Quantifying TOLNet ozone lidar accuracy during the 2014 DISCOVER-AQ and FRAPPÉ campaigns

Abstract

Abstract. The Tropospheric Ozone Lidar Network (TOLNet) is a unique network of lidar systems that measure highresolution atmospheric profiles of ozone. The accurate characterization of these lidars is necessary to determine the uniformity of the network calibration. From July to August 2014, three lidars, the TROPospheric OZone (TROPOZ) lidar, the Tunable Optical Profiler for Aerosol and oZone (TOPAZ) lidar, and the Langley Mobile Ozone Lidar (LMOL), of TOLNet participated in the Deriving Information on Surface conditions from Column and Vertically Resolved Observations Relevant to Air Quality (DISCOVER-AQ) mission and the Front Range Air Pollution and Photochemistry Éxperiment (FRAPPÉ) to measure ozone variations from the boundary layer to the top of the troposphere. This study presents the analysis of the intercomparison between the TROPOZ, TOPAZ, and LMOL lidars, along with comparisons between the lidars and other in situ ozone instruments including ozonesondes and a P-3B airborne chemiluminescence sensor. The TOLNet lidars measured vertical ozone structures with an accuracy generally better than ±15 % within the troposphere. Larger differences occur at some individual altitudes in both the near-field and far-field range of the lidar systems, largely as expected. In terms of column average, the TOLNet lidars measured ozone with an accuracy better than ±5 % for both the intercomparison between the lidars and between the lidars and other instruments. These results indicate that these three TOLNet lidars are suitable for use in air quality, satellite validation, and ozone modeling efforts.

Intercomparison of lidar, aircraft, and surface ozone measurements in the San Joaquin Valley during the California Baseline Ozone Transport Study (CABOTS)

“…The laser pulses are transmitted and the lidar return signals collected by a coaxial transmitter and receiver equipped with a commercial (Licel) photomultiplier-based dual analog or photon counting system. This hybrid data acquisition system was installed in 2016 and replaced the original fast analog data acquisition system that was optimized for aircraft operations Wang et al, 2017). This modification increased the maximum useful range to ∼ 6 km during the day and to more than 8 km at night, depending on the laser power, atmospheric extinction, and solar background light.…”

“…The NASA Ames Alpha Jet Atmospheric eXperiment (AJAX) (Hamill et al, 2016) sampled O 3 and other tropospheric constituents above California during CABOTS using a two-person jet based at Moffett Field, CA (MF, 37.415 • N, 122.050 • E). The Alpha Jet carried an external wing pod with a modified commercial UV absorption monitor (2B Technologies Inc., model 205) to measure O 3 (Ryoo et al, 2017;Yates et al, 2013Yates et al, , 2015 and a (Picarro model 2301 m) cavity ringdown analyzer to measure CO 2 , CH 4 , and H 2 O . A second wing pod carried a nonresonant laserinduced fluorescence instrument to measure formaldehyde (CH 2 O) (St. Clair et al, 2017).…”

“…Integration of these datasets requires that these measurements be intercompared (Ancellet and Ravetta, 2005;Beekmann et al, 1995;Kempfer et al, 1994;Schäfer et al, 2002) and any differences among the various techniques understood and characterized. For pollution studies it is important that this validation includes the lowest 100 m, which is inaccessible to most ozone lidars (Wang et al, 2017). In this paper, we compare O 3 measurements from the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory ESRL multi-angle Tunable Optical Profiler for Aerosol and oZone (TOPAZ) lidar with in situ measurements from nearby regulatory and research surface monitors, and also with instruments flown aboard the UC Davis-Scientific Aviation Mooney (Trousdell et al, 2016) and Alpha Jet research aircraft based at NASA's Ames Research Center (Hamill et al, 2016;Yates et al, 2015).…”

Acyl Peroxy Nitrates Link Oil and Natural Gas Emissions to High Ozone Abundances in the Colorado Front Range During Summer 2015

“…This residual O 3 will then influence the "starting" mixing ratio as O 3 production begins. There can be considerable variability in this residual O 3 (McDuffie et al, 2016), but without coincident O 3 LIDAR measurements at BAO such as those during summer 2014 (Wang et al, 2017), it is difficult to estimate. We also expect that PAN and PPN will remain aloft in the residual layer and that they are likely also entrained into the planetary boundary layer during the next day.…”

Validation of the TOLNet Lidars: The Southern California Ozone Observation Project (SCOOP)

“…Since its inception, TROPOZ has been deployed to several field campaigns, including NASA's 2014 DISCOVER-AQ campaign (Sullivan et al, 2016) and the international KORUS-AQ Campaign (Korea-US Air Quality) in 2016 (Sullivan et al, 2017).…”