The Impact of Lidar Detection Sensitivity on Assessing Aerosol Direct Radiative Effects

Tyler J. Thorsen; Richard A Ferrare; Chris A Hostetler; Mark A Vaughan; Qiang Fu

Spaceborne lidar observations have great potential to provide accurate global estimates of the aerosol direct radiative effect (DRE) in both clear and cloudy conditions. However, comparisons between observations from the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite (CALIPSO) and multiple years of Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program’s ground-based Raman lidars (RL) show that CALIPSO does not detect all radiatively significant aerosol, i.e. aerosol that directly modifies the Earth’s radiation budget. We estimated that using CALIPSO observations results in an underestimate of the magnitude of the global mean aerosol DRE by up to 54%. The ARM RL datasets along with NASA Langley airborne high spectral resolution lidar (HSRL) data from multiple field campaigns are used to compute the detection sensitivity required to accurately resolve the aerosol DRE. This shows that a lidar with a backscatter coefficient detection sensitivity of about 1−2x10(exp -4)km(exp -1)sr(exp -1) at 532nm would resolve all the aerosol needed to derive the DRE to within 1%.

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20190028365

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Langley Research Center

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Accepted Manuscript (Version with final changes)

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Date Acquired

August 1, 2019

Publication Date

August 14, 2017

Publication Information

Publication: Geophysical Research Letters

Publisher: American Geophysical Union

Volume: 44

Issue: 17

Issue Publication Date: September 16, 2017

ISSN: 0094-8276

e-ISSN: 1944-8007

DOI: doi: 10.1002/2017GL074521

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