Abstract
Abstract. The NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) airborne High Spectral Resolution Lidar (HSRL) on the NASA B200 aircraft has acquired extensive datasets of aerosol extinction (532 nm), aerosol optical depth (AOD) (532 nm), backscatter (532 and 1064 nm), and depolarization (532 and 1064 nm) profiles during 18 field missions that have been conducted over North America since 2006. The lidar measurements of aerosol intensive parameters (lidar ratio, depolarization, backscatter color ratio, and spectral depolarization ratio) are shown to vary with location and aerosol type. A methodology based on observations of known aerosol types is used to qualitatively classify the extensive set of HSRL aerosol measurements into eight separate types. Several examples are presented showing how the aerosol intensive parameters vary with aerosol type and how these aerosols are classified according to this new methodology. The HSRL-based classification reveals vertical variability of aerosol types during the NASA ARCTAS field experiment conducted over Alaska and northwest Canada during 2008. In two examples derived from flights conducted during ARCTAS, the HSRL classification of biomass burning smoke is shown to be consistent with aerosol types derived from coincident airborne in situ measurements of particle size and composition. The HSRL retrievals of AOD and inferences of aerosol types are used to apportion AOD to aerosol type; results of this analysis are shown for several experiments.
Highlights
We introduce an aerosol classification scheme for airborne High Spectral Resolution Lidar (HSRL) measurements from the NASA Langley HSRL instrument
During the second Caribbean campaign, high values of aerosol depolarization reflect the large amount of Saharan dust observed. These results indicate that the aerosol intensive variables measured by HSRL vary with location and suggest that this variability can be used as an indicator of aerosol type
A method to qualitatively classify aerosol types based on airborne HSRL measurements of aerosol intensive parameters has been presented here
Summary
We introduce an aerosol classification scheme for airborne High Spectral Resolution Lidar (HSRL) measurements from the NASA Langley HSRL instrument. Since 2006, the NASA Langley HSRL has routinely participated in chemistry and radiationfocused field missions throughout North America, where its high accuracy, high resolution, vertically resolved measurements of aerosol provide vertical context for ground-based, in situ, and satellite observations of aerosols and clouds (e.g. Molina et al, 2010; Warneke et al, 2010). The aerosol classification introduced here serves to enhance the input provided by HSRL in both of these roles. The HSRL serves as a test-bed for advanced satellite lidar instruments, and the advanced retrievals required for those measurements may benefit from aerosol classification like what is described here. Advanced lidar retrievals of microphysical properties from extinction and backscattering coefficients and depolarization at multiple wavelengths (Muller et al, 1999; Veselovskii et al, 2002), such as might be part of the future Aerosol Clouds and Ecosystems (ACE) Decadal Survey mission (National Research Council, 2007), would benefit from aerosol type information as a constraint to improve the retrieval efficiency
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