Analysis of African Biomass Burning Over the South East Atlantic and its Interaction with Stratocumulus Clouds during ORACLES 2016/17
Abstract
During NASA ORACLES 2016/17 airborne missions, biomass burning (BB) advected from the African continent out over the South East Atlantic was intensively studied to better understand the role of BB aerosol in the regional radiation budget but also to discern its effect from natural aerosol on underlying Stratocumulus (Sc) clouds in the marine boundary layer (MBL). Because of its particle size and vast quantities BB aerosol once entrained into the MBL are highly effective as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) impacting cloud microphysical properties and as such the Sc deck's radiative budget. This work identifies characteristic in-plume size resolved aerosol physiochemistry observed during the campaign with focus on absorbing aerosol measurements retrieved with a Single Particle Soot Photometer (SP2). The results are compared to MBL aerosol obervations and adjacent Sc cloud properties such as the cloud droplet number concentration. Additionally, size resolved aerosol physiochemistry and black carbon concentration were measured in the cloud occasionally using a Counterflow Virtual Impactor (CVI) inlet sampling exclusively cloud droplet residuals. Employing the CVI cloud droplets are inertially separated from the air and dried in-situ en-route to the aerosol instrumentation. This allows us to study natural and combustion-influenced aerosol that were actually activated as CCN in the Sc deck.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFM.A14B..08F
- Keywords:
-
- 0321 Cloud/radiation interaction;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE;
- 3311 Clouds and aerosols;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES;
- 3355 Regional modeling;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES;
- 3360 Remote sensing;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES