aerosol concentration.
As can be seen in Fig. 8, the optical thickness of the plume is highest
close to the location of MCMA, once again pointing to the city as the likely origin of these plumes. However, the outow dilutes sharply away
from the city and can be clearly discriminated from the high values
from local sources in the low altitudes over the valley, north or south
of the city.

Fig. 6. Height latitude cross section of particulate color ratio in MCMA outow.

Fig. 8. Height latitude cross section of 532 nm extinction coefcient (km1) near MCMA.

210

J. Kar et al. / Remote Sensing of Environment 169 (2015) 205211

3.3. Aerosol subtypes and outow estimate


CALIPSO extinction retrievals need information on the lidar ratio
(i.e., extinction-to-backscatter ratio) associated with the aerosol subtypes inferred for each layer on the basis of optical properties as well
as the characteristics of the underlying surface (Omar et al., 2009).
These aerosol subtypes, although not exhaustive, provide valuable information on the aerosol environment. Fig. 9 shows overall distribution
of the dominant aerosol subtypes between 2007 and 2012 for the winter months (NovemberFebruary) in the vicinity of MCMA.
For this gure representing the subtypes in the vicinity of MCMA, we
have used a coincidence box of 19N20N and 98.5W99.5W and
have included only those layers detected at 5 km horizontal resolution
occurring with layer base height above 2.5 km and layer top height
below 5 km which were classied as aerosols with feature classication
quality assurance ag of medium or high and cloud-aerosol discrimination (CAD) score between 20 and 100. Using only those layers detected at the 5 km horizontal resolution restricts the data set to only
the highest SNR measurements and thus provides increased condence
in the aerosol subtyping results. As seen in this Figure, in all months,
polluted dust, which is the model for a mixture of smoke and dust,
was the dominant aerosol subtype with a maximum of ~80% in February. The distribution of the particulate depolarization ratio for these polluted dust layers does not show any signicant dependence on the
overlying attenuated backscatter. Such a dependence might potentially
impact the classication of polluted dust layers (Burton et al., 2013).
Smoke layers also contributed substantially, with a highest fraction of
~35% in November. Dust accounted for about 10% with 412% contribution coming from clean layers. Previous results from HSRL measurements during the MILAGRO campaign (March 2006), indicated the
presence of primarily three aerosol types, i.e., dusty mix, smoke and
urban pollution, the dusty mix being similar to the polluted dust (mixture of dust and smoke) in the CALIPSO algorithm (Patadia, Kahn,
Limbacher, Burton, et al., 2013).
CALIPSO lidar measurements, as presented here clearly show large
plumes of aerosol emanating from MCMA region during the winter
months, which are likely to have signicant regional scale impacts. It
is of some interest, therefore to estimate the amount of mass outow
in these plumes. An approximate estimate of the mass ux of pollution
outow can be derived using the following equation (Kaufman et al.,
2005):
M = L v g s1

