Layered Atlantic Smoke Interactions with Clouds (LASIC) Field Campaign Report
- University of Miami
- Atmospheric and Environmental Research, Inc.
- Colorado State Univ., Fort Collins, CO (United States)
- Oregon State Univ., Corvallis, OR (United States)
- University of Colorado
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Boulder, CO (United States). Earth System Research Lab.
- Aerodyne Research, Inc.
- Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
- Univeristy of Exeter
- McGill Univ., Montreal, QC (Canada)
- Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
- Univerisity of Oklahoma
- University of Kansas
- NASA Ames Research Center (ARC), Moffett Field, Mountain View, CA (United States)
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- National Severe Storms Laboratory
- Univeristy of Washington
- North Carolina State Univ., Raleigh, NC (United States)
- Florida Intl Univ., Miami, FL (United States)
Southern Africa is the world’s largest emitter of biomass burning aerosols. Their westward transport over the remote southeast Atlantic Ocean co-locates some of the largest atmospheric loadings of absorbing aerosol with the least examined of the Earth’s major subtropical stratocumulus decks. Global aerosol model results highlight that the largest positive top-of-atmosphere (TOA) forcing in the world occurs in the southeast Atlantic, but this region exhibits large differences in magnitude and sign between reputable models, in part because of high variability in the underlying model cloud distributions. Many uncertainties contribute to the highly variable model radiation fields: the aging of the shortwave-absorbing aerosol during transport, how much of the aerosol mixes into the cloudy boundary layer, and how the low clouds adjust to smoke-radiation and smoke-cloud interactions. In addition, the ability of the biomass burning aerosol to absorb shortwave radiation is known to vary seasonally as the fuel type on land changes. LASIC (Layered Atlantic Smoke Interactions with Clouds) is a strategy to improve our understanding of aged carbonaceous aerosol, its seasonal evolution, and the mechanisms by which clouds adjust to the presence of the aerosol. The observational strategy centers on deploying the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility first ARM Mobile Facility (AMF1) cloud, aerosol, and atmospheric profiling instrumentation to Ascension Island, located within the trade-wind shallow cumulus regime (14.50W, 80S) 3000 km offshore of continental Africa. The location is within the latitude zone of the maximum outflow of aerosol, with the deepening boundary layer known to entrain free-tropospheric smoke. The primary activities for LASIC are: 1) to improve current knowledge on aged biomass burning aerosol and its radiative properties as a function of the seasonal cycle; 2) to use surface-based remote sensing to sensitively interrogate the atmosphere for the relative vertical location of aerosol and clouds; 3) to improve our understanding of the cloud adjustments to the presence of shortwave-absorbing aerosol within the vertical column, both through aerosol-radiation and through aerosol-cloud interactions; 4) to aid low cloud parameterization efforts for climate models. The measurements span June 1, 2016-October 31, 2017, encompassing two July-October biomass burning seasons. The August-September, 2016, months include an intensive operational period (IOP) with 8x/daily radiosondes. In 2017, from 16 August through 7 September, the United Kingdom Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurements (FAAM) BAe-146 plane was deployed from Ascension, providing complementary data on the atmosphere’s vertical structure as part of the Cloud-Aerosol-Radiation Interactions and Forcing (CLARIFY) project, with similar scientific goals. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Observations of Clouds above Aerosols and their Interactions (ORACLES) aircraft campaign, sharing similar objectives to LASIC, deployed from Namibia in September, 2016, and Sao Tome in August, 2017. The latter included a suitcase flight to Ascension spanning August 18-21. In 2017 a cavity-attenuated phase shift single-scattering albedo (CAPS-SSA) instrument belonging to Aerodyne was brought to Ascension, gathering data primarily for August, towards providing a second, independent measurement of aerosol absorption. Ascension Island is also an Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) site.
- Research Organization:
- DOE Office of Science Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
- Contributing Organization:
- University of Washington, NOAA, Florida International University, NASA, Aerodyne Research, University of Kansas, University of Colorado, University of Exeter, University of Oklahoma, McGill University, Oregon State University, Colorado State University, Atmospheric and Environmental Research, University of Miami
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-ACO5-7601830
- OSTI ID:
- 1437446
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/SC-ARM-18-018
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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