Aerosol plume observations by the ground-based lidar, sunphotometer, and satellite: cases analysis

Smoke and dust aerosol plumes are observed by the ground-based multi-wavelength elastic-Raman lidar, sunphotometer and space-borne lidar CALIOP (Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization). Lidar-derived multi-wavelength aerosol extinction profiles and column lidar ratios are constrained by the independently measured optical depths. The aloft smoke plume layers from Idaho/Montana forest fires were measured at 2~8 km altitude by the ground lidar on Aug. 14~15, 2007. High aerosol optical depths (AOD) are shown with the value of 0.6~0.8 at wavelength 500 nm and Angstrom exponent of 1.8. The CALIOP observations generally show consistent plume height distribution with the ground lidar, but partly misclassify these smoke plumes as clouds. The forest fire sources and intra-continental smoke transport are clearly illustrated by CALIOP and MODIS satellite imageries. For the moderate dust-like plumes on April 18, 2008, they were observed at the altitude of 2~6 km. Aerosol optical depths vary from 0.2 to 0.4 at wavelength 500 nm with Angstrom exponent <1.0 in the plume-layer. Ground-lidar and CALIOP retrievals show the good agreement in dust-like layer heights, extinction profiles and aerosol species classification.

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