where, is the optical depth estimated between the outow altitudes,


(m2 g1) is the dry mass extinction efciency of the aerosols, L (m) is a

characteristic length scale of the MCMA in the eastwest direction across


which the outow occurs and v (m s1) is the northward wind speed. To
obtain a rst order estimate of the outow for the two events shown in
Fig. 1, we have used the mean extinction prole in the vicinity of MCMA
(using all cloud free proles between 19N20N and 98.5W100.5W
using the quality lters mentioned earlier) and computed the optical
depth between 2.5 and 5.0 km. Within this coincidence box, the
CALIPSO level 2 aerosol products report 11 cloud-free 5-km proles for
December 25, 2008 and 17 for December 4, 2012. The median dry mass
extinction efciency values derived from an ensemble of 20 aerosol
models is 0.95 m2 g1 for dust, 5.7 m2 g1 for organic material and
9.0 m2 g1 for black carbon (Kinne, Schulz, Textor, Guibert, et al., 2006).
Yu, Remer, Chin, Bian, et al. (2008) have used a value of 4 m2 g1 for
Asian outows with low dust component. As discussed above, the dominant aerosol subtype identied by CALIPSO in MCMA region is polluted
dust while several eld campaigns indicate the strong inuence of organic
aerosols with the organic aerosol loading increasing as the plume is
transported away from MCMA (Molina et al., 2007). We assume a value
of 5 m2 g1 for to represent a mixture of dust and smoke (or black carbon). Further, adopting L = 40 km for the extent of MCMA in eastwest
direction and using the daily averaged gridded northward wind speed
as available from the National Center for Environmental Prediction
(NCEP) near MCMA at 700 hPa (to represent the outow speed between
2.5 and 5 km), we obtain approximate northward outow amounts of
~(+)180 tons per day and ~()610 tons per day for the events on December 25, 2008 and December 4, 2012 respectively, assuming a constant
outow over 24 h. The dominant wind direction at 700 hPa on December
4, 2012 was southward and the mass ux is calculated with a negative
sign, which is also consistent with the browse image, with the bulk of
the outow occurring to the south. We have not taken into account the
effect of aerosol swelling with increasing humidity, as in winter the
MCMA area is generally dry. The relative uncertainties in the various parameters in Eq. (1) are not well-known. Assuming conservative values
of 50% for the uncertainty in the mass extinction efciency (), 10% for
the uncertainty in L and 20% for the uncertainty in NCEP daily winds
used here, we estimate an uncertainty of ~50% for the outow amount
on both days by propagating the uncertainties in the extinction coefcient
proles within the coincidence box. If the episodic outows are dominated by black carbon, the mass outow amount will decrease signicantly
(by a factor of 5/9 if we use = 9 m2 g1 for black carbon). The accuracy
of these mass outow estimates is difcult to gauge from the currently
available information near the MCMA. Kunkel, Lawrence, Tost, Kerkweg,
et al. (2012) have modeled impact of aerosol transport from 46 megacities including the MCMA. However, they used a constant emission rate
from all cities and modeled the annual total mass deposition ux using
the prevailing meteorology, so it is not possible to directly compare our
mass outow values with their mass deposition values. Despite the uncertainties the values reported here might represent a rst order estimate of
the particulate outow episodes from a major megacity using satellite
data on aerosol extinction, and are presented essentially as a possible application of CALIPSO lidar data for studies of regional impacts of megacity
pollution.
4. Conclusions

Fig. 9. Relative abundance of the various aerosol subtypes in the vicinity of MCMA.

We have used CALIPSO lidar measurements to detect regional scale


pollution outows from MCMA during winter. Strong outows were
clearly detected emanating from the MCMA and often owed as far
north as the Texas coast. These measurements of long-range transport
of MCMA pollution are in agreement with the MILAGRO balloon and aircraft measurements in the Gulf of Mexico. The optical properties of the
aerosols as probed by the lidar indicate presence of non-spherical particles with depolarization ratios near 0.1. The CALIPSO algorithm identied most of these aerosols as polluted dust, which is consistent with
previous lidar measurements in the vicinity of MCMA. A rst order estimate of the mass outow on two occasions indicates that outow

