Optical properties of biomass burning smoke in South-East Asia studied by NOAA/AVHRR and ground-base monitoring Original Research Article

Indonesian forest fire took place in wide area of Kalimantan and Sumatera Islands in 1997 and continuously influenced the atmospheric environment and meteorological conditions of South-East Asia nearly throughout the last half of the year. The fire produced various materials including chemical gas and particles, which acted on the optical properties of aerosols in each area. A retrieval algorithm previously developed for MODIS was modified for the NOAA/AVHRR visible and near infrared channels based on the look-up table, which is pre-calculated with 6S code. Local biomass burning aerosol concentrations and contribution factor η of small radius particles over certain ocean areas between the two islands were derived from two channel data of NOAA/AVHRR. The results were validated with surface meteorological data, and sun photometer data.