Multi-year Satellite and Surface Observations of AOD in support of Two-Column Aerosol Project (TCAP) Field Campaign

• Main Authors: Evgueni Kassianov A, Duli Ch, Larry Berg A, Jerome Fast A, Jason Tomlinson A, Richard Ferrare B, Chris Hostetler B, John Hair B
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: measurements and; Aerosol Robotic Network
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.376.2314; http://proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org/data/Conferences/SPIEP/69279/853407.pdf

We use combined multi-year measurements from the surface and space for assessing the spatial and temporal distribution of aerosol properties within a large (~400x400 km) region centered on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, along the East Coast of the United States. The ground-based Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) measurements at Martha’s Vineyard Coastal Observatory (MVCO) site and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) sensors on board the Terra and Aqua satellites provide horizontal and temporal variations of aerosol optical depth, while the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) offers the altitudes of aerosol-layers. The combined ground-based and satellite measurements indicated several interesting features among which were the large differences in the aerosol properties observed in July and February. We applied the climatology of aerosol properties for designing the Two-Column Aerosol Project (TCAP), which is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program. The TCAP field campaign involves 12-month deployment (started July 1, 2012) of the ground-based ARM Mobile Facility (AMF) and Mobile Aerosol Observing System (MAOS) on Cape Cod and complimentary aerosol observations from two research aircraft: the DOE Gulfstream-1 (G-1) and the