Abstract View
The North Atlantic Aerosols and Marine Ecosystems Study – A Multi-Year Data Set of Aerosol-Cloud Observations
RICHARD MOORE, NAAMES Science Team, NASA
Abstract Number: 403
Working Group: Aerosols, Clouds and Climate
Abstract
This poster summarizes the combined aerosol and cloud observations obtained from the recently concluded, 5-year NASA NAAMES Earth Venture Suborbital field campaign (https://naames.larc.nasa.gov/). The NAAMES dataset is permanently archived in the NASA Atmospheric Science Data Center (ASDC; https://doi.org/10.5067/Suborbital/NAAMES/DATA001) and the SeaWiFS Bio-Optical Archive and Storage System (SeaBASS; https://doi.org/10.5067/SeaBASS/NAAMES/DATA001). The data set includes ship-, aircraft-, and satellite-based observations of the remote North Atlantic that were carried out during four, approximately-month-long deployments in November 2015, May 2016, September 2017, and March 2018. Here, we focus on the combined subset of data from the first three deployments that focused on sampling boundary layer aerosols and clouds, as, unfortunately, an aircraft engine failure prevented data from being obtained during the 2018 deployment. The aircraft completed twenty cloud modules, each consisting of a series of vertically-stacked, horizontal legs: near-surface 100-meter-altitude leg, below cloud, above cloud base, below cloud top, above cloud top, and a high-altitude remote sensing leg. Each was designed to provide in situ and remote sensing information regarding the vertical structure of the remote marine cloudy atmosphere. Additional information is provided from ship-based radiosonde and ceilometer measurements, while in situ instruments on the ship capture the atmospheric composition at roughly 10 m above the sea surface. We present a description of the key observational variables, summary statistics of the dynamic range of aerosol and cloud variability encountered during NAAMES, and contextual information for those interested in exploring and analyzing the NAAMES data set in the future.