J. Kar et al. / Remote Sensing of Environment 169 (2015) 205211

amounts can be of the order of several hundred tons per day. This satellite perspective conrms the strong regional scale impact of the pollution outows from MCMA. This study indicates the potential of using
CALIPSO lidar data for monitoring the regional air quality around large
urban centers like MCMA and the impact of long range pollution
outows.
Acknowledgments
The CALIPSO data used in this work were obtained from the NASA
Langley Atmospheric Sciences Data Center. J.K. acknowledges useful discussions with B. de Foy. We thank Kurt Severance for the help with the
CALIPSO curtain plots.
References
Burton, S.P., Ferrare, R.A., Vaughan, M.A., Omar, A.H., Rogers, R.R., Hostetler, C.A., & Hair,
J.A. (2013). Aerosol classication from airborne HSRL and comparisons with the
CALIPSO vertical feature mask. Atmospheric Measurement Techniques, 6, 13971412.
Cassiani, M., Stohl, A., & Eckhardt, S. (2013). The dispersion characteristics of air pollution
from the world's megacities. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 13, 99759996.
de Foy, B., Burton, S.P., Ferrare, R.A., Hostetler, C.A., et al. (2011). Aerosol plume transport
and transformation in high spectral resolution lidar measurements and WRF-Flexpart
simulations during the MILAGRO eld campaign. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics,
11, 35433563.
de Foy, B., Krotkov, N.A., Bei, A., Herndon, N., et al. (2009). Hit from both sides: Tracking
industrial and volcanic plumes in Mexico City with surface measurements and OMI
SO2 retrievals during the MILAGRO eld campaign. Atmospheric Chemistry and
Physics, 9, 95999617.
de Foy, B., Varela, J.R., Molina, L.T., & Molina, M.J. (2006). Rapid ventilation of the Mexico
City basin and regional fate of the urban plume. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 6,
23212336.
Fairlie, T.D., Szykman, J., Gilliland, A., Pierce, R.B., et al. (2009). Lagrangian sampling of 3-D
air quality model results for regional transport contributions to sulfate aerosol concentrations at Baltimore, MD, in summer 2004. Atmospheric Environment, 43,
32753288.
Hunt, W.H., Winker, D.M., Vaughan, M.A., Powell, K.A., Lucker, P.L., & Weimer, C. (2009).
CALIPSO Lidar description and performance assessment. Journal of Atmospheric and
Oceanic Technology, 26, 12141228.
Kaufman, Y.J., Koren, I., Remer, L.A., Tanre, D., Ginoux, P., & Fan, S. (2005). Dust transport
and deposition as observed from the Terra-Moderate Resolution Imaging
Spectroradiometer (MODIS) spacecraft over the Atlantic ocean. Journal of
Geophysical Research, 110, D10S12.
Kinne, S., Schulz, M., Textor, C., Guibert, S., et al. (2006). An AeroCom initial
assessmentOptical properties in aerosol component modules of global models.
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 6, 18151834.
Kunkel, D., Lawrence, M.G., Tost, H., Kerkweg, A., et al. (2012). Urban emission hotspots as
sources for remote aerosol deposition. Geophysical Research Letters, 39, L01808.
Kunkel, D., Tost, H., & Lawrence, M.G. (2013). Aerosol pollution potential from major population centers. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 13, 42034222.
Lawrence, M.G., Butler, T.M., Steinkamp, J., Gurjar, B.R., & Lelieveld, J. (2007). Regional pollution potentials of megacities and other major population centers. Atmospheric
Chemistry and Physics, 7, 39693987.
Liu, Z., Vaughan, M.A., Winker, D.M., Kittaka, C., et al. (2009). The CALIPSO lidar cloud and
aerosol discrimination: Version 2 algorithm and initial assessment of performance.
Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, 26, 11981213.
Livingston, J.M., Redemann, J., Russell, P.B., Torres, O., et al. (2009). Comparison of aerosol
optical depths from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on Aura with results
from airborne sunphotometry, other space and ground measurements during
MILAGRO/INTEX-B. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 9, 67436765.
McGill, M.J., Vaughan, M.A., Trepte, C.R., Hart, W.D., et al. (2007). Airborne validation of
spatial properties measured by the CALIPSO lidar. Journal of Geophysical Research,
112, D20201.

