The Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program is a climate research user facility operating stationary ground sites that provide long-term measurements of climate-relevan... The Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program is a climate research user facility operating stationary ground sites that provide long-term measurements of climate-relevan...

The Spectrometer for Sky-Scanning, Sun-Tracking Atmospheric Research (4STAR) combines airborne sun tracking and sky scanning with diffraction spectroscopy to improve knowledge of atmospheric constituents and their links to air-pollution/climate. Direct beam hyper-spectral measurement of optical depth improves retrievals of gas constituents and determination of aerosol properties. Sky scanning enhances retrievals of aerosol type and size distribution. 4STAR measurements will tighten the closure between satellite and ground-based measurements. 4STAR incorporates a modular sun-tracking/ sky-scanning optical head with fiber optic signal transmission to rack mounted spectrometers, permitting miniaturization of the external optical head, and future detector evolution. Technical challenges include compact optical collector design, radiometric dynamic range and stability, and broad spectral coverage. Test results establishing the performance of the instrument against the full range of operational requirements are presented, along with calibration, engineering flight test, and scientific field campaign data and results.

Accurate representation of atmospheric aerosol properties is a long-standing problem in atmospheric research. Modern pilotless aerial systems provide a new platform for atmospheric in situ measurement. However, small airborne platforms require miniaturized instrumentation due to apparent size, power, and weight limitations. A Portable Optical Particle Spectrometer (POPS) is an emerged instrument to measure ambient aerosol size distribution with high time and size resolution, designed for deployment on a small unmanned aerial system (UAS) or tethered balloon system (TBS) platforms. This study evaluates the performance of a POPS with an upgraded laser heater and additional temperature sensors in the aerosol pathway. POPS maintains its performance under different environmental conditions as long as the laser temperature remains above 25 °C and the aerosol flow temperature inside the optical chamber is 15 °C higher than the ambient temperature. The comparison between POPS and an Ultra-High Sensitivity Aerosol Spectrometer (UHSAS) suggests that the coincidence error is less than 25% when the number concentration is less than 4000 cm⁻³. The size distributions measured by both of them remained unaffected up to 15,000 cm⁻³. While both instruments’ sizing accuracy is affected by the aerosol chemical composition and morphology, the influence is more profound on the POPS.

This study examines the vertical variations of cloud microphysical relationships and their implications to cloud microphysical processes in marine stratocumulus clouds using in‐situ aircraft observations during the Aerosol and Cloud Experiments in Eastern North Atlantic (ACE‐ENA) field campaign. A new diagram with a coordinate system based on cloud droplet liquid water content (L_c) and phase relaxation time scale is proposed to investigate mixing mechanisms. This new diagram analysis shows that the inhomogeneous mixing trait is dominant near the cloud top, but homogeneous mixing trait is stronger at lower altitudes. The relevant scale parameters (i.e., transition length scale and transition scale number) also indicate a high likelihood of inhomogeneous mixing. The relationship between L_c and standard deviation of droplet radius (σ_R) clearly shows the vertical transition: the correlation between L_c and σ_R is positive at lower cloud altitudes, but it becomes negative as altitude increases. Such a vertical transition is consistent with the vertical circulation mixing, modulating the cloud microphysical relationships to suggest homogeneous mixing at a significant depth from the cloud top.

We present a framework for calculating the total scattering of both non-absorbing and absorbing aerosol at ambient conditions from aircraft data. Our framework is developed emphasizing the explicit use of chemical composition data for estimating the complex refractive index (RI) of particles, and thus obtaining improved ambient size spectra derived from Optical Particle Counter (OPC) measurements. The feasibility of our framework for improved calculations of total scattering is demonstrated using three types of data collected by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) aircraft during the Two-Column Aerosol Project (TCAP). Namely, these data types are: (1) size distributions measured by a suite of OPC’s; (2) chemical composition data measured by an Aerosol Mass Spectrometer and a Single Particle Soot Photometer; and (3) the dry total scattering coefficient measured by a integrating nephelometer and scattering enhancement factor measured with a humidification system. We demonstrate that good agreement (~10%) between the observed and calculated scattering can be obtained under ambient conditions (RH < 80%) by applying chemical composition data for the RI-based correction of the OPC-derived size spectra. We also demonstrate that ignoring the RI-based correction or using non-representative RI values can cause a substantial underestimation (~40%) or overestimation (~35%) of the calculated scattering, respectively.