Diner, David J. and Ackerman, Thomas P. and Anderson, Theodore L. and Bösenberg, Jens and Braverman, Amy J. and Charlson, Robert J. and Collins, Williams D. and Davies, Roger and Holben, Brent N. and Hostetler, Chris A. and Kahn, Ralph A. and Martonchik, John V. and Menzies, Robert T. and Miller, Mark A. and Ogren, John A. and Penner, Joyce E. and Rasch, Philip J. and Schwartz, Stephen E. and Seinfeld, John H. and Stephens, Graeme L. and Torres, Omar and Travis, Larry D. and Wielicki, Bruce A. and Yu, Bin (2004) An Integrated Approach for Characterizing Aerosol Climate Impacts and Environmental Interactions. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 85 (10). pp. 1491-1501. ISSN 0003-0007. http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20110920-114400141
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Aerosols exert myriad influences on the earth's environment and climate, and on human health. The complexity of aerosol-related processes requires that information gathered to improve our understanding of climate change must originate from multiple sources, and that effective strategies for data integration need to be established. While a vast array of observed and modeled data are becoming available, the aerosol research community currently lacks the necessary tools and infrastructure to reap maximum scientific benefit from these data. Spatial and temporal sampling differences among a diverse set of sensors, nonuniform data qualities, aerosol mesoscale variabilities, and difficulties in separating cloud effects are some of the challenges that need to be addressed. Maximizing the long-term benefit from these data also requires maintaining consistently well-understood accuracies as measurement approaches evolve and improve. Achieving a comprehensive understanding of how aerosol physical, chemical, and radiative processes impact the earth system can be achieved only through a multidisciplinary, inter-agency, and international initiative capable of dealing with these issues. A systematic approach, capitalizing on modern measurement and modeling techniques, geospatial statistics methodologies, and high-performance information technologies, can provide the necessary machinery to support this objective. We outline a framework for integrating and interpreting observations and models, and establishing an accurate, consistent, and cohesive long-term record, following a strategy whereby information and tools of progressively greater sophistication are incorporated as problems of increasing complexity are tackled. This concept is named the Progressive Aerosol Retrieval and Assimilation Global Observing Network (PARAGON). To encompass the breadth of the effort required, we present a set of recommendations dealing with data interoperability; measurement and model integration; multisensor synergy; data summarization and mining; model evaluation; calibration and validation; augmentation of surface and in situ measurements; advances in passive and active remote sensing; and design of satellite missions. Without an initiative of this nature, the scientific and policy communities will continue to struggle with understanding the quantitative impact of complex aerosol processes on regional and global climate change and air quality.
|Additional Information:||© 2004 American Meteorological Society. Support from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Energy is gratefully acknowledged. The research of D. J. Diner, A. J. Braverman, R. Davies, R. A. Kahn, J. V. Martonchik, and R. T. Menzies was conducted at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with NASA. The research of T. P. Ackerman was conducted at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory under contract with JPL. T. L. Anderson and R. J. Charlson acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation (Grant ATM-0138250). The research work of O. Torres was funded by NASA, and conducted at the Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology, University of Maryland, Baltimore County.|
|Official Citation:||Diner, David J., and Coauthors, 2004: Paragon: an integrated approach for characterizing aerosol climate impacts and environmental interactions. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 85, 1491–1501. doi: 10.1175/BAMS-85-10-1491|
|Usage Policy:||No commercial reproduction, distribution, display or performance rights in this work are provided.|
|Deposited By:||Ruth Sustaita|
|Deposited On:||20 Sep 2011 21:00|
|Last Modified:||26 Dec 2012 13:41|
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