211

Mielonen, T., Arola, A., Komppula, M., Kukkonen, J., et al. (2009). Comparison of CALIOP
level 2 aerosol subtypes to aerosol types derived from AERONET inversion data.
Geophysical Research Letters, 36, L18804.
Misra, A.K., Tripathi, S.N., Kaul, D.S., & Welton, E.J. (2013). Study of MPLNET-derived aerosol climatology over Kanpur, India and validation of CALIPSO level 2 version 3 backscatter and extinction products. Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, 29,
12851294.
Molina, L.T., Kolb, C.E., de Foy, B., Lamb, B.K., et al. (2007). Air quality in North America's
most populous city-overview of the 2003 MCMA campaign. Atmospheric Chemistry
and Physics, 7, 24472473.
Molina, L.T., Madronich, S., Gaffney, J.S., Apel, E., et al. (2010). An overview of the
MILAGRO 2006 campaign: Mexico City emissions and their transport and transformation. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 10, 86978760.
Omar, A.H., Winker, D.M., Kittaka, C., Vaughan, M.A., et al. (2009). The CALIPSO automated
aerosol classication and lidar ratio selection algorithm. Journal of Atmospheric and
Oceanic Technology, 26, 19942014.
Patadia, F., Kahn, R.A., Limbacher, J.A., Burton, S.P., et al. (2013). Aerosol air mass type
mapping over the Urban Mexico City region from space-based multi-angle imaging.
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 13, 95259541.
Pierce, R.B., & Fairlie, T.D. (1993). Chaotic advection in the stratosphere: Implications for
the dispersal of chemically perturbed air from the polar vortex. Journal of
Geophysical Research, 98, 1858918595.
Raga, G.B., Kok, G.L., Baumgardner, D., Baez, A., & Rosasa, I. (1999). Evidence for volcanic
inuence on Mexico City aerosols. Geophysical Research Letters, 26, 11491152.
Redemann, J., Zhang, Q., Livingston, J., Russell, P., et al. (2009). Testing aerosol properties
in MODIS Collection 4 and 5 using airborne sunphotometer observations in INTEX-B/
MILAGRO. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 9, 81598172.
Reinecker, M.M., Suarez, M.J., Todling, R., Bacmeister, J., et al. (2008). The GEOS-5 data assimilation system. NASA Tech, NASA/TM-2008-104606, vol 27, (118 pp.).
Rogers, R.R., Hair, J.W., Hostetler, C.A., Ferrare, R.A., et al. (2009). NASA LaRC airborne high
spectral resolution lidar aerosol measurements during MILAGRO: Observations and
validation. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 9, 48114826.
Rogers, R.R., Vaughan, M.A., Hostetler, C.A., Burton, S.P., et al. (2014). Looking through the
haze: Evaluating the CALIPSO level 2 aerosol optical depth using airborne high spectral resolution Lidar data. Atmospheric Measurement Techniques, 7, 43174340.
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2014).
World urbanization prospects: The 2014 revision, highlights (ST/ESA/SER.A/352).
Vaughan, M., Pitts, M., Trepte, C., Winker, D., et al. (2014). CALIPSO Data Products Catalog,
release 3.7, PC-SCI-503. Hampton, VA USA: NASA Langley Research Center (available
at: http://www-calipso.larc.nasa.gov/products/CALIPSO_DPC_Rev3x7.pdf).
Vaughan, M.A., Powell, K.A., Kuehn, R.E., Young, S.A., et al. (2009). Fully automated detection of cloud and aerosol layers in the CALIPSO lidar measurements. Journal of
Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, 26, 20342050.
Voss, P.B., Zaveri, R.A., Flocke, F.M., Mao, H., et al. (2010). Long-range pollution transport
during the MILAGRO-2006 campaign: A case study of a major Mexico City outow
event using free-oating altitude-controlled balloons. Atmospheric Chemistry and
Physics, 10, 71377159.
Winker, D.M., Hunt, W.H., & McGill, M.J. (2007). Initial performance assessment of
CALIOP. Geophysical Research Letters, 34, L19803.
Winker, D.M., Pelon, J., Coakley, J.A., Jr., Ackerman, S.A., et al. (2010). The CALIPSO mission: A global 3D view of aerosols and clouds. Bulletin of the American Meteorological
Society, 91, 12111229.
Winker, D.M., Vaughan, M.A., Omar, A.H., Hu, Y., et al. (2009). Overview of the CALIPSO
mission and CALIOP data processing algorithms. Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic
Technology, 26, 23102323.
Yang, W., Marshak, A., Varnai, T., Kalashnikova, O.V., & Kostinski, A.B. (2012). CALIPSO observations of transatlantic dust: Vertical stratication and effect of Clouds.
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 12, 1133911354.
Yokelson, R.J., Urbanski, S.P., Atlas, E.L., Toohey, D.W., et al. (2007). Emissions from forest
res near Mexico City. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 7, 55695584.
Young, S.A., & Vaughan, M.A. (2009). The retrieval of proles of particulate extinction
from Cloud Aerosol Lidar Infrared Pathnder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) data:
Algorithm description. Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, 26, 11051119.
Yu, H., Remer, L.A., Chin, M., Bian, H., et al. (2008). A satellite-based assessment of transpacic transport of pollution aerosol. Journal of Geophysical Research, 113, D14S12.

You might also like