Characterizing the Asian Tropopause Aerosol Layer using in situ balloon measurements, satellite observations and a chemical transport model

Fairlie, Thomas

Characterizing the Asian Tropopause Aerosol Layer using in situ balloon measurements, satellite observations and a chemical transport model

Tuesday, 20 March 2018

Iriarte (Hotel Botanico)

Thomas Duncan Fairlie¹, Jean-Paul Vernier², Terry Deshler³, Hongyu Liu⁴, Amit Pandit⁵, M Venkat Ratnam⁵, Harish S Gadhavi⁵, A. Jayaraman⁶, Georgiy L Stenchikov⁷, Suneel Kumar⁸, Kristopher M Bedka⁹, Murali Natarajan¹, Akhil Raj⁵, Frank Wienhold¹⁰ and Damien Vignelles¹¹, (1)NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA, United States, (2)Science Systems and Applications, Inc., Hampton, VA, United States, (3)LASP, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, United States, (4)National Institute of Aerospace, Hampton, VA, United States, (5)National Atmospheric Research Laboratory, Department of Space, Gadanki, India, (6)National Atmospheric Research Laboratory, Gadanki, India, (7)King Abdullah University of Sc, Thuwal, Saudi Arabia, (8)TiFR, Balloon Facility, Hyderabad, India, (9)NASA Langley Research Center, Climate Science Branch, Hampton, VA, United States, (10)Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland, (11)Laboratoire de Physique et Chimie de l'Environnement et de l'Espace, Orléans Cedex 2, France

Abstract:

We present in situ balloon observations of the Asian Tropopause Aerosol Layer (ATAL), a summertime accumulation of aerosols in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS), associated with Asian Summer Monsoon (ASM), made during 2014-2017. The ATAL has been linked with deep convection of boundary layer pollution into the UTLS, and has potential implications for regional cloud properties, radiative transfer, and chemical processes in the UTLS. The “Balloon measurements of the Asian Tropopause Aerosol Layer (BATAL)” field campaigns to India and Saudi Arabia were designed to characterize the physical and optical properties of the ATAL, to explore its composition, and its relationship with clouds in the UTLS. Balloon payloads ranging from 500g to 50 kg, made measurements of meteorological parameters, ozone, water vapor, aerosol optical properties, concentration, volatility, and composition in the UTLS region. We interpret the observations using satellite observations from CALIPSO, SAGE-III on ISS, and present 3-d chemical transport simulations designed to further explore the ATAL’s chemical composition, the sensitivity of scavenging in parameterized deep convection, and the relative contribution of Indian and Chinese source regions vs. rest-of-the-world pollution sources. The BATAL project has been a successful partnership between institutes in the US, India, Saudi Arabia, and Europe, and is sponsored by the NASA Upper Atmosphere Research program. This partnership may provide a foundation for potential high-altitude airborne measurement studies during the ASM in the future.