Vertical mass impact and features of Saharan dust intrusions derived from ground-based remote sensing in synergy with airborne in-situ measurements

Abstract

A study of the vertical mass impact of Saharan dust intrusions is presented in this work. Simultaneous ground-based remote-sensing and airborne in-situ measurements performed during the AMISOC-TNF campaign over the Tenerife area (Canary Islands) in summertime from 01 July to 11 August 2013 were used for that purpose. A particular dusty (DD) case, associated to a progressively arriving dust intrusion lasting for two days on 31 July (weak incidence) and 01 August (strong incidence), is especially investigated. AERONET AOD and AEx values were ranging, respectively, from 0.2 to 1.4 and 0.35 to 0.05 along these two days. Vertical particle size distributions within fine and coarse modes (0.16–2.8 μm range) were obtained from aircraft aerosol spectrometer measurements. Extinction profiles and Lidar Ratio (LR) values were derived from MPLNET/Micro Pulse Lidar observations. MAXDOAS measurements were also used to retrieve the height-resolved aerosol extinction for evaluation purposes in comparison to Lidar-derived profiles. The synergy between Lidar observations and airborne measurements is established in terms of the Mass Extinction Efficiency (MEE) to calculate the vertical mass concentration of Saharan dust particles. Both the optical and microphysical profilings show dust particles mostly confined in a layer of 4.3 km thickness from 1.7 to 6 km height. LR ranged between 50 and 55 sr, typical values for Saharan dust particles. In addition, this 2-day dust event mostly affected the Free Troposphere (FT), being less intense in the Boundary Layer (BL). In particular, rather high Total Mass Concentrations (TMC) were found on the stronger DD day (01 August 2013): 124, 70 and 21 μg m−3 were estimated, respectively, at FT and BL altitudes and on the near-surface level. This dust impact was enhanced due to the increase of large particles affecting the FT, but also the BL, likely due to their gravitational settling. However, the use of an assumed averaged MEE value can be especially critical for estimating the mass concentration of particular layers. Moreover, the potential of MAXDOAS retrieval for aerosol extinction profiling is also evidenced by showing a relatively good agreement with the Lidar-derived extinction profiles, once a particular smoothing procedure is applied to Lidar measurements.