2018, Altstädter, Barbara, Platis, Andreas, Jähn, Michael, Baars, Holger, Lückerath, Janine, Held, Andreas, Lampert, Astrid, Bange, Jens, Hermann, Markus, Wehner, Birgit

This study describes the appearance of ultrafine boundary layer aerosol particles under classical “non-favourable” conditions at the research site of TROPOS (Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research). Airborne measurements of meteorological and aerosol properties of the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) were repeatedly performed with the unmanned aerial system ALADINA (Application of Light-weight Aircraft for Detecting IN-situ Aerosol) during three seasons between October 2013 and July 2015. More than 100 measurement flights were conducted on 23 different days with a total flight duration of 53 h. In 26 % of the cases, maxima of ultrafine particles were observed close to the inversion layer at altitudes between 400 and 600 m and the particles were rapidly mixed vertically and mainly transported downwards during short time intervals of cloud gaps. This study focuses on two measurement days affected by low-level stratocumulus clouds, but different wind directions (NE, SW) and minimal concentrations (< 4.6 µg m−3) of SO2, as a common indicator for precursor gases at ground. Taken from vertical profiles, the onset of clouds led to a non-linearity of humidity that resulted in an increased turbulence at the local-scale and caused fast nucleation (e.g. Bigg, 1997; Wehner et al., 2010), but in relation to rapid dilution of surrounding air, seen in sporadic clusters of ground data, so that ultrafine particles disappeared in the verticality. The typical “banana shape” (Heintzenberg et al., 2007) of new particle formation (NPF) and growth was not seen at ground and thus these days might not have been classified as NPF event days by pure surface studies.

2016, Chouza, Fernando, Reitebuch, Oliver, Jähn, Michael, Rahm, Stephan, Weinzierl, Bernadett

This study presents the analysis of island induced gravity waves observed by an airborne Doppler wind lidar (DWL) during SALTRACE. First, the instrumental corrections required for the retrieval of high spatial resolution vertical wind measurements from an airborne DWL are presented and the measurement accuracy estimated by means of two different methods. The estimated systematic error is below −0.05 m s−1 for the selected case of study, while the random error lies between 0.1 and 0.16 m s−1 depending on the estimation method. Then, the presented method is applied to two measurement flights during which the presence of island induced gravity waves was detected. The first case corresponds to a research flight conducted on 17 June 2013 in the Cabo Verde islands region, while the second case corresponds to a measurement flight on 26 June 2013 in the Barbados region. The presence of trapped lee waves predicted by the calculated Scorer parameter profiles was confirmed by the lidar and in situ observations. The DWL measurements are used in combination with in situ wind and particle number density measurements, large-eddy simulations (LES), and wavelet analysis to determine the main characteristics of the observed island induced trapped waves.