Airborne Coarse Mode Aerosol Measurements with the CAS-DPOL Instrument: Effects of Particle Shape and Refractive Index and Implications for Radiative Transfer Estimate

Abstract:

Each year huge amounts of mineral dust are mobilized in deserts and arid regions of the world and transported over large distances forming thick elevated aerosol layers with a substantial fraction of coarse mode particles. Optical properties of mineral dust, including the absorptive refractive index of some components, cause a significant effect on the atmospheric radiative energy balance from optical to infrared wavelengths. The aerosol characteristics, in particular its coarse mode size distribution, are modified during long-range transport by aging and deposition processes. This also affects the aerosol optical properties and therefore the effect on the atmospheric radiative energy budget.

In-situ measurements of aerosol microphysical properties are essential to characterize those effects in order to be implemented in global climate models in parametrized form. However, in-situ measurements of airborne coarse mode aerosols such as mineral dust and volcanic ash are challenging and the measurements are usually affected by substantial uncertainties. In this work we use airborne measurements of mineral dust from our optical light-scattering spectrometer CAS-DPOL during SALTRACE 2013 to discuss the analysis of such data. We cover the effects of varying refractive index and particle shapes and develop recommendations for the configuration of the CAS-DPOL for aerosol studies. We also present an inversion method to derive coarse mode size distributions from light-scattering probes for mixtures of non-spherical, absorbing aerosols. The size distributions retrieved from the in-situ measurements are then validated using an independent analysis with a combination of sun-photometer and lidar data.

We apply these methods to investigate the Saharan mineral dust particle size distributions measured on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean and discuss the influence of aerosol aging on the atmospheric radiative energy budget. With this example we also assess how the uncertainties affecting coarse mode aerosol measurements translate into uncertainties in radiative forcing estimates.