Shipboard sunphotometer measurements of aerosol optical depth spectra and columnar water vapor during ACE‐2, and comparison with selected land, ship, aircraft, and satellite measurements

ABSTRACT

Analyses of aerosol optical depth (AOD) and columnar water vapor (CWV) measurements acquired with NASA Ames Research Center's 6‐channel Airborne Tracking Sunphotometer (AATS‐6) operated aboard the R/V Professor Vodyanitskiy during the 2nd Aerosol Characterization Experiment (ACE‐2) are discussed. Data are compared with various in situ and remote measurements for selected cases. The focus is on 10 July, when the Pelican airplane flew within 70 km of the ship near the time of a NOAA‐14/AVHRR satellite overpass and AOD measurements with the 14–channel Ames Airborne Tracking Sunphotometer (AATS‐14) above the marine boundary layer (MBL) permitted calculation of AOD within the MBL from the AATS‐6 measurements. A detailed column closure test is performed for MBL AOD on 10 July by comparing the AATS‐6 MBL AODs with corresponding values calculated by combining shipboard particle size distribution measurements with models of hygroscopic growth and radiosonde humidity profiles (plus assumptions on the vertical profile of the dry particle size distribution and composition). Large differences (30–80% in the mid‐visible) between measured and reconstructed AODs are obtained, in large part because of the high sensitivity of the closure methodology to hygroscopic growth models, which vary considerably and have not been validated over the necessary range of particle size/composition distributions. The wavelength dependence of AATS‐6 AODs is compared with the corresponding dependence of aerosol extinction calculated from shipboard measurements of aerosol size distribution and of total scattering measured by a shipboard integrating nephelometer for several days. Results are highly variable, illustrating further the great difficulty of deriving column values from point measurements. AATS‐6 CWV values are shown to agree well with corresponding values derived from radiosonde measurements during 8 soundings on 7 days and also with values calculated from measurements taken on 10 July with the AATS‐14 and the University of Washington Passive Humidigraph aboard the Pelican.