ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Remote Sens.
Sec. Atmospheric Remote Sensing
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frsen.2025.1676851
This article is part of the Research TopicEarth Observations from the Deep Space: 10 Years of the DSCOVR MissionView all 12 articles
MAIAC-Based Climatology of Atmospheric Iron-Oxide Dust Species from DSCOVR EPIC Observations
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, United States
- 2NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, United States
- 3US Naval Research Laboratory Marine Meteorology Division, Monterey, United States
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This study investigates the vertical distribution and seasonal climatology of absorbing iron-oxide minerals, specifically hematite and goethite, in atmospheric dust using the updated MAIAC EPIC version 3 algorithm. Leveraging data from July 2015 to December 2023, the key innovation is the improved Level 2 product which now incorporates Aerosol Layer Height (ALH), enabling the first-ever long-term characterization of their vertical and seasonal distribution globally. Our analysis reveals distinct seasonal and spatial patterns across major dust-emitting regions. Critically, we find that the spectral absorption properties, such as the imaginary refractive index (k) and Single Scattering Albedo (SSA), are strongly proportional to the mass fraction of iron oxides, highlighting the potential of SSA at UV wavelengths as a valuable tool for global monitoring. Furthermore, we confirm that hematite exhibits significant seasonal vertical variability; its concentration is high near the surface in winter but extends up to 2–4 km into the free troposphere in summer, a finding consistent with independent CALIOP observations. The resulting comprehensive climatology provides novel observational constraints for Earth System Models (ESMs), particularly for accurately modeling dust-radiative forcing. The developed methodology is readily applicable to other UV-NIR satellite platforms, such as PACE, GEMS, and TEMPO, demonstrating its broad utility for future atmospheric composition monitoring efforts.
Keywords: climatology, Hematite, Goethite, iron oxide, spectral refractive imaginary index, spectral single scattering albedo, aerosol layer height
Received: 31 Jul 2025; Accepted: 13 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Go, Lyapustin, Choi, Korkin, Wang and Hyer. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Sujung Go, sgo1@umbc.edu
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