Climatological assessment of the vertically resolved optical and microphysical aerosol properties by lidar measurements, sun photometer, and in situ observations over 17 years at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) Barcelona
-
Published:2023-10-13
Issue:19
Volume:23
Page:12887-12906
-
ISSN:1680-7324
-
Container-title:Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
-
language:en
-
Short-container-title:Atmos. Chem. Phys.
Author:
Lolli SimoneORCID, Sicard MichaëlORCID, Amato Francesco, Comeron AdolfoORCID, Gíl-Diaz Cristina, Landi Tony C.ORCID, Munoz-Porcar Constantino, Oliveira Daniel, Dios Otin Federico, Rocadenbosch FrancescORCID, Rodriguez-Gomez AlejandroORCID, Alastuey AndrésORCID, Querol Xavier, Reche Cristina
Abstract
Abstract. Aerosols are one of the most important pollutants in the atmosphere and have been monitored for the past few decades by remote sensing and in situ observation platforms to assess the effectiveness of government-managed reduction emission policies and assess their impact on the radiative budget of the Earth's atmosphere. In fact, aerosols can directly modulate incoming short-wave solar radiation and outgoing long-wave radiation and indirectly influence cloud formation, lifetime, and precipitation. In this study, we quantitatively evaluated long-term temporal trends and seasonal variability from a climatological point of view of the optical and microphysical properties of atmospheric particulate matter at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain, over the past 17 years, through a synergy of lidar, sun photometer, and in situ concentration measurements. Interannual temporal changes in aerosol optical and microphysical properties are evaluated through the seasonal Mann–Kendall test. Long-term trends in the optical depth of the recovered aerosol; the Ångström exponent (AE); and the concentrations of PM10, PM2.5, and PM1 reveal that emission reduction policies implemented in the past decades were effective in improving air quality, with consistent drops in PM concentrations and optical depth of aerosols. The seasonal analysis of the 17-year average vertically resolved aerosol profiles obtained from lidar observations shows that during summer the aerosol layer can be found up to an altitude of 5 km, after a sharp decay in the first kilometer. In contrast, during the other seasons, the backscatter profiles fit a pronounced exponential decay well with a well-defined scale height. Long-range transport, especially dust outbreaks from the Sahara, is likely to occur throughout the year. During winter, the dust aerosol layers are floating above the boundary layer, while during the other seasons they can penetrate the layer. The analysis also revealed that intense, short-duration pollution events during winter, associated with dust outbreaks, have become more frequent and intense since 2016. This study sheds some light on the meteorological processes and conditions that can lead to the formation of haze and helps decision makers adopt mitigation strategies to preserve large metropolitan areas in the Mediterranean basin.
Funder
Horizon 2020 European Space Agency
Publisher
Copernicus GmbH
Subject
Atmospheric Science
Reference101 articles.
1. Abshire, J. B., Riris, H., Allan, G. R., Weaver, C. J., Mao, J., Sun, X.,
Hasselbrack, W. E., Kawa, S. R., and Biraud, S.: Pulsed airborne lidar
measurements of atmospheric CO2 column absorption, Tellus B, 62, 770–783, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0889.2010.00502.x, 2010. a 2. Ackermann, J.: The extinction-to-backscatter ratio of tropospheric aerosol: A
numerical study, J. Atmos. Ocean. Technol., 15,
1043–1050, 1998. a 3. Adler, C., Wester, P., Bhatt, I., Huggel, C., Insarov, G., Morecroft, M.,
Muccione, V., and Prakash, A.: Cross-Chapter Paper 5: Mountains,
2273–2318, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, USA,
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/chapter/ccp5/ (last access: 10 October 2023), 2022. a 4. Alados-Arboledas, L., Müller, D., Guerrero-Rascado, J., Navas-Guzmán,
F., Pérez-Ramírez, D., and Olmo, F.: Optical and microphysical
properties of fresh biomass burning aerosol retrieved by Raman lidar, and
star-and sun-photometry, Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, 1, https://doi.org/10.1029/2010GL045999, 2011. a 5. Ali, E., Cramer, W., Carnicer, J., Georgopoulou, E., Hilmi, N. J. M., Le Cozannet, G., and Lionello, P.: Cross-Chapter Paper 4: Mediterranean Region, in: Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, edited by: Pörtner, H.-O., Roberts, D. C., Tignor, M., Poloczanska, E. S., Mintenbeck, K., Alegría, A., Craig, M., Langsdorf, S., Löschke, S., Möller, V., Okem, A., and Rama, B., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA, 2233–2272, 2022. a
Cited by
4 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献
|
|