Abstract
Abstract. Retrievals of aerosol microphysical properties (effective radius, volume and surface-area concentrations) and aerosol optical properties (complex index of refraction and single-scattering albedo) were obtained from a hybrid multiwavelength lidar data set for the first time. In July 2011, in the Baltimore–Washington DC region, synergistic profiling of optical and microphysical properties of aerosols with both airborne (in situ and remote sensing) and ground-based remote sensing systems was performed during the first deployment of DISCOVER-AQ. The hybrid multiwavelength lidar data set combines ground-based elastic backscatter lidar measurements at 355 nm with airborne High-Spectral-Resolution Lidar (HSRL) measurements at 532 nm and elastic backscatter lidar measurements at 1064 nm that were obtained less than 5 km apart from each other. This was the first study in which optical and microphysical retrievals from lidar were obtained during the day and directly compared to AERONET and in situ measurements for 11 cases. Good agreement was observed between lidar and AERONET retrievals. Larger discrepancies were observed between lidar retrievals and in situ measurements obtained by the aircraft and aerosol hygroscopic effects are believed to be the main factor in such discrepancies.
Highlights
Aerosols are known to play an important role in chemical processes, cloud formation, air quality, radiative balance, and other atmospheric processes
We present different averaging subsets for AERONET retrievals, since both level 1.5 and level 2.0 data were utilized in the comparison
Subsets 1 and 2 contain the AERONET data described in Table 1, which are level 1.5 and level 2.0, respectively
Summary
Aerosols are known to play an important role in chemical processes, cloud formation, air quality, radiative balance, and other atmospheric processes. A number of ground-based networks contribute continuous aerosol observations (Holben et al, 1998; Bösenberg et al, 2003; Welton et al, 2001; Sugimoto and Uno, 2009). Despite this continuous advance, it is indisputable that many gaps in our understanding of aerosols are yet to be filled. Aerosols originate both naturally and from anthropogenic processes. While suspended in the atmosphere, the sizes of these particles, as well as their number distributions, evolve as they undergo coagulation, condensation, water uptake, chemical reactions, and removal processes
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