Studying the radiative environment of individual biomass burning fire plumes using multi-platform observations: an example ARCTAS case study on June 30, 2008

The scientific goals of the 2008 Arctic Research of the Composition of the Troposphere from Aircraft and Satellites (ARCTAS) field campaign included the study of biomass burning emissions through the synergistic use of observations using a wide variety of experimental techniques (e.g., in situ, radiometric, active remote sensing) from multiple platforms (ground, airborne, satellite). In this paper we report on the multi-platform fire plume study on June 30, 2008. A portion of the flight track of the NASA P-3 aircraft carrying a suite of in situ aerosol and radiometric instruments was coordinated to coincide in space and time with the flight track of the B-200 aircraft carrying a high spectral resolution lidar (HSRL) and with the A-Train suite of satellites. We used the P-3 radiometric instrumentation and applied different techniques to derive aerosol radiative forcing efficiency, absorption aerosol optical depth (AAOD) and single scattering albedo, and compare them to the P-3 in situ observations. We compare the suborbital observations of aerosol radiative properties to estimates from coincident MODIS, CALIPSO and OMI measurements and show how these satellites provide different estimates for some quantities based on sensor spatial resolution and scene heterogeneity alone. Finally, we describe a technique that combines AOD, AAOD and aerosol backscatter measurements to derive a set of aerosol radiative properties sufficient for aerosol direct radiative effect calculations. Comparing these calculations to spectral radiative flux measurements aboard the P-3 aircraft, we find good agreement for the broader wavelength range of 350-2150 nm, but less good agreement for the shorter wavelength range (350-700 nm). We will discuss reasons for the differences in agreement for the various spectral ranges, in particular those differences that may be traced to the newly developed retrieval methodology for aerosol radiative properties.