Christine Bingen

Stratospheric Aerosol--Observations, Processes, and Impact on Climate

Interest in stratospheric aerosol and its role in climate have increased over the last decade due to the observed increase in stratospheric aerosol since 2000 and the potential for changes in the sulfur cycle induced by climate change. This review provides an overview about the advances in stratospheric aerosol research since the last comprehensive assessment of stratospheric aerosol was published in 2006. A crucial development since 2006 is the substantial improvement in the agreement between in situ and space-based inferences of stratospheric aerosol properties during volcanically quiescent periods. Furthermore, new measurement systems and techniques, both in situ and space based, have been developed for measuring physical aerosol properties with greater accuracy and for characterizing aerosol composition. However, these changes induce challenges to constructing a long-term stratospheric aerosol climatology. Currently, changes in stratospheric aerosol levels less than 20% cannot be confidently quantified. The volcanic signals tend to mask any nonvolcanically driven change, making them difficult to understand. While the role of carbonyl sulfide as a substantial and relatively constant source of stratospheric sulfur has been confirmed by new observations and model simulations, large uncertainties remain with respect to the contribution from anthropogenic sulfur dioxide emissions. New evidence has been provided that stratospheric aerosol can also contain small amounts of nonsulfate matter such as black carbon and organics. Chemistry-climate models have substantially increased in quantity and sophistication. In many models the implementation of stratospheric aerosol processes is coupled to radiation and/or stratospheric chemistry modules to account for relevant feedback processes.

Development, Production and Evaluation of Aerosol Climate Data Records from European Satellite Observations (Aerosol_cci)

Producing a global and comprehensive description of atmospheric aerosols requires integration of ground-based, airborne, satellite and model datasets. Due to its complexity, aerosol monitoring requires the use of several data records with complementary information content. This paper describes the lessons learned while developing and qualifying algorithms to generate aerosol Climate Data Records (CDR) within the European Space Agency (ESA) Aerosol_cci project. An iterative algorithm development and evaluation cycle involving core users is applied. It begins with the application-specific refinement of user requirements, leading to algorithm development, dataset processing and independent validation followed by user evaluation. This cycle is demonstrated for a CDR of total Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) from two subsequent dual-view radiometers. Specific aspects of its applicability to other aerosol algorithms are illustrated with four complementary aerosol datasets. An important element in the development of aerosol CDRs is the inclusion of several algorithms evaluating the same data to benefit from various solutions to the ill-determined retrieval problem. The iterative approach has produced a 17-year AOD CDR, a 10-year stratospheric extinction profile CDR and a 35-year Absorbing Aerosol Index record. Further evolution cycles have been initiated for complementary datasets to provide insight into aerosol properties (i.e., dust aerosol, aerosol absorption).

A global climatology of the mesospheric sodium layer from GOMOS data during the 2002–2008 period

This paper presents a climatology of the mesospheric sodium layer built from the processing of 7 years of GOMOS data. With respect to preliminary results already published for the year 2003, a more careful analysis was applied to the averaging of occultations inside the climatological bins (10 in latitude-1 month). Also, the slant path absorption lines of the Na doublet around 589 nm shows evidence of partial saturation that was responsible for an underestimation of the Na concentration in our previous results. The sodium climatology has been validated with respect to the Fort Collins lidar measurements and, to a lesser extent, to the OSIRIS 2003–2004 data. Despite the important natural sodium variability, we have shown that the Na vertical column has a marked semi-annual oscillation at low latitudes that merges into an annual oscillation in the polar regions,a spatial distribution pattern that was unreported so far. The sodium layer seems to be clearly influenced by the mesospheric global circulation and the altitude of the layer shows clear signs of subsidence during polar winter. The climatology has been parameterized by time-latitude robust fits to alCorrespondence to: D. Fussen (didier.fussen@oma.be) low for easy use. Taking into account the non-linearity of the transmittance due to partial saturation, an experimental approach is proposed to derive mesospheric temperatures from limb remote sounding measurements.

Tunable acousto-optic spectral imager for atmospheric composition measurements in the visible spectral domain

We describe a new spectral imaging instrument using a TeO(2) acousto-optical tunable filter (AOTF) operating in the visible domain (450-900 nm). It allows for fast (~1 second), monochromatic (FWHM ranges from 0.6 nm at 450 nm to 3.5 nm at 800 nm) picture acquisition with good spatial resolution. This instrument was designed as a breadboard of the visible channel of a new satellite-borne atmospheric limb spectral imager, named the Atmospheric Limb Tracker for the Investigation of the Upcoming Stratosphere (ALTIUS), that is currently being developed. We tested its remote sensing capabilities by observing the dense, turbulent plume exhausted by a waste incinerator stack at two wavelengths sensitive to NO(2). An average value of 6.0±0.4×10(17) molecules cm(-2) has been obtained for the NO(2) slant column density within the plume, close to the stack outlet. Although this result was obtained with a rather low accuracy, it demonstrates the potential of spectral imaging by using AOTFs in remote sensing.

Global measurement of the mesospheric sodium layer by the star occultation instrument GOMOS

We present the first global measurement of the sodium mesospheric layer obtained from the processing of about 100 000 star occultations by the GOMOS instrument onboard the ENVISAT satellite. The retrieval method is developed on the basis of a simple DOAS retrieval applied to averaged transmittances. The vertical inversion of the sodium slant path optical thickness is performed by using a modified Gaussian extinction profile. A global climatology is derived by using monthly bins of 20 degrees in latitude. The high variability of the sodium layer is confirmed on a global scale as well as the presence of an important modulation in the annual cycle. Also, we present some evidence for the existence of a diurnal cycle characterized by an increase of the sodium concentration in daylight.

A volcanism dependent model for the extinction profile of stratospheric aerosols in the UV‐visible range

We present a climatological model of the extinction coefficient of stratospheric aerosols in the UV-visible range based on SAGE II data. The model is a function of wavelength, latitude, relative altitude with respect to the tropopause and depends on the volcanism level. The vertical structure describes the tropopause region, the Junge layer and the high altitude domain. The model is shown to predict realistic extinction profiles with an reasonable accuracy.

Evolution of stratospheric aerosols in the post-Pinatubo period measured by solar occultation

Abstract This paper presents particle size distributions of stratospheric aerosols derived from solar occultation data measured by the instrument ORA (an acronym