EGU25-17053, updated on 15 Mar 2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-17053
EGU General Assembly 2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Vertical Profiles of Aerosol Chemical Species Concentrations derived from the Synergism of the Future Spaceborne Lidar and Polarimeter of the Atmosphere Observing System
Abou Bakr Merdji1, Juan Cuesta1, Fazzal Qayyum1, Anton Lopatin2, Oleg Dubovik3, Durgesh Nandan5, Laaziz El Amraoui4, and Richard Ferrare6
Abou Bakr Merdji et al.
  • 1Univ Paris Est Creteil and Université Paris Cité, CNRS, LISA, F-94010 Créteil, France (abou.merdji@lisa.ipsl.fr; cuesta@lisa.ipsl.fr; fazzal.qayyum@lisa.ipsl.fr)
  • 2GRASP SAS, Lezennes, 59260, France (anton.lopatin@grasp-earth.com)
  • 3Laboratoire d’Optique Atmosphérique, UMR 8518, Villeneuve d’Ascq, 59650, France (oleg.dubovik@univ-lille.fr)
  • 4CNRM, Université de Toulouse, Météo-France, CNRS, 42 Avenue Gaspard Coriolis, 31057 Toulouse, France (laaziz.elamraoui@meteo.fr)
  • 5National Center for Medium Range Weather Forecast, Ministry of Earth Sciences, NOIDA 201309, INDIA (durgesh.piyush@nic.in)
  • 6NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA, USA (richard.a.ferrare@nasa.gov; sharon.p.burton@nasa.gov)

The Atmosphere Observing System (AOS), a collaborative initiative from the international cooperation of NASA, CNES, JAXA, ASI, and CSA, aims to substantially enhance the observation of aerosols and clouds through the deployment of an advanced spaceborne lidar and a multi-angular polarimeter, expected to fly in tandem. Within this framework, we present a novel methodology for retrieving vertical concentration profiles of aerosol chemical species by synergistically leveraging measurements from co-located lidar and polarimeter instruments. This approach, named Aerosol Chemical Profiling (AEROCHEMPro), extends the GRASP (Generalized Retrieval of Aerosol and Surface Properties) framework to provide vertically resolved profiles of aerosol modes: (i) a fine mode containing black carbon, brown carbon, inorganic salts, and water content; (ii) a coarse desert dust mode composed of iron oxide and quartz; and (iii) a coarse sea salt mode with associated water content.

First, the AEROCHEMPro methodology is developed and implemented on synthetic observations from an Observing System Simulation Experiment (OSSE). Synthetic lidar and polarimeter measurements are simulated by radiative transfer code using a pseudo-reality built from the MOCAGE chemistry-transport model. We consider the instrumental configuration of AOS: the high energy 3-wavelength elastic backscatter lidar called CALIGOLA and the 8-wavelength ultraviolet-to-near-infrared multi-angular polarimeter of the AOS-Sky mission. These case studies demonstrate the capability of AEROCHEMPro to accurately retrieve the vertical profiles of aerosol chemical species, along with their optical and microphysical properties, offering a robust foundation for real-world applications.

In a second stage, a first adaptation of the AEROCHEMPro approach to real measurement is conducted. We use real airborne measurements from the Research Scanning Polarimeter (RSP) and NASA's High Spectral Resolution Lidar-2 (HSRL-2). While the RSP delivers complementing passive observations of polarized radiances across many spectral bands, the HSRL-2 offers high-resolution active aerosols remote sensing. HSRL-2 measurements are used to derive elastic backscatter signals as those that will be performed by CALIGOLA and level 2 products for comparison with respect to AEROCHEMPro output.

The proposed presentation will provide results of AEROCHEMPro based on both OSSE synthetic measurements and first implementations with airborne real measurements.

 

Keywords: AEROSOL OBESERVING SYSTEM; LIDAR; POLARIMETER; AEROSOL SPECIES PROFILE; GRASP; AEROCHEMPro

How to cite: Merdji, A. B., Cuesta, J., Qayyum, F., Lopatin, A., Dubovik, O., Nandan, D., El Amraoui, L., and Ferrare, R.: Vertical Profiles of Aerosol Chemical Species Concentrations derived from the Synergism of the Future Spaceborne Lidar and Polarimeter of the Atmosphere Observing System, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-17053, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-17053, 2025.