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- ItemFour-dimensional distribution of the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull volcanic cloud over Europe observed by EARLINET(München : European Geopyhsical Union, 2013) Pappalardo, G.; Mona, L.; D'Amico, G.; Wandinger, U.; Adam, M.; Amodeo, A.; Ansmann, A.; Apituley, A.; Alados Arboledas, L.; Balis, D.; Boselli, A.; Bravo-Aranda, J.A.; Chaikovsky, A.; Comeron, A.; Cuesta, J.; De Tomasi, F.; Freudenthaler, V.; Gausa, M.; Giannakaki, E.; Giehl, H.; Giunta, A.; Grigorov, I.; Groß, S.; Haeffelin, M.; Hiebsch, A.; Iarlori, M.; Lange, D.; Linné, H.; Madonna, F.; Mattis, I.; Mamouri, R.-E.; McAuliffe, M.A.P.; Mitev, V.; Molero, F.; Navas-Guzman, F.; Nicolae, D.; Papayannis, A.; Perrone, M.R.; Pietras, C.; Pietruczuk, A.; Pisani, G.; Preißler, J.; Pujadas, M.; Rizi, V.; Ruth, A.A.; Schmidt, J.; Schnell, F.; Seifert, P.; Serikov, I.; Sicard, M.; Simeonov, V.; Spinelli, N.; Stebel, K.; Tesche, M.; Trickl, T.; Wang, X.; Wagner, F.; Wiegner, M.; Wilson, K.M.The eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull in April–May 2010 represents a "natural experiment" to study the impact of volcanic emissions on a continental scale. For the first time, quantitative data about the presence, altitude, and layering of the volcanic cloud, in conjunction with optical information, are available for most parts of Europe derived from the observations by the European Aerosol Research Lidar NETwork (EARLINET). Based on multi-wavelength Raman lidar systems, EARLINET is the only instrument worldwide that is able to provide dense time series of high-quality optical data to be used for aerosol typing and for the retrieval of particle microphysical properties as a function of altitude. In this work we show the four-dimensional (4-D) distribution of the Eyjafjallajökull volcanic cloud in the troposphere over Europe as observed by EARLINET during the entire volcanic event (15 April–26 May 2010). All optical properties directly measured (backscatter, extinction, and particle linear depolarization ratio) are stored in the EARLINET database available at http://www.earlinet.org. A specific relational database providing the volcanic mask over Europe, realized ad hoc for this specific event, has been developed and is available on request at http://www.earlinet.org. During the first days after the eruption, volcanic particles were detected over Central Europe within a wide range of altitudes, from the upper troposphere down to the local planetary boundary layer (PBL). After 19 April 2010, volcanic particles were detected over southern and south-eastern Europe. During the first half of May (5–15 May), material emitted by the Eyjafjallajökull volcano was detected over Spain and Portugal and then over the Mediterranean and the Balkans. The last observations of the event were recorded until 25 May in Central Europe and in the Eastern Mediterranean area. The 4-D distribution of volcanic aerosol layering and optical properties on European scale reported here provides an unprecedented data set for evaluating satellite data and aerosol dispersion models for this kind of volcanic events.
- ItemTarget categorization of aerosol and clouds by continuous multiwavelength-polarization lidar measurements(Katlenburg-Lindau : Copernicus, 2017) Baars, Holger; Seifert, Patric; Engelmann, Ronny; Wandinger, UllaAbsolute calibrated signals at 532 and 1064 nm and the depolarization ratio from a multiwavelength lidar are used to categorize primary aerosol but also clouds in high temporal and spatial resolution. Automatically derived particle backscatter coefficient profiles in low temporal resolution (30 min) are applied to calibrate the lidar signals. From these calibrated lidar signals, new atmospheric parameters in temporally high resolution (quasi-particle-backscatter coefficients) are derived. By using thresholds obtained from multiyear, multisite EARLINET (European Aerosol Research Lidar Network) measurements, four aerosol classes (small; large, spherical; large, non-spherical; mixed, partly nonspherical) and several cloud classes (liquid, ice) are defined. Thus, particles are classified by their physical features (shape and size) instead of by source. The methodology is applied to 2 months of continuous observations (24 h a day, 7 days a week) with the multiwavelength-Raman-polarization lidar PollyXT during the High-Definition Clouds and Precipitation for advancing Climate Prediction (HD(CP)2) Observational Prototype Experiment (HOPE) in spring 2013. Cloudnet equipment was operated continuously directly next to the lidar and is used for comparison. By discussing three 24 h case studies, it is shown that the aerosol discrimination is very feasible and informative and gives a good complement to the Cloudnet target categorization. Performing the categorization for the 2-month data set of the entire HOPE campaign, almost 1 million pixel (5 min×30 m) could be analysed with the newly developed tool. We find that the majority of the aerosol trapped in the planetary boundary layer (PBL) was composed of small particles as expected for a heavily populated and industrialized area. Large, spherical aerosol was observed mostly at the top of the PBL and close to the identified cloud bases, indicating the importance of hygroscopic growth of the particles at high relative humidity. Interestingly, it is found that on several days non-spherical particles were dispersed from the ground into the atmosphere.
