Publications

Pan, HL; Wang, MZ; Kumar, KR; Lu, H; Mamtimin, A; Huo, W; Yang, XH; Yang, F; Zhou, CL (2019). Seasonal and vertical distributions of aerosol type extinction coefficients with an emphasis on the impact of dust aerosol on the microphysical properties of cirrus over the Taklimakan Desert in Northwest China. ATMOSPHERIC ENVIRONMENT, 203, 216-227.

Abstract
In the present study, the seasonal and vertical distributions of key aerosol types and its extinction coefficient (EC) are investigated with an emphasis on the impact of desert dust aerosols on the microphysical properties of cirrus. For this, we obtained near-simultaneous and collocated datasets retrieved from the CALIPSO (Cloud-Aerosol LiDAR and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations), CloudSat, and MODerate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) over the Taklimakan Desert (TMD) area situated in Northwest China during 2006-2011. We found that the main aerosol types prevalent over the TMD region are desert dust (DD), polluted dust (PD), and polluted continental/elevated smoke (PC/SE) which accounted for similar to 88.38%, similar to 10.81%, and similar to 0.47%, respectively. The DD type was the most dominant aerosol type during the total observational period due to the nature of the desert underlying surface, and the frequent dust activities occurred over the region. Further, the concentrations of PD and PC/SE were observed larger in winter compared to the other seasons contributing similar to 25.66% and 1.42%, respectively. This is likely attributed to increased burning of fossil fuels used for combustion processes in the cold season over Northwest China. On the other hand, the latitudinal distribution total aerosol loading of EC presented the south-to-north gradient with a declined tendency in all seasons due to enhanced amount of dust aerosols transported from the TMD area. Further, the seasonal mean values of total EC over TMD showed a maximum of 0.021 km(-1) appeared in spring, with a minimum (0.017 km(-1)) in autumn. In addition, we also investigated the impact of dust aerosols on the cirrus micro physical properties namely, ice water content (IWC), ice water path (IWP), ice cloud effective radius (IER), ice number concentration (INC), and ice distribution width (IDW). The results showed that dust aerosol can possibly change the microphysical properties of cirrus over the study domain.

DOI:
10.1016/j.atmosenv.2019.02.004

ISSN:
1352-2310