Abstract. Long-range-transported Canadian smoke layers in the stratosphere over northern France were detected by three lidar systems in August 2017. The peaked optical depth of the stratospheric smoke layer exceeds 0.20 at 532 nm, which is comparable with the simultaneous tropospheric aerosol optical depth. The measurements of satellite sensors revealed that the observed stratospheric smoke plumes were transported from Canadian wildfires after being lofted by strong pyro-cumulonimbus. Case studies at two observation sites, Lille (lat 50.612, long 3.142, 60 m a.s.l.) and Palaiseau (lat 48.712, long 2.215, 156 m a.s.l.), are presented in detail. Smoke particle depolarization ratios are measured at three wavelengths: over 0.20 at 355 nm, 0.18–0.19 at 532 nm, and 0.04–0.05 at 1064 nm. The high depolarization ratios and their spectral dependence are possibly caused by the irregular-shaped aged smoke particles and/or the mixing with dust particles. Similar results are found by several European lidar stations and an explanation that can fully resolve this question has not yet been found. Aerosol inversion based on lidar 2α+3β data derived a smoke effective radius of about 0.33 µm for both cases. The retrieved single-scattering albedo is in the range of 0.8 to 0.9, indicating that the smoke plumes are absorbing. The absorption can cause perturbations to the temperature vertical profile, as observed by ground-based radiosonde, and it is also related to the ascent of the smoke plumes when exposed in sunlight. A direct radiative forcing (DRF) calculation is performed using the obtained optical and microphysical properties. The calculation revealed that the smoke plumes in the stratosphere can significantly reduce the radiation arriving at the surface, and the heating rate of the plumes is about 3.5 K day−1. The study provides a valuable characterization for aged smoke in the stratosphere, but efforts are still needed in reducing and quantifying the errors in the retrieved microphysical properties as well as radiative forcing estimates.

West Africa and the adjacent oceanic regions are very important locations for studying dust properties and their influence on weather and climate. The SHADOW (study of SaHAran Dust Over West Africa) campaign is performing a multiscale and multilaboratory study of aerosol properties and dynamics using a set of in situ and remote sensing instruments at an observation site located at the IRD (Institute for Research and Development) in Mbour, Senegal (14 • N, 17 • W). In this paper, we present the results of lidar measurements performed during the first phase of SHADOW (study of SaHAran Dust Over West Africa) which occurred in March-April 2015. The multiwavelength Mie-Raman li-dar acquired 3β + 2α + 1δ measurements during this period. This set of measurements has permitted particle-intensive properties, such as extinction and backscattering Ångström exponents (BAE) for 355/532 nm wavelengths' corresponding lidar ratios and depolarization ratio at 532 nm, to be determined. The mean values of dust lidar ratios during the observation period were about 53 sr at both 532 and 355 nm, which agrees with the values observed during the SAMUM-1 and SAMUM-2 campaigns held in Morocco and Cabo Verde in 2006 and 2008. The mean value of the particle depolariza-tion ratio at 532 nm was 30 ± 4.5 %; however, during strong dust episodes this ratio increased to 35 ± 5 %, which is also in agreement with the results of the SAMUM campaigns. The backscattering Ångström exponent during the dust episodes decreased to ∼ −0.7, while the extinction Ångström exponent , though negative, was greater than −0.2. Low values of BAE can likely be explained by an increase in the imaginary part of the dust refractive index at 355 nm compared to 532 nm. The dust extinction and backscattering coefficients at multiple wavelengths were inverted to the particle mi-crophysics using the regularization algorithm and the model of randomly oriented spheroids. The analysis performed has demonstrated that the spectral dependence of the imaginary part of the dust refractive index may significantly influence the inversion results and should be taken into account.

