Calendar Event Details

Ali Omar

Affiliation: NASA LaRC
Event Date: Tuesday, November 6, 2018

Location: Building 33, G133
Time: 11:00 AM

The CALIPSO Version 4 Automated Aerosol Classification and Lidar Ratio Selection Algorithm

 The Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) version 4.10 (V4) level 2 aerosol data products, released in November 2016, include substantial improvements to the aerosol subtyping and lidar ratio selection algorithms. These improvements are described along with resulting changes in aerosol optical depth (AOD). The most fundamental change in V4 level 2 aerosol products is a new algorithm to identify aerosol subtypes in the stratosphere. Four aerosol subtypes are introduced for the stratospheric aerosols: polar stratospheric aerosol (PSA), volcanic ash, sulfate/other, and smoke. The tropospheric aerosol subtyping algorithm was also improved by adding the following enhancements: (1) all aerosol subtypes are now allowed over polar regions, (2) a new “dusty marine” aerosol subtype is introduced, representing mixtures of dust and marine aerosols near the ocean surface; and (3) the “polluted continental” and “smoke” subtypes have been renamed “polluted continental/smoke” and “elevated smoke”, respectively. V4 also revises the lidar ratios for clean marine, dust, clean continental, and elevated smoke subtypes. As a consequence of the V4 updates, the mean 532 nm AOD retrieved by CALIOP has increased by 0.044 (0.036) or 52 % (40 %) for nighttime (daytime). Preliminary validation studies show that the AOD discrepancies between CALIOP and AERONET/MODIS (ocean) are reduced in V4 compared to V3.

Posted or updated: Thursday, November 1, 2018

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