Fluorescence lidar observations of wildfire smoke inside cirrus: a contribution to smoke–cirrus interaction research

Abstract

Abstract. A remote sensing method, based on fluorescence lidar measurements, that allows us to detect and to quantify the smoke content in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS) is presented. The unique point of this approach is that smoke and cirrus properties are observed in the same air volume simultaneously. In this article, we provide results of fluorescence and multiwavelength Mie–Raman lidar measurements performed at ATOLL (ATmospheric Observation at liLLe) observatory from Laboratoire d'Optique Atmosphérique, University of Lille, during strong smoke episodes in the summer and autumn seasons of 2020. The aerosol fluorescence was induced by 355 nm laser radiation, and the fluorescence backscattering was measured in a single spectral channel, centered at 466 nm and having 44 nm width. To estimate smoke particle properties, such as number, surface area and volume concentration, the conversion factors, which link the fluorescence backscattering and the smoke microphysical properties, are derived from the synergy of multiwavelength Mie–Raman and fluorescence lidar observations. Based on two case studies, we demonstrate that the fluorescence lidar technique provides the possibility to estimate the smoke surface area concentration within freshly formed cirrus layers. This value was used in the smoke ice nucleating particle (INP) parameterization scheme to predict ice crystal number concentrations in cirrus generation cells.