Aerosol, cloud, and precipitation interactions in Eastern North Atlantic

 

Authors

Jian Wang — Washington University in St. Louis
Robert Wood — University of Washington
Eduardo Brito Azevedo — University of the Azores
Daniel Bonanno — University of the Pacific
Joseph Charnawskas — Stony Brook University

J.-Y. Christine Chiu — Colorado State University
Xiquan Dong — University of Arizona
Scott Giangrande — Brookhaven National Laboratory
Mary Gilles — Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Susanne Glienke — Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
John Hubbe — Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Michael Jensen — Brookhaven National Laboratory
Daniel Knopf — Stony Brook University
Pavlos Kollias — Stony Brook University
Katia Lamer — Brookhaven National Laboratory
Alexander Laskin — Purdue University
Xiaohong Liu — Texas A&M University
Yangang Liu — Brookhaven National Laboratory
Edward Luke — Brookhaven National Laboratory
Alyssa A. Matthews — Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
David B. Mechem — University of Kansas
Fan Mei — Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Mark A. Miller — Rutgers University
Ryan Moffet — Sonoma Technology Inc.
Mikhail S. Pekour — Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Tamara Pinterich — Brookhaven National Laboratory
Beat Schmid — Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Arthur J Sedlacek — Brookhaven National Laboratory
Raymond A Shaw — Michigan Technological University
John E Shilling — Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Stephen R. Springston — Brookhaven National Laboratory
Amy Patricia Sullivan — Colorado State University
Kaitlyn Suski — Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Jason Tomlinson — Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Daniel Veghte — Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Yang Wang — University of Miami
Rodney Weber — Georgia Tech
Seong Soo Yum — Yonsei University
Guangjie Zheng — Washington University in St Louis

Category

Warm low clouds, including aerosol interactions

Description

With their extensive coverage, marine low clouds greatly impact global climate. Presently, marine low clouds are poorly represented in global climate models, and the response of marine low clouds to changes in atmospheric greenhouse gases and aerosols remains the major source of uncertainty in climate simulations. The Eastern North Atlantic (ENA) is a region of persistent but diverse subtropical marine boundary layer clouds, whose albedo and precipitation are highly susceptible to perturbations in aerosol properties. In addition, ENA is periodically impacted by anthropogenic aerosol both from North American and from continental Europe, making it an excellent location to study the cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) budget in a remote marine region periodically perturbed by anthropogenic emissions, and to investigate the impacts of long-range transport of aerosols on remote marine clouds. Aerosol and Cloud Experiments in Eastern North Atlantic (ACE-ENA), funded by DOE Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program, is designed to improve the understanding of marine boundary CCN budget, cloud and drizzle microphysics, and the impact of aerosol on marine low cloud and precipitation in the ENA by combining airborne observations and long term surface based measurements. The study has two airborne deployments. The first deployment took place from June 21 to July 20, 2017, and the second one takes place from January 15 to February 18, 2018. Flights were carried out in the Azores, near the ARM ENA site on Graciosa Island. The long term measurements at the ENA site provide important climatological context for the airborne observations during the two deployments, and the cloud structures provided by the scanning radars at the ENA site put the detailed in-situ measurements into mesoscale and cloud lifecycle contexts. Another important aspect of this study is to provide high quality in-situ measurements for validating and improving ground-based retrieval algorithms at the ENA site. This presentation will describe the setup and strategies of the study, early results from the deployments on vertical structures and horizontal variabilities of aerosol properties, cloud and drizzle microphysics, and insights into the processes that drive the properties and interactions of aerosol and marine low clouds.