Airborne High Spectral Resolution Lidar and Research Scanning Polarimeter Observations and Applications from TCAP-I

Poster PDF

Description

The NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) second-generation airborne High Spectral Resolution Lidar (HSRL-2) was deployed on the NASA LaRC B200 during the July 2012 Two-Column Aerosol Project (TCAP). This lidar employs the HSRL technique at 355 and 532 nm to make independent, unambiguous retrievals of aerosol extinction and backscatter. It also employs the standard backscatter technique at 1064 nm and is polarization-sensitive at all three wavelengths. HSRL-2 was deployed on the B200 with the NASA GISS Research Scanning Polarimeter (RSP), and flights were closely coordinated with the DOE’s G1 aircraft. The DOE also deployed their Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Mobile Facility and their Mobile Aerosol Observing System at a ground station located on the northeastern coast of Cape Cod for this mission. In this poster we focus on the capabilities, data products, and applications of the HSRL-2 instrument. Data products include aerosol extinction, backscatter, depolarization, optical depth, and range-resolved aerosol microphysical parameters. In addition, HSRL-2 aerosol intensive variables are used to generate a horizontally- and vertically-resolved aerosol classification product. Here we make comparisons with the single particle mass spectrometer, miniSPLAT, which provides in situ measurements of aerosol size and mixing state from the G1 aircraft. The miniSPLAT and HSRL measurements are complimentary as the miniSPLAT provides detailed aerosol speciation measurements at the G1 altitude that are used to help assess the HSRL aerosol classifications, and the HSRL aerosol classification results within collocated “curtains” provide vertical context and insight into the representativeness of the in situ observations for the surrounding scene. HSRL-2 data products, including aerosol classification, are also used to help evaluate WRF-Chem model simulations of aerosol properties, including aerosol extinction and composition. Finally, aerosol retrievals from RSP, including column averaged single scattering albedo, will also be presented. We compare RSP aerosol products from two retrieval techniques, using the HSRL aerosol classifications to assess variability in the aerosol intensive parameters/microphysics and HSRL column integrated extinction to evaluate the quality of the aerosol optical thickness retrievals for clear and cloudy skies.