American Association for Aerosol Research - Abstract Submission

AAAR 36th Annual Conference
October 16 - October 20, 2017
Raleigh Convention Center
Raleigh, North Carolina, USA

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Using High-Spectral Resolution Lidar to Infer CCN Proxies: Results from NASA DISCOVER-AQ and NAAMES Field Campaigns

PATRICIA SAWAMURA, Richard Moore, Sharon P. Burton, Eduard Chemyakin, Detlef Müller, Alexei Kolgotin, Richard Ferrare, Chris Hostetler, Luke Ziemba, Andreas Beyersdorf, Ewan Crosbie, Edward Winstead, Yohei Shinozuka, Kenneth Thornhill, Bruce Anderson, NASA Langley Research Center

     Abstract Number: 603
     Working Group: Aerosols, Clouds, and Climate

Abstract
There has been intense interest in recent years in developing correlations between CCN number concentrations and satellite observables such as column-integrated aerosol optical depth (AOD) or ambient aerosol extinction in order to place constraints on the global CCN budget and geographical distribution. These parameters are chosen because of the existing NASA Earth Observing System Sensors, particularly MODIS, but also CALIPSO. Airborne and ground-based field campaigns provide the comprehensive observational datasets upon which to develop and test these correlations with a number of relationships being previously reported in the literature (e.g., Andreae, 2009; Liu et al., 2014; Shinozuka et al., 2015). Generally, these correlations are monotonic, but are ill-constrained (variability of 10-100-fold). Lessons from HSRL and CALIPSO lidar remote sensing aerosol classification efforts tell us that aerosol intensive optical parameters encode information about the aerosol size and composition regardless of number or mass concentration that can be used to differentiate aerosol types. Since aerosol size and composition are the primary drivers of CCN activity, this information holds promise for placing constraints on the shape of the CCN spectrum.

Here, we present comparisons of in situ aerosol and CCN properties with remotely-sensed aerosol microphysical and optical properties. Measurements were carried out during the NASA DISCOVER-AQ and NAAMES campaigns in urban and remote marine environments, respectively. Large differences in both aerosol loading and composition were observed during these campaigns, which makes them ideal for exploring much of the range in aerosol microphysical and optical properties.