FY 2001 Lidar measurements during Aerosols99 Voss, K.J., E.J. Welton, P.K. Quinn, J. Johnson, A.M. Thompson, and H.R. Gordon J. Geophys. Res., 106(D18), 20,821–20,831, doi: 10.1029/2001JD900217 (2001) 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. Feature Publications | Outstanding Scientific Publications Contact Sandra Bigley | Help
