Trade-wind clouds and aerosols characterized by airborne horizontal lidar measurements during the EUREC 4 A field campaign

[摘要] From 23 January to 13 February 2020, 20 manned research flights were conducted over the tropical Atlantic, off the coast of Barbados ( 13 ∘ 30 ′  N, 58 ∘ 30 ′  W), to characterize the trade-wind clouds generated by shallow convection. These flights were conducted as part of the international EUREC 4 A (Elucidating the role of cloud–circulation coupling in climate) field campaign. One of the objectives of these flights was to characterize the trade-wind cumuli at their base for a range of meteorological conditions, convective mesoscale organizations and times of the day, with the help of sidewards-staring remote sensing instruments (lidar and radar). This paper presents the datasets associated with horizontal lidar measurements. The lidar sampled clouds from a lateral window of the aircraft over a range of about 8 km, with a horizontal resolution of 15 m, over a rectangle pattern of 20 km by 130 km. The measurements made possible the characterization of the size distribution of clouds near their base and the presence of dust-like aerosols within and above the marine boundary layer. This paper presents the measurements and the different levels of data processing, ranging from the raw Level 1 data ( https://doi.org/10.25326/57 ; Chazette et al., 2020c) to the Level 2 and Level 3 processed data that include a horizontal cloud mask ( https://doi.org/10.25326/58 ; Chazette et al., 2020b) and aerosol extinction coefficients ( https://doi.org/10.25326/59 ; Chazette et al., 2020a). An intermediate level, companion to Level 1 data (Level 1.5), is also available for calibrated and geolocalized data ( https://doi.org/10.25326/57 ; Chazette et al., 2020c).

[学科分类] 眼科学