Optical Characteristics of Atmospheric Aerosol over the Black Sea and Reservoirs of the Middle and Lower Volga for 2022–2024

D. V. Kalinskaya1,2,*, A. A. Molkov1, 3

1 Lobachevsky Nizhny Novgorod State University, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia

2 Marine Hydrophysical Institute of RAS, Sevastopol, Russia

3 A.V. Gaponov-Grekhov Institute of Applied Physics of RAS, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia

* e-mail: kalinskaya_d_v@mail.ru

Abstract

The paper presents the results of a comprehensive analysis of atmospheric aerosol based on in situ photometer SPM measurements data, MODIS (Aqua/Terra) and VIIRS satellite data, and HYSPLIT air flow modeling data. The study was conducted by comparing the optical characteristics obtained during the same periods over the Black Sea region and tracking the movement of aerosol towards reservoirs located in different parts of the Volga River: the Middle Volga (Gorky and Cheboksary Reservoirs) and the Lower Volga (Kuybyshev and Volgograd Reservoirs). The analysis revealed the days of dust aerosol presence in the atmosphere. We compared the periods when high values of the aerosol optical depth (AOD) and low values of the Angstrom exponent were obtained for the Black Sea and for the Volga River. The periods when high values of AOD and low values of the Angstrom exponent were obtained simultaneously for the Black Sea and for the Volga River region were identified. A key finding of this study is the stability of the aerosol optical characteristics over the Black Sea and the Kuybyshev Reservoir, which persisted even during intensive dust transport from the Sahara Desert. This proves that regional algorithms for the Black Sea can be used to restore the brightness coefficients from satellite data when there is dust aerosol in the atmosphere over the Volga River reservoirs. The presented results provide a preliminary description of the atmosphere optical characteristics in the study regions and may be useful for testing the accuracy of standard atmospheric correction algorithms for satellite data.

Keywords

SPM, MODIS, VIIRS, SILAM, backward trajectories of HYSPLIT, Angstrom exponent, dust aerosol, smoke aerosol, aerosol optical depth, AOD, Volga, Black Sea, atmospheric aerosol

Acknowledgments

The work was carried out at the expense of the RNF grant No. 23-17-00071 (“Volga bio-optical algorithms”), https://rscf.ru/project/23-17-00071. The authors express their gratitude to S. M. Sakerin and D. M. Kabanov for providing the SPM photometer and its software and for the possibility of using high-quality photometric measurement data. The authors also thank Air Resources Laboratory (ARL) and the developers of HYSPLIT for providing high-quality simulation data in a timely manner. The authors express their gratitude to Kapustin I.A. and Leshchev G.V. for their participation in performing in situ measurements. For the Black Sea the researches were performed under state assignment of the Marine Hydrophysical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences FNNN-2024-0012 “Analysis, diagnosis and operational forecast of the state of hydrophysical and hydrochemical fields of marine waters based on mathematical modeling using data from remote and contact measurement methods” (“Operational Oceanology”).

For citation

Kalinskaya, D.V. and Molkov, A.A., 2025. Optical Characteristics of Atmospheric Aerosol over Reservoirs of the Middle and Lower Volga in Comparison with the Black Sea for the Period 2022–2024. Ecological Safety of Coastal and Shelf Zones of Sea, (3), pp. 141–162.

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