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Title: Aerosol-Cloud-Meteorology Interaction Airborne Field Investigations: Using Lessons Learned from the US West Coast in the Design of ACTIVATE off the US East Coast

Journal Article · · Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
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  1. Univ. of Arizona, Tucson, AZ (United States)
  2. NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA (United States)
  3. NASA Goddard Inst. for Space Studies (GISS), New York, NY (United States)
  4. NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA.; Science Systems and Applications, Inc., Hampton, VA.
  5. California Inst. of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States)
  6. Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA (United States)
  7. National Inst. of Aerospace, Hampton, VA (United States)
  8. Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
  9. NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA (United States); Science Systems and Applications, Inc., Hampton, VA (United States)
  10. Univ. of California, San Diego, CA (United States). Scripps Inst. of Oceanography
  11. Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
  12. Univ. of Miami, FL (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

We report on a multi-year set of airborne field campaigns (2005 – 2016) off the California coast to examine aerosols, clouds, and meteorology, and how lessons learned tie into the upcoming NASA Earth Venture Suborbital (EVS-3) campaign: Aerosol Cloud meTeorology Interactions oVer the western ATlantic Experiment (ACTIVATE) (2019 – 2023). The largest uncertainty in estimating global anthropogenic radiative forcing is associated with the interactions of aerosol particles with clouds, which stems from the variability of cloud systems and the multiple feedbacks that affect and hamper efforts to ascribe changes in cloud properties to aerosol perturbations. While past campaigns have been limited in flight hours and the ability to fly in and around clouds, efforts sponsored by the Office of Naval Research have resulted in 113 single aircraft flights (> 500 flight hours) in a fixed region with warm marine boundary layer clouds. All flights used nearly the same payload of instruments on a Twin Otter to fly below, in, and above clouds, producing an unprecedented dataset. We provide here (i) an overview of statistics of aerosol, cloud, and meteorological conditions encountered in those campaigns and (ii) quantification of model-relevant metrics associated with aerosol-cloud interactions leveraging the high data volume and statistics. Based on lessons learned from those flights, we describe the pragmatic innovation in sampling strategy (dual aircraft approach with combined in situ and remote sensing) that will be used in ACTIVATE to generate a dataset that can advance scientific understanding and improve physical parameterizations for Earth system and weather forecasting models, and for assessing next-generation remote sensing retrieval algorithms.

Research Organization:
Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States); Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
Grant/Contract Number:
SC0012704; AC05-76RL01830
OSTI ID:
1508960
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1572900
Report Number(s):
BNL-211587-2019-JAAM; PNNL-SA-142639
Journal Information:
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 100, Issue 8; ISSN 0003-0007
Publisher:
American Meteorological SocietyCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 36 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (1)

Modelling the Effects of Aerosol on Mei-Yu Frontal Precipitation and Physical Processes journal September 2019

Figures / Tables (11)

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