Airborne High Spectral Resolution Lidar-2 Measurements of Biomass Burning Aerosol Distributions over the Southeastern Atlantic Ocean during the ORACLES Field Missions
Abstract
We use NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) airborne High Spectral Resolution Lidar-2 measurements to characterize extensive biomass burning aerosol layers located over the southeastern Atlantic Ocean. The HSRL-2 measurements were collected during the NASA EV-S Observations of Aerosols above Clouds and their Interactions (ORACLES) missions in 2016, 2017, and 2018. HSRL-2 measured profiles of aerosol backscattering, extinction, aerosol optical depth, and depolarization at 355 and 532 nm and aerosol backscattering and depolarization at 1064 nm. We also use these profiles in advanced retrieval algorithms to derive profiles of aerosol effective radius and concentration.
The HSRL-2 aerosol profiles show that the vertical distributions of these smoke layers varied during these deployments. The HSRL-2 mean aerosol extinction profiles acquired during 2017 show considerably higher aerosol extinction just above the cloud top than profiles from the 2016 ORACLES deployment. In some cases, the HSRL-2 profiles also show vertical variability in aerosol intensive properties that indicate aerosol properties such as particle size and/or absorption varied with altitude. HSRL-2 measurements showed a more pronounced gap between the smoke and cloud layers in 2016 than in 2017 and 2018. We also use these HSRL-2 aerosol measurements along with retrievals of cloud drop effective radius and liquid water path retrieved from airborne Research Scanning Polarimeter measurements to investigate the extent to which cloud properties vary with the amount and properties of the overlying biomass burning aerosol layer.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.A11N2906F
- Keywords:
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- 0305 Aerosols and particles;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE;
- 0321 Cloud/radiation interaction;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE;
- 3311 Clouds and aerosols;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES;
- 3359 Radiative processes;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES