Measuring and Simulating Particulate Matter in the Upper Troposphere and Lower Stratosphere (UTLS)

Thursday, 22 March 2018: 09:45
Salon Vilaflor (Hotel Botanico)
Sabine Griessbach1, Bianca Maria Dinelli2, Daniel Gerber3, Michael Hoepfner4, Lars Hoffmann1, Michael Kahnert5, Martina Kraemer1, Tiziano Maestri6, Richard Siddans3, Reinhold Spang1, Joern Ungermann1 and Xue Wu1, (1)Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich 52428, Germany, (2)CNR Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, Bologna, Italy, (3)Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Didcot, United Kingdom, (4)Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research, Karlsruhe, Germany, (5)Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, Norrköping, Sweden, (6)University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
Abstract:
Within the ESA study "Characterisation of particulates in the UTLS" we compiled and advanced available particle measurement techniques for Envisat MIPAS. Further, we investigated the transferability of these methods to a potential infrared limb sounding (IRLS) instrument and compared the IRLS measurement capabilities to those of established instruments (e.g. SAGE II, CALIOP, OSIRIS, GOMOS). We concluded that IRLS instruments provide global information on a daily basis and hence can fill measurement gaps in the horizontal and vertical e.g. at high latitudes and in the UTLS.

The investigated IRLS instrument has a coarser spectral resolution, but a higher spatial resolution than MIPAS. For volcanic aerosol, ice clouds, and polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) we found all methods to be transferable while maintaining a comparable sensitivity. Moreover, for cirrus clouds we demonstrated that the higher spatial resolution enables 3D measurements of clouds. For PSCs the micro-physical retrieval was advanced and for volcanic aerosol we demonstrated that a classification between volcanic ash and sulfate is feasible.

For the generation of 3D aerosol cloud test cases in our study we applied a new approach. Based on AIRS SO2 measurements we reconstructed altitude resolved emission time series using backward trajectories. For the Eyjafjalla and Nabro eruptions we initialized the Lagrangian plume dispersion simulations with our new altitude resolved emission time series. That this method leads to reliable plume simulations was shown for the Grimsvötn, Nabro, Puyehue, and Sarychev by Hoffmann et al., 2016, Heng et al., 2016, Wu et al., 2017.

The performance of the retrieval algorithms for ice clouds and PSCs encourage us to apply them also to aerosol. Further, from the transferability of the MIPAS aerosol detection methods to IRLS we conclude that the methods will also be applicable to existing instruments, such as GLORIA, past instruments, such as CRISTA, and future instruments, such as ATMOSAT.

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