Temporal variability of aerosol properties during TCAP: impact on radiative forcing

Ground-based remote sensing and in situ observations of aerosol microphysical and optical properties have been collected during summertime (June-August, 2012) as part of the Two-Column Aerosol Project (TCAP; http://campaign.arm.gov/tcap/), which was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program (http://www.arm.gov/). The overall goal of the TCAP field campaign is to study the evolution of optical and microphysical properties of atmospheric aerosol transported from North America to the Atlantic and their impact on the radiation energy budget. During TCAP, the ground-based ARM Mobile Facility (AMF) was deployed on Cape Cod, an arm-shaped peninsula situated on the easternmost portion of Massachusetts (along the east coast of the United States) and that is generally downwind of large metropolitan areas. The AMF site was equipped with numerous instruments for sampling aerosol, cloud and radiative properties, including a Multi-Filter Rotating Shadowband Radiometer (MFRSR), a Scanning Mobility Particle Sizer (SMPS), an Aerodynamic Particle Sizer (APS), and a three-wavelength nephelometer. In this study we present an analysis of diurnal and day-to-day variability of the column and near-surface aerosol properties obtained from remote sensing (MFRSR data) and ground-based in situ measurements (SMPS, APS, and nephelometer data). In particular, we show that the observed diurnal variability of the MFRSR aerosol optical depth is strong and comparable with that obtained previously from the AERONET climatology in Mexico City, which has a larger aerosol loading. Moreover, we illustrate how the variability of aerosol properties impacts the direct aerosol radiative forcing at different time scales.