DETECTION OF BIOMASS BURNING SMOKE FROM TOMS MEASUREMENTS

A 14.5 year gridded data set of tropospheric absorbing aerosol index w as derived from the Nimbus-7 Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) r eflectivity difference between 340 and 380 nm channels. Based upon rad iative transfer calculations, the reflectivity anomaly between these t wo UV wavelength channels is very sensitive to smoke and soot aerosols from biomass burning and forest fires, volcanic ash clouds as well as desert mineral dust. We demonstrate the ability of the TOMS instrumen t to detect and track smoke and soot aerosols generated by biomass bur ning in South America. TOMS data can clearly distinguish between absor bing particles (smoke and dust) and non-absorbing aerosols (clouds and haze). For South American fires, comparisons of TOMS data are consist ent with the limited amount of ground-based observations (Porto Nacion al, Brazil) and show generally good agreement with other satellite ima gery. TOMS data shows large-scale transport of smoke particulates gene rated by the burning fires in the South America, which subsequentially advects smoke aerosols as far as the Atlantic Ocean east of Uruguay.