Trade-wind clouds and aerosols characterized by airborne horizontal lidar measurements during the EUREC<sup>4</sup>A field campaign

Abstract

Abstract. From 23 January to 13 February 2020, twenty ATR-42 flights were conducted over the tropical Atlantic, off the coast of Barbados (−58°30' W 13°30' N), to characterize the trade-wind clouds generated by shallow convection. These flights were conducted as part of the international EUREC4A (Elucidating the role of clouds-circulation coupling in climate) field campaign. One of the objectives of these flights was to characterize the trade-wind cumuli at their base for a range of meteorological conditions, convective mesoscale organizations and times of the day, with the help of sidewards staring remote sensing (lidar and radar). This paper presents the datasets associated with horizontal lidar measurements. The lidar sampled clouds from a lateral window of the aircraft over a range of about 8 km, with a horizontal resolution of 15 to 30 m, over a rectangle pattern of 20 km by 130 km. The measurements made it possible to characterize the size distribution of clouds near their base, and the presence of dust-like aerosols within and above the marine boundary layer. This paper presents the measurements and the different levels of data processing, ranging from raw level 1 data (https://doi.org/10.25326/57; Chazette et al., 2020c) to level 2 and 3 processed data that include an horizontal cloud mask (https://doi.org/10.25326/58; Chazette et al., 2020b) and aerosol extinction coefficients (https://doi.org/10.25326/59; Chazette et al., 2020a). An intermediate level, companion to the level 1 data (level 1.5), is also available for calibrated and geolocalized data ( https://doi.org/10.25326/57; Chazette et al., 2020c).

Isotopic measurements in water vapor, precipitation, and seawater during EUREC4A

“…The ATR spent most of its flight hours flying repeated rectangles and L-legs to characterize the shallow cumulus field and to measure boundary-layer properties; it also flew occasionally at cloud top and sampled the lower free troposphere during ferry legs (Bony et al, 2022). The ATR was equipped with various remote-sensing (lidar, radar) and in situ (turbulence, radiation, microphysics, stable water isotopes) instruments (Chazette et al, 2020;Brilouet et al, 2021). ATR flights were closely coordinated with HALO flights and typically lasted 4-5 h in duration, thus making it possible to conduct two flights per day.…”

How Rossby wave breaking modulates the water cycle in the North Atlantic trade wind region

“…During EUREC 4 A, multiple days with Saharan dust arriving above Barbados have been observed. Aircraft-based lidar (Chazette et al, 2020, Stevens et al, 2020b and stable water isotope measurements have been performed in this period, which provides the data basis to investigate this aspect in more detail.…”

A network of water vapor Raman lidars for improving heavy precipitation forecasting in southern France: introducing the WaLiNeAs initiative

“…• The Weather Atmospheric LIdar (WALI, Chazette et al 2014) developed at LSCE, which was involved in the SOP1 of HyMeX (Chazette et al 2016a,b;Di Girolamo et al 2020) or during the Pollution in the ARCtic System (PARCS) project (Totems et al 2019) and recently during the Lacustrine-Water vApor Isotope inVentory Experiment (L-WAIVE) project (Chazette et al 2021) • The Airborne Lidar for Atmospheric Studies (ALiAS, Chazette et al 2012Chazette et al , 2017Chazette et al , 2019Chazette et al , 2020 developed at LSCE • The Lidar for Automatic Atmospheric Surveys using Raman Scattering (LAASURS; Baron et al 2020) developed at LSCE • The University of BASILicata ground-based Raman Lidar system (BASIL), which was involved in HyMeX (Di Girolamo et al, 2009Girolamo et al, , 2017Girolamo et al, , 2020Stelitano et al 2019) • The Atmospheric Raman Temperature and Humidity Sounder (ARTHUS, Lange et al 2019) of the University of Hohenheim…”