Variabilidade espacial e temporal do monóxido de carbono sobre a América do Sul: dez anos de sondagem AQUA

Abstract

This study investigates the behavior of tropospheric carbon monoxide (CO) over South America, analyzing their spatial and temporal variability and relating with important interannual events to the region such as El Niño and La Niña, from infor-mation the AQUA souding system, between the years 2003-2012. Moreover, it is an assessment of the quality of the estimates of CO by the AQUA sounding system based on measurements taken over a field experiment with the Bandeirante aircraft from INPE during the month of October 2007, in the town of Alta Floresta (MT), the Midwest region of Brazil. The results of the temporal analysis of CO show a well de-fined seasonal behavior, with reduced concentrations in the rainy season and an in-creased concentration in the dry season, with peaks in September, due to increased biomass burning during this period. As biomass burning in the interannual scale is directly associated with climate variability and the decrease/increase of rain in the central and eastern part of South America, during certain years the high (low) con-centrations of CO are associated with the events of El Niño (La Niña). In terms of spatial variability greater variability of CO on the central region of Brazil, a region with the largest number of outbreaks of burning is observed. Regarding comparisons be-tween the estimates of the AQUA sounding system and the measures using the air-craft it is possible to observe the difficulty of retrieve the concentration of CO in the lower troposphere using remote sensing data, particularly in periods with a large number of fires in the region, as well as seen in 2007, the year with the largest num-ber of fires in the region during the decade, when the sounding system was unable to detect the plumes of smoke.