Comparison of Aerosol Optical and Microphysical Retrievals from HSRL-2, AERONET, and In-situ Measurements During DISCOVER-AQ 2013 (California and Texas)

The second-generation NASA airborne High Spectral Resolution Lidar (HSRL-2) is the first airborne multiwavelength HSRL system to provide 3β + 2α datasets (i.e. backscatter coefficient at 355, 532, and 1064 nm and extinction coefficient at 355 and 532 nm) which are used in an unsupervised and automated inversion algorithm to retrieve optical and microphysical properties of aerosols. HSRL-2 was deployed onboard NASA Langley King Air on the DISCOVER-AQ (Deriving Information on Surface Conditions from Column and VERtically Resolved Observations Relevant to Air Quality) field mission over San Joaquin Valley, California between January and February 2013 and over Houston, Texas in September 2013. Vertical profiles of aerosol optical properties, hygroscopicity, and size distributions were obtained from in-situ instruments onboard the NASA Langley P-3B over a number of DRAGON (Distributed Regional Aerosol Gridded Observation Network) AERONET ground stations. As HSRL-2 flew over those same ground stations, measurements and retrievals of optical depth, and microphysical aerosol properties were obtained by all three platforms. We will present the results of this intercomparison and discuss the challenges inherent to such comparisons.