High Resolution Dynamics Limb Sounder observations of polar stratospheric clouds and subvisible cirrus

Massie, Steven T.; Gille, J. C.; Khosravi, R.; Lee, Hyunah; Kinnison, Douglas E.; Francis, Gene; Nardi, Bruno; Eden, T.; Craig, Cheryl; Halvorson, C.; Coffey, M. T.; Packman, D.; Cavanaugh, Charles; Craft, James A.; Dean, V.; Ellis, David R.; Barnett, J. J.; Hepplewhite, C. L.; Lambert, A.; Manney, G. L.; Strawa, A. W.; Legg, M.

doi:10.1029/2007jd008788

Cited by 26 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…This value is based on measurements by the Improved Stratosphere and Mesosphere Sounder (Lambert et al, 1996) poleward of 70 • N taken during late 1991, before the meridional transport of volcanic aerosol impacted polar background levels. We also found a similar extinction threshold by examining the characteristics of the polar aerosol extinction measured by the High Resolution Dynamics Limb Sounder (HIRDLS) (Massie et al, 2007(Massie et al, ) during 2005(Massie et al, -2007. For both ISAMS and HIRDLS the distribution of the background aerosol extinction is modeled adequately by a log-normal distribution, with the stated threshold being at least 3 standard deviations higher than the mean of the extinction distribution.…”

Section: Modeled Uptake Of Hno 3 Lidar Backscatter and Infrared Exsupporting

confidence: 58%

Interannual variations of early winter Antarctic polar stratospheric cloud formation and nitric acid observed by CALIOP and MLS

2016

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Abstract. We use satellite-borne measurements collected over the last decade (2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015) from the Aura Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) and the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) to investigate the nitric acid distribution and the properties of polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) in the early winter Antarctic vortex. Frequently, at the very start of the winter, we find that synoptic-scale depletion of HNO 3 can be detected in the inner vortex before the first lidar detection of geophysically associated PSCs. The generation of "sub-visible" PSCs can be explained as arising from the development of a solid particle population with low number densities and large particle sizes. Assumed to be composed of nitric acid trihydrate (NAT), the sub-visible PSCs form at ambient temperatures well above the ice frost point, but also above the temperature at which supercooled ternary solution (STS) grows out of the background supercooled binary solution (SBS) distribution. The temperature regime of their formation, inferred from the simultaneous uptake of ambient HNO 3 into NAT and their Lagrangian temperature histories, is at a depression of a few kelvin with respect to the NAT existence threshold, T NAT . Therefore, their nucleation requires a considerable supersaturation of HNO 3 over NAT, and is consistent with a recently described heterogeneous nucleation process on solid foreign nuclei immersed in liquid aerosol. We make a detailed investigation of the comparative limits of detection of PSCs and the resulting sequestration of HNO 3 imposed by lidar, mid-infrared, and microwave techniques. We find that the temperature history of air parcels, in addition to the local ambient temperature, is an important factor in the relative frequency of formation of liquid/solid PSCs. We conclude that the initiation of NAT nucleation and the subsequent development of large NAT particles capable of sedimentation and denitrification in the early winter do not emanate from an ice-seeding process. Finally, we investigate the patterns of interannual variability and compare the relative formation frequency of liquid and solid PSCs in the Antarctic lower polar stratosphere using the results of a cluster analysis to synthesize the combined CALIOP and MLS measurements into a relatively small number of interrelated categories.

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Section: Modeled Uptake Of Hno 3 Lidar Backscatter and Infrared Exsupporting

confidence: 58%

Interannual variations of early winter Antarctic polar stratospheric cloud formation and nitric acid observed by CALIOP and MLS

2016

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“…Consequently, major corrective work has been required to produce useful atmospheric data. Measurements of temperature, cloud, and a wide range of chemical species have now been successfully retrieved and made available for scientific analysis (Massie et al, 2007;Nardi et al, 2008;Gille et al, 2008Gille et al, , 2013Khosravi et al, 2009).…”

Section: Hirdlsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global distributions of overlapping gravity waves in HIRDLS data

Osprey

Gille

2015

Atmos. Chem. Phys.

