Aerosol indirect effect studies at Southern Great Plains during the May 2003 Intensive Operations Period

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Authors
Feingold, Graham
Furrer, Reinhard
Pilewskie, Peter
Remer, Lorraine A.
Min, Qilong
Jonsson, Haflidi
Subjects
Advisors
Date of Issue
2006
Date
2006
Publisher
Language
Abstract
During May 2003 the Department of Energy’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program conducted an Intensive Operations Period (IOP) to measure the radiative effects of aerosol and clouds. A suite of both in situ and remote sensing measurements were available to measure aerosol and cloud parameters. This paper has three main goals: First, it focuses on comparison between in situ retrievals of the radiatively important drop effective radius re and various satellite, airborne, and surface remote sensing retrievals of the same parameter. On 17 May 2003, there was a fortuitous, near-simultaneous sampling of a stratus cloud by five different methods. The retrievals of re agree with one another to within !20%, which is approximately the error estimate for most methods. Second, a methodology for deriving a best estimate of re from these different instruments, with their different physical properties and sampling volumes, is proposed and applied to the 17 May event. Third, the paper examines the response of re to changes in aerosol on 3 days during the experiment and examines the consistency of remote sensing and in situ measurements of the effect of aerosol on re. It is shown that in spite of the generally good agreement in derived re, the magnitude of the response of re to changes in aerosol is quite sensitive to the method of retrieving re and to the aerosol proxy for cloud condensation nuclei. Nonphysical responses are sometimes noted, and it is suggested that further work needs to be done to refine these techniques.
Type
Description
Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 111, No. D5S14, 2006.
The article of record as published may be located at http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2004JD005648
Series/Report No
Department
Center for Interdisciplinary Remotely Piloted Aircraft Studies (CIRPAS)
Organization
Identifiers
NPS Report Number
Sponsors
Funder
Format
Citation
Distribution Statement
Rights
This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.
Collections