Assessment of long scale plume transport to the US East coast using coordinated CREST lidar network and synergistic AERONET and satellite measurements

Abstract

The vertical stratification and optical characteristics of aloft aerosol plumes are critical to evaluate their influences on climate radiation and air quality. In this study, we demonstrate the synergistic measurements of aloft aerosol plumes by a ground-based NOAA-CREST lidar network (CLN) along the US East Coast, the AERONET-sun/sky radiometer network at lidar sites, and satellite observations. During the plume intrusion period on March 6, 2012, the CLN and AERONET measurements were consistent in illustrating the onset of dust aerosol plumes. We observed two-layers of aerosol located at 1.0 ~ 8.0 km altitude. The column-average volume size distributions show increasing concentration of both fine- and coarse-modes aerosols, but are dominated by the coarse-mode. Direct lidar inversions illustrate that the aerosol plume layers contributed up to 70% of the total AOD. NOAA-HYSPLIT back-trajectories and CALIPSO observations indicate the trans-Pacific transport of Asian-dust at 3 - 8 km altitude to the US East Coast. Meanwhile, the NOAA-HMS fire and smoke products illustrate the transport and possible mixture of dust with fine-mode smoke particles from the middle and southwestern US. The small Angstrom exponents of MODIS/Aqua in the US East Coast imply the dominance of coarse-mode particles. Accordingly, the upper layer of coarse mode aerosols is most likely transported from the East Asia, while the lower layer at 1-3 km altitude probably consists of continental dust particles from the western US mixed with fine-mode smoke particles. In addition, the transport and vertical structure of aerosol are investigated with the NAAPS global aerosol transport model.