Deriving Cloud Droplet Number Concentration from Combined Airborne Lidar and Polarimeter Measurements from the NAAMES Mission
Abstract
The NASA Langley High Spectral Resolution lidar (HSRL) and the NASA GISS Research Scanning Polarimeter (RSP) were deployed onboard the NASA C-130 during two field campaigns as part of the NASA's Earth Venture-Suborbital (EVS) North Atlantic Aerosol and Marine Ecosystems Study (NAAMES) during November 2015 and May 2016. The main objectives of NAAMES are to study the phases of the North Atlantic annual plankton cycle and to investigate remote marine aerosols and their impact on boundary layer clouds. Lidar retrievals of the cloud-top extinction and lidar ratio (extinction/backscatter ratio) of boundary layer clouds are presented. These retrievals are unique and are enabled by two characteristics of the lidar: employment of the high-spectral-resolution lidar technique and the high-vertical-resolution (1.25 m) the Langley HSRL instrument. The HSRL lidar ratio retrievals are compared to estimates derived from Research Scanning Polarimeter data to assess consistency between the two remote sensors. The measurements of effective size and variance from RSP are combined with the HSRL cloud top extinction to retrieve the cloud droplet number concentrations (CDNC). The lidar+polarimeter CDNC estimates are compared to those from the Cloud Droplet Probe (CDP) that is part of the NASA Langley Aerosol Research Group Experiment (LARGE) instrument suite. Histograms of the CNDC measurements from remote sensors are shown to highlight the observed differences in CDNC between the November and May deployments.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFM.A13I..08H
- Keywords:
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- 0305 Aerosols and particles;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE;
- 0319 Cloud optics;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE;
- 0360 Radiation: transmission and scattering;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE;
- 4264 Ocean optics;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: GENERAL