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Abstract. Data from the High Resolution Dynamics LimbSounder (HIRDLS) instrument on NASA's Aura satellite are used to investigate the relative numerical variability of observed gravity wave packets as a function of both horizontal and vertical wavenumber, with support from the Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (SABER) instrument on TIMED. We see that these distributions are dominated by large vertical and small horizontal wavenumbers, and have a similar spectral form at all heights and latitudes, albeit with important differences. By dividing our observed wavenumber distribution into particular subspecies of waves, we demonstrate that these distributions exhibit significant temporal and spatial variability, and that small-scale variability associated with particular geophysical phenomena such as the monsoon arises due to variations in specific parts of the observed spectrum. We further show that the well-known Andes/Antarctic Peninsula gravity wave hotspot during southern winter, home to some of the largest wave fluxes on the planet, is made up of relatively few waves, but with a significantly increased flux per wave due to their spectral characteristics. These results have implications for the modelling of gravity wave phenomena.

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“…Polar stratospheric clouds and tropical sub-visible cirrus cloud extinctions range from approximately 10 −4 to 10 −2 km −1 . The unknown cloud label accounts for radiance perturbations at non-polar locations that may be influenced by volcanic or forest fire smoke clouds in the UTLS (Massie et al, 2007(Massie et al, , 2010Gille et al, 2011).…”

Section: Hirdlsmentioning

confidence: 99%

MIPAS detection of cloud and aerosol particle occurrence in the UTLS with comparison to HIRDLS and CALIOP

et al. 2012

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Abstract. Satellite infrared emission instruments require efficient systems that can separate and flag observations which are affected by clouds and aerosols. This paper investigates the identification of cloud and aerosols from infrared, limb sounding spectra that were recorded by the Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding (MIPAS), a high spectral resolution Fourier transform spectrometer on the European Space Agency's (ESA) ENVISAT (Now inoperative since April 2012 due to loss of contact). Specifically, the performance of an existing cloud and aerosol particle detection method is simulated with a radiative transfer model in order to establish, for the first time, confident detection limits for particle presence in the atmosphere from MIPAS data. The newly established thresholds improve confidence in the ability to detect particle injection events, plume transport in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS) and better characterise cloud distributions utilising MIPAS spectra. The method also provides a fast front-end detection system for the MIPClouds processor; a processor designed for the retrieval of macro-and microphysical cloud properties from the MIPAS data.It is shown that across much of the stratosphere, the threshold for the standard cloud index in band A is 5.0 although threshold values of over 6.0 occur in restricted regimes. Polar regions show a surprising degree of uncertainty at altitudes above 20 km, potentially due to changing stratospheric trace gas concentrations in polar vortex conditions and poor signal-to-noise due to cold atmospheric temperatures. The optimised thresholds of this study can be used for much of the time, but time/composition-dependent thresholds are recommended for MIPAS data for the strongly perturbed polar stratosphere. In the UT, a threshold of 5.0 applies at 12 km and above but decreases rapidly at lower altitudes. The new thresholds are shown to allow much more sensitive detection of particle distributions in the UTLS, with extinction detection limits above 13 km often better than 10 −4 km −1 , with values approaching 10 −5 km −1 in some cases.Comparisons of the new MIPAS results with cloud data from HIRDLS and CALIOP, outside of the poles, establish a good agreement in distributions (cloud and aerosol top heights and occurrence frequencies) with an offset between MIPAS and the other instruments of 0.5 km to 1 km between 12 km and 20 km, consistent with vertical oversampling of extended cloud layers within the MIPAS field of view. We conclude that infrared limb sounders provide a very consistent picture of particles in the UTLS, allowing detection limits which are consistent with the lidar observations. Investigations of MIPAS data for the Mount Kasatochi volcanic eruption on the Aleutian Islands and the Black Saturday fires in Australia are used to exemplify how useful MIPAS limb sounding data were for monitoring aerosol injections into the UTLS. It is shown that the new thresholds allowed such events to be much more effectively derived fro...

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High Resolution Dynamics Limb Sounder observations of polar stratospheric clouds and subvisible cirrus

Cited by 26 publications

References 33 publications

Interannual variations of early winter Antarctic polar stratospheric cloud formation and nitric acid observed by CALIOP and MLS

Interannual variations of early winter Antarctic polar stratospheric cloud formation and nitric acid observed by CALIOP and MLS

Global distributions of overlapping gravity waves in HIRDLS data

MIPAS detection of cloud and aerosol particle occurrence in the UTLS with comparison to HIRDLS and CALIOP

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