Abstract
The Aerosols99 cruise (January 14 to February 8, 1999) went between Norfolk, Virginia, and Cape Town, South Africa. A Micropulse lidar system was used almost continually during this cruise to profile the aerosol vertical structure. Inversions of this data illustrated a varying vertical structure depending on the dominant air mass. In clean maritime aerosols in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres the aerosols were capped at 1 km. When a dust event from Africa was encountered, the aerosol extinction increased its maximum height to above 2 km. During a period in which the air mass was dominated by biomass burning from southern Africa, the aerosol layer extended to 4 km. Comparisons of the aerosol optical depth (AOD) derived from lidar inversion and surface Sun photometers showed an agreement within ±0.05 RMS. Similar comparisons between the extinction measured with a nephelometer and particle soot absorption photometer (at 19 m altitude) and the lowest lidar measurement (75 m) showed good agreement (±0.014 km-1). The lidar underestimated surface extinction during periods when an elevated aerosol layer (total AOD > 0.10) was present over a relatively clean (aerosol extinction < 0.05 km-1) surface layer, but otherwise gave accurate results.
Original language | English (US) |
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Article number | 2001JD900217 |
Pages (from-to) | 20821-20831 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres |
Volume | 106 |
Issue number | D18 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Sep 27 2001 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Geophysics
- Forestry
- Oceanography
- Aquatic Science
- Ecology
- Water Science and Technology
- Soil Science
- Geochemistry and Petrology
- Earth-Surface Processes
- Atmospheric Science
- Earth and Planetary Sciences (miscellaneous)
- Space and Planetary Science
- Palaeontology