Aerosol classification using airborne High Spectral Resolution Lidar measurements – methodology and examples

[摘要] The NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) airborne High Spectral ResolutionLidar (HSRL) on the NASA B200 aircraft has acquired extensive datasets ofaerosol extinction (532 nm), aerosol optical depth (AOD) (532 nm),backscatter (532 and 1064 nm), and depolarization (532 and 1064 nm) profilesduring 18 field missions that have been conducted over North America since2006. The lidar measurements of aerosol intensive parameters (lidar ratio,depolarization, backscatter color ratio, and spectral depolarization ratio)are shown to vary with location and aerosol type. A methodology based onobservations of known aerosol types is used to qualitatively classify theextensive set of HSRL aerosol measurements into eight separate types.Several examples are presented showing how the aerosol intensive parametersvary with aerosol type and how these aerosols are classified according tothis new methodology. The HSRL-based classification reveals verticalvariability of aerosol types during the NASA ARCTAS field experimentconducted over Alaska and northwest Canada during 2008. In two examplesderived from flights conducted during ARCTAS, the HSRL classification ofbiomass burning smoke is shown to be consistent with aerosol types derivedfrom coincident airborne in situ measurements of particle size andcomposition. The HSRL retrievals of AOD and inferences of aerosol types areused to apportion AOD to aerosol type; results of this analysis are shownfor several experiments.

[学科分类] 几何与拓扑