Seasonal Variations of the Relative Optical Air Mass Function for Background Aerosol and Thin Cirrus Clouds at Arctic and Antarctic Sites

Remote Sensing

Claudio Tomasi²  Boyan H. Petkov²  Mauro Mazzola²  Christoph Ritter⁴  Alcide G. di Sarra¹  Tatiana di Iorio¹  Massimo del Guasta⁵  Alexander Kokhanovsky³ 

[1] Laboratory for Earth Observations and Analyses (UTMEA-TER), National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA), Rome 00123, Italy; E-Mails:;Climate Change Division, Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (ISAC), National Council of Research (CNR), Bologna 40129, Italy; E-Mails:Climate Change Division, Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (ISAC), National Council of Research (CNR), Bologna 40129, Italy;;Climate System Division, Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), Potsdam 14473, Germany; E-Mail:;National Institute of Optics (INO), National Council of Research (CNR), Sesto Fiorentino (Florence) 50019, Italy; E-Mail:

关键词: relative optical air mass function;    background Arctic aerosol in summer;    background Antarctic aerosol at coastal sites;    diamond dust ground layer on the Antarctic Plateau;    thin cirrus clouds;    cirrus clouds in the middle troposphere;   

DOI  :  10.3390/rs70607157

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

New calculations of the relative optical air mass function are made over the 0°–87° range of apparent solar zenith angle θ, for various vertical profiles of background aerosol, diamond dust and thin cirrus cloud particle extinction coefficient in the Arctic and Antarctic atmospheres. The calculations were carried out by following the Tomasi and Petkov (2014) procedure, in which the above-mentioned vertical profiles derived from lidar observations were used as weighting functions. Different sets of lidar measurements were examined, recorded using: (i) the Koldewey-Aerosol-Raman Lidar (KARL) system (AWI, Germany) at Ny-Ålesund (Spitsbergen, Svalbard) in January, April, July and October 2013; (ii) the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) satellite-based sensor over Barrow (Alaska), Eureka (Nunavut, Canada) and Sodankylä (northern Finland), and Neumayer III, Mario Zucchelli and Mirny coastal stations in Antarctica in the local summer months of the last two years; (iii) the National Institute of Optics (INO), National Council of Research (CNR) Antarctic lidar at Dome C on the Antarctic Plateau for a typical “diamond dust” case; and (iv) the KARL lidar at Ny-Ålesund and the University of Rome/National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA) lidar at Thule (northwestern Greenland) for some cirrus cloud layers in the middle and upper troposphere. The relative optical air mass calculations are compared with those obtained by Tomasi and Petkov (2014) to define the seasonal changes produced by aerosol particles, diamond dust and cirrus clouds. The results indicate that the corresponding air mass functions generally decrease as angle θ increases with rates that are proportional to the increase in the pure aerosol, diamond dust and cirrus cloud particle optical thickness.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.