ALBERT

Description: The dataset consists of two ship-borne aerosols scattering ratio lidar datasets in the early stages of the stratospheric aerosols produced by the June 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption. The Russian vessel Prof. Zubov ship Atlantic transect from Europe to the Caribbean from July to September 1991 and Prof. Vize ship transect from Europe to south of the Equator between January and February 1992. All the 48 reported measurements at the Prof. Zubov were rescued but only 11 of the 20 measurements conducted by Prof. Vize were found. We used the same algorithms and parameters appearing in the only two articles published with this datasets to reproduce the aerosols extinction values those papers reported and showed in its figures. Following this criteria the CIRA-86 atmosphere was used to derive the molecular backscattering, vertical and temporal constant values of the aerosols backscattering to extinction ratio and for the correction factor of the aerosols backscattering wavelength dependence. The dataset consists of profiles of lidar aerosols backscattering to extinction profiles ratios and the derived aerosols backscattering and aerosols extinction profiles. Each profile contains information about the latitude, longitude, date and time it was measured.

Description: High-quality satellite-based measurements are crucial to the assessment of global stratospheric composition change. The Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment II (SAGE II) provides the longest, continuous data set of vertically resolved ozone and aerosol extinction coefficients to date and therefore remains a cornerstone of understanding and detecting long-term ozone variability and trends in the stratosphere. Despite its stability, SAGE II measurements must be screened for outliers that are a result of excessive aerosol emitted into the atmosphere and that degrade inferences of change. Current methods for SAGE II ozone measurement quality assurance consist of multiple ad hoc and sometimes conflicting rules, leading to too much valuable data being removed or outliers being missed. In this work, the SAGE II ozone data set version 7.00 is used to develop and present a new set of screening recommendations and to compare the output to the screening recommendations currently used. Applying current recommendations to SAGE II ozone leads to unexpected features, such as removing ozone values around zero if the relative error is used as a screening criterion, leading to biases in monthly mean zonal mean ozone concentrations. Most of these current recommendations were developed based on “visual inspection”, leading to inconsistent rules that might not be applicable at every altitude and latitude. Here, a set of new screening recommendations is presented that take into account the knowledge of how the measurements were made. The number of screening recommendations is reduced to three, which mainly remove ozone values that are affected by high aerosol loading and are therefore not reliable measurements. More data remain when applying these new recommendations compared to the rules that are currently being used, leading to more data being available for scientific studies. The SAGE II ozone data set used here is publicly available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3710518 (Kremser et al., 2020). The complete SAGE II version 7.00 data set, which includes other variables in addition to ozone, is available at https://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/project/sage2/sage2_v7_table (last access: December 2019), https://doi.org/10.5067/ERBS/SAGEII/SOLAR_BINARY_L2-V7.0 (SAGE II Science Team, 2012; Damadeo et al., 2013).

Description: We describe the construction of a continuous 38-year record of stratospheric aerosol optical properties. The Global Space-based Stratospheric Aerosol Climatology, or GloSSAC, provided the input data to the construction of the Climate Model Intercomparison Project stratospheric aerosol forcing data set (1979 to 2014) and we have extended it through 2016 following an identical process. GloSSAC focuses on the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment (SAGE) series of instruments through mid-2005 and on the Optical Spectrograph and InfraRed Imager System (OSIRIS) and the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) data thereafter. We also use data from other space instruments and from ground-based, air and balloon borne instruments to fill in key gaps in the data set. The end result is a global and gap-free data set focused on aerosol extinction coefficient at 525 and 1020 nm and other parameters on an as available basis. For the primary data sets, we developed a new method for filling the post-Pinatubo eruption data gap for 1991 to 1993 based on data from the Cryogenic Limb Array Etalon Spectrometer. In addition, we developed a new method for populating wintertime high latitudes during the SAGE period employing a latitude-equivalent latitude conversion process that greatly improves the depiction of aerosol at high latitudes compared to earlier similar efforts. We report data in the troposphere only when and where it is available. This is primarily during the SAGE II period except the most enhanced part of the Pinatubo period. It is likely that the upper troposphere during Pinatubo was greatly enhanced over non-volcanic periods and that domain remains substantially under characterized. We note that aerosol levels during the OSIRIS/CALIPSO period in the lower stratosphere at mid and high latitudes is routinely higher than what we observed during the SAGE II period. While this period had nearly continuous low-level volcanic activity, it is possible that the enhancement in part reflects deficiencies in the data set. We also expended substantial effort to quality assess the data set and the product is by far the best we have produced. GloSSAC version 1.0 is available in netCDF format at the NASA Atmospheric Data Center at https://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/. GloSSAC users should cite this paper and the data set DOI (10.5067/GloSSAC-L3-V1.0).

Description: We show that a fire plume injected into the lower stratosphere at high northern latitudes during the Canadian wildfire event in August 2017 partly reached the tropics. The transport to the tropics was mediated by the anticyclonic flow of the Asian monsoon circulation. The fire plume reached the Asian monsoon area in late August/early September, when the Asian monsoon anticyclone (AMA) was still in place. While there is no evidence of mixing into the center of the AMA, we show that a substantial part of the fire plume is entrained into the anticyclonic flow at the AMA edge and is transported from the extratropics to the tropics, and possibly the Southern Hemisphere particularly following the north–south flow on the eastern side of the AMA. In the tropics the fire plume is lifted by ∼5 km in 7 months. Inside the AMA we find evidence of the Asian tropopause aerosol layer (ATAL) in August, doubling background aerosol conditions with a calculated top of the atmosphere shortwave radiative forcing of −0.05 W m−2. The regional climate impact of the fire signal in the wider Asian monsoon area in September exceeds the impact of the ATAL by a factor of 2–4 and compares to that of a plume coming from an advected moderate volcanic eruption. The stratospheric, trans-continental transport of this plume to the tropics and the related regional climate impact point to the importance of long-range dynamical interconnections of pollution sources.