- ItemConcentration and variability of ice nuclei in the subtropical maritime boundary layer(Katlenburg-Lindau : EGU, 2018) Welti, André; Müller, Konrad; Fleming, Zoë L.; Stratmann, FrankMeasurements of the concentration and variability of ice nucleating particles in the subtropical maritime boundary layer are reported. Filter samples collected in Cabo Verde over the period 2009-2013 are analyzed with a drop freezing experiment with sensitivity to detect the few rare ice nuclei active at low supercooling. The data set is augmented with continuous flow diffusion chamber measurements at temperatures below -24 °C from a 2-month field campaign in Cabo Verde in 2016. The data set is used to address the following questions: what are typical concentrations of ice nucleating particles active at a certain temperature? What affects their concentration and where are their sources? Concentration of ice nucleating particles is found to increase exponentially by 7 orders of magnitude from -5 to -38 °C. Sample-to-sample variation in the steepness of the increase indicates that particles of different origin, with different ice nucleation properties (size, composition), contribute to the ice nuclei concentration at different temperatures. The concentration of ice nuclei active at a specific temperature varies over a range of up to 4 orders of magnitude. The frequency with which a certain ice nuclei concentration is measured within this range is found to follow a lognormal distribution, which can be explained by random dilution during transport. To investigate the geographic origin of ice nuclei, source attribution of air masses from dispersion modeling is used to classify the data into seven typical conditions. While no source could be attributed to the ice nuclei active at temperatures higher than -12 °C, concentrations at lower temperatures tend to be elevated in air masses originating from the Sahara.
- ItemHigh-resolution numerical modeling of mesoscale island wakes and sensitivity to static topographic relief data(München : European Geopyhsical Union, 2015) Nunalee, C.G.; Horváth, Á.; Basu, S.Recent decades have witnessed a drastic increase in the fidelity of numerical weather prediction (NWP) modeling. Currently, both research-grade and operational NWP models regularly perform simulations with horizontal grid spacings as fine as 1 km. This migration towards higher resolution potentially improves NWP model solutions by increasing the resolvability of mesoscale processes and reducing dependency on empirical physics parameterizations. However, at the same time, the accuracy of high-resolution simulations, particularly in the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL), is also sensitive to orographic forcing which can have significant variability on the same spatial scale as, or smaller than, NWP model grids. Despite this sensitivity, many high-resolution atmospheric simulations do not consider uncertainty with respect to selection of static terrain height data set. In this paper, we use the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model to simulate realistic cases of lower tropospheric flow over and downstream of mountainous islands using the default global 30 s United States Geographic Survey terrain height data set (GTOPO30), the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), and the Global Multi-resolution Terrain Elevation Data set (GMTED2010) terrain height data sets. While the differences between the SRTM-based and GMTED2010-based simulations are extremely small, the GTOPO30-based simulations differ significantly. Our results demonstrate cases where the differences between the source terrain data sets are significant enough to produce entirely different orographic wake mechanics, such as vortex shedding vs. no vortex shedding. These results are also compared to MODIS visible satellite imagery and ASCAT near-surface wind retrievals. Collectively, these results highlight the importance of utilizing accurate static orographic boundary conditions when running high-resolution mesoscale models.