EARLINET dust observations vs. BSC-DREAM8b modeled profiles: 12-year-long systematic comparison at Potenza, Italy

Abstract

Abstract. In this paper, we report the first systematic comparison of 12-year modeled dust extinction profiles vs. Raman lidar measurements. We use the BSC-DREAM8b model, one of the most widely used dust regional models in the Mediterranean, and Potenza EARLINET lidar profiles for Saharan dust cases, the largest one-site database of dust extinction profiles. A total of 310 dust cases were compared for the May 2000-July 2012 period. The model reconstructs the measured layers well: profiles are correlated within 5 % of significance for 60 % of the cases and the dust layer center of mass as measured by lidar and modeled by BSC-DREAM8b differ on average 0.3 ± 1.0 km. Events with a dust optical depth lower than 0.1 account for 70 % of uncorrelated profiles. Although there is good agreement in terms of profile shape and the order of magnitude of extinction values, the model overestimates the occurrence of dust layer top above 10 km. Comparison with extinction profiles measured by the Raman lidar shows that BSC-DREAM8b typically underestimates the dust extinction coefficient, in particular below 3 km. Lowest model-observation differences (below 17 %) correspond to a lidar ratio at 532 nm and Ångström exponent at 355/532 nm of 60 ± 13 and 0.1 ± 0.6 sr, respectively. These are in agreement with values typically observed and modeled for pure desert dust. However, the highest differences (higher than 85 %) are typically related to greater Ångström values (0.5 ± 0.6), denoting smaller particles. All these aspects indicate that the level of agreement decreases with an increase in mixing/modification processes.

CALIPSO climatological products: evaluation and suggestions from EARLINET

“…The relatively low local aerosol content makes the observations particularly interesting for long-transported particle plumes Mona et al, 2014). In Fig.…”

1064 nm rotational Raman lidar for particle extinction and lidar-ratio profiling: cirrus case study

“…In the next step, dual-wavelength Raman lidar came into operation (Müller et al, 1998;Ansmann et al, 2000;Mattis et al, 2002;Wandinger et al, 2002;Murayama et al, 2004) with laser wavelengths at 355 and 532 nm and respective vibrational-rotational nitrogen Raman channels at 387 and 607 nm. The aerosol Raman lidar technique opened a solid way for comprehensive studies of anthropogenic pollution, desert dust, volcanic dust, and biomass burning smoke at several wavelengths (e.g., Mattis et al, 2004;Müller et al, 2005;Tesche et al, 2009a;AladosArboledas et al, 2011;Groß et al, 2011Groß et al, , 2012Nicolae et al, 2013;Kanitz et al, 2014;Veselovskii et al, 2016) and found broad application in the European Aerosol Research Lidar Network, EARLINET (e.g., Amiridis et al, 2005;Papayannis et al, 2008;Mona et al, 2014;Pappalardo et al, 2014). Particle extinction profiling is also a basic requirement for a successful retrieval of microphysical aerosol properties by means of inversion methods (Müller et al, 1998;Müller et al, 2000;Müller et al, 2013;Ansmann and Müller, 2005;Veselovskii et al, 2002Veselovskii et al, , 2016.…”

Looking Into CALIPSO Climatological Products: Evaluation and Suggestions from EARLINET

“…In the height range 2.7-5 km, the agreement is satisfactory with an EARLINET mean value of Saer=50.4±5.2 sr, suggesting that all the aerosol types identified compensate for this situation or the aerosol fields over the grid are frequently dust affected. The latter stems from EARLINET based studies, such as the study of [8] where the authors used a multiyear dust database and found values lidar ratio of ~50 sr for the site of Potenza. Figure 3 reports the classification of aerosol features of the CALIPSO overpasses and the corresponding Potenza station observations.…”