Abstract. The Chemistry-Aerosol Mediterranean Experiment (ChArMEx; http://charmex.lsce.ipsl.fr) is a collaborative research program federating international activities to investigate Mediterranean regional chemistry-climate interactions. A special observing period (SOP-1a) including intensive airborne measurements was performed in the framework of the Aerosol Direct Radiative Impact on the regional climate in the MEDiterranean region (ADRIMED) project during the Mediterranean dry season over the western and central Mediterranean basins, with a focus on aerosol-radiation measurements and their modeling. The SOP-1a took place from 11 June to 5 July 2013. Airborne measurements were made by both the ATR-42 and F-20 French research aircraft operated from Sardinia (Italy) and instrumented for in situ and remote-sensing measurements, respectively, and by sounding and drifting balloons, launched in Minorca. The experimental setup also involved several ground-based measurement sites on islands including two ground-based reference stations in Corsica and Lampedusa and secondary monitoring sites in Minorca and Sicily. Additional measurements including lidar profiling were also performed on alert during aircraft operations at EARLINET/ACTRIS stations at Granada and Barcelona in Spain, and in southern Italy. Remote-sensing aerosol products from satellites (MSG/SEVIRI, MODIS) and from the AERONET/PHOTONS network were also used. Dedicated meso-scale and regional modeling experiments were performed in relation to this observational effort. We provide here an overview of the different surface and aircraft observations deployed during the ChArMEx/ADRIMED period and of associated modeling studies together with an analysis of the synoptic conditions that determined the aerosol emission and transport. Meteorological conditions observed during this campaign (moderate temperatures and southern flows) were not favorable to producing high levels of atmospheric pollutants or intense biomass burning events in the region. However, numerous mineral dust plumes were observed during the campaign, with the main sources located in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, leading to aerosol optical depth (AOD) values ranging between 0.2 and 0.6 (at 440 nm) over the western and central Mediterranean basins. One important point of this experiment concerns the direct observations of aerosol extinction onboard the ATR-42, using the CAPS system, showing local maxima reaching up to 150 M m −1 within the dust plume. Non-negligible aerosol extinction (about 50 M m −1 ) has also been observed within the marine boundary layer (MBL). By combining the ATR-42 extinction coefficient observations with absorption and scattering measurements, we performed a complete optical closure revealing excellent agreement with estimated optical properties. This additional information on extinction properties has allowed calculation of the dust single scattering albedo (SSA) with a high level of confidence over the western Mediterranean. Our results show a moderate variability from 0....

Abstract. We present ground-based measurements of aerosol mass, optical properties and vertical extinction profiles acquired in M'Bour, Senegal (16.96° W; 14.39° N) from January 2006 to September 2008. This place of the world is all year long affected by the export of mineral dust as it moves westward to the north Atlantic ocean. The maximum in the dust activity is observed in summer (June–July), corresponding to a maximum in the aerosol optical thickness (above 0.5) and single scattering albedo (above 0.95). It also corresponds to a maximum in the top altitude of the transported aerosol layer (up to 6 km) and aerosol optical thickness scale height (up to 3.5 km) due to the presence of the Saharan Air Layer located between 2 and 6 km. The late summer shows an additional low level aerosol layer that increases in thickness in autumn. Severe dust storms are also systematically observed in spring (March) but with a lower vertical development and a stronger impact (factor 2 to 3) on the ground-level mass compared to summer. Sporadic events of biomass burning aerosols are observed in winter (January) and particularly in January 2006 when the biomass burning aerosol are advected between 1.5 and 3.5 km high. On average, the seasonal signal in the aerosol optical properties and vertical distribution is very similar from year to year over our 3 year monitoring.

Six months of stratospheric aerosol observations with the European Aerosol Research Lidar Network (EAR-LINET)

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Abstract. Aerosol particles are important and highly variable components of the terrestrial atmosphere, and they affect both air quality and climate. In order to evaluate their multiple impacts, the most important requirement is to precisely measure their characteristics. Remote sensing technologies such as lidar (light detection and ranging) and sun/sky photometers are powerful tools for determining aerosol optical and microphysical properties. In our work, we applied several methods to joint or separate lidar and sun/sky-photometer data to retrieve aerosol properties. The Raman technique and inversion with regularization use only lidar data. The LIRIC (LIdar-Radiometer Inversion Code) and recently developed GARRLiC (Generalized Aerosol Retrieval from Radiometer and Lidar Combined data) inversion methods use joint lidar and sun/sky-photometer data. This paper presents a comparison and discussion of aerosol optical properties (extinction coefficient profiles and lidar ratios) and microphysical properties (volume concentrations, complex refractive index values, and effective radius values) retrieved using the aforementioned methods. The comparison showed inconsistencies in the retrieved lidar ratios. However, other aerosol properties were found to be generally in close agreement with the AERONET (AErosol RObotic NETwork) products. In future studies, more cases should be analysed in order to clearly define the peculiarities in our results.

Two types of sunphotometric measurement are considered in this study: direct-Sun irradiance and diffuse-sky radiance. Based on CIMEL CE318 Sun-sky radiometer characteristics, we introduce a gain-corrected solid angle that allows interconverting calibration coefficients of these two types of measurement, thus realizing a "vicarious" radiance calibration. The accuracy of the gain-corrected solid angle depends on the number of available historical calibration records. The method is easy to use, provided that at least one laboratory calibration has been made previously. Examples coming from three distinct CE318 versions belonging to the AERONET/PHOTONS network are presented to provide details on the vicarious calibration method and protocols. From the error propagation analysis and the comparison with laboratory results, the uncertainty of the vicarious radiance calibration is shown to be comparable with the laboratory one, e.g., 3%-5%.