Abstract
Abstract. The aim of this study is to investigate the potential of the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment-2 (GOME-2) instruments, aboard the Meteorological Operational (MetOp)-A, MetOp-B and MetOp-C satellite programme platforms, to deliver accurate geometrical features of lofted aerosol layers. For this purpose, we use archived ground-based lidar data from stations available from the European Aerosol Research Lidar Network (EARLINET) database. The data are post-processed using the wavelet covariance transform (WCT) method in order to extract geometrical features such as the planetary boundary layer (PBL) height and the cloud boundaries. To obtain a significant number of collocated and coincident GOME-2 – EARLINET cases for the period between January 2007 and September 2019, 13 lidar stations, distributed over different European latitudes, contributed to this validation. For the 172 carefully screened collocations, the mean bias was found to be −0.18 ± 1.68 km, with a near-Gaussian distribution. On a station basis, and with a couple of exceptions where very few collocations were found, their mean biases fall in the ± 1 km range with an associated standard deviation between 0.5 and 1.5 km. Considering the differences, mainly due to the temporal collocation and the difference, between the satellite pixel size and the point view of the ground-based observations, these results can be quite promising and demonstrate that stable and extended aerosol layers as captured by the satellite sensors are verified by the ground-based data. We further present an in-depth analysis of a strong and long-lasting Saharan dust intrusion over the Iberian Peninsula. We show that, for this well-developed and spatially well-spread aerosol layer, most GOME-2 retrievals fall within 1 km of the exact temporally collocated lidar observation for the entire range of 0 to 150 km radii. This finding further testifies for the capabilities of the MetOp-borne instruments to sense the atmospheric aerosol layer heights.
Highlights
Aerosols are important constituents of the atmosphere, influencing both the air quality and the Earth’s climate
It should be noted that the temporal criterion is necessary since most of the EARLINET lidar observations occur at noon or night, while the Meteorological Operational (MetOp) orbits are in the morning
We presented the first validation results of Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment-2 (GOME-2)/MetOp absorbing aerosol height (AAH) product using lidar data from the EARLINET database
Summary
Aerosols are important constituents of the atmosphere, influencing both the air quality and the Earth’s climate They scatter and absorb solar and terrestrial radiation (direct effect), and can act as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) in liquid water clouds (Bougiatioti et al, 2016; Georgoulias et al, 2020) and as ice-nucleating particles (INPs) in mixedphase and ice clouds (indirect effect) (Seinfeld et al, 2016). Changes in their concentration affect cloud extent, lifetime, particle size and radiative properties (Ansmann et al, 2019; Laaksonen et al, 2020). The overall uncertainties in the radiative forcing effect of aerosols (anthropogenic and natural) still remain very high (IPCC, 2014).
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