Southern Ocean Cloud and Aerosol data: a compilation of measurements from the 2018 Southern Ocean Ross Sea Marine Ecosystems and Environment voyage

• Main Authors: Kremser, Stefanie, Harvey, Mike, Kuma, Peter, Hartery, Sean, Saint-Macary, Alexia, McGregor, John, Schuddeboom, Alex, Hobe, Marc, Lennartz, Sinikka T., Geddes, Alex, Querel, Richard, McDonald, Adrian, Peltola, Maija, Sellegri, Karine, Silber, Israel, Law, Cliff S., Flynn, Connor J., Marriner, Andrew, Hill, Thomas C. J., DeMott, Paul J., Hume, Carson C., Plank, Graeme, Graham, Geoffrey, Parsons, Simon
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: New Zealand; Ross Sea; Southern Ocean; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2020-321; https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2020-321/

Due to its remote location and extreme weather conditions, atmospheric in situ measurements are rare in the Southern Ocean. As a result, aerosol-cloud interactions in this region are poorly understood and remain a major source of uncertainty in climate models. This, in turn, contributes substantially to persistent biases in climate model simulations, numerical weather prediction models and reanalyses. It has been shown in previous studies that in situ and ground-based remote sensing measurements across the Southern Ocean are critical for complementing satellite data sets due to the importance of boundary layer and low-level cloud processes. These processes are poorly sampled by satellite-based measurements which are typically obscured by near-continuous overlying cloud cover observed in this region. In this work we present a comprehensive set of ship-based aerosol and meteorological observations collected on the TAN1802 voyage of R/V Tangaroa across the Southern Ocean, from Wellington, New Zealand, to the Ross Sea, Antarctica. The voyage was carried out from 8 February to 21 March, 2018. Many distinct, but contemporaneous, data sets were collected throughout the voyage. The compiled data sets include measurements from a range of instruments, such as (i) meteorological conditions at the sea surface and profile measurements; (ii) the size and concentration of particles; (iii) trace gases dissolved in the ocean surface such as dimethyl sulfide and carbonyl sulfide; (iv) and remotely sensed observations of low clouds. Here, we describe the voyage, the instruments, data processing, and provide a brief overview of some of the data products available. We encourage the scientific community to use these measurements for further analysis and model evaluation studies, in particular, for studies of Southern Ocean clouds, aerosol and their interaction. The data sets presented in this study are publicly available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4060237 (Kremser et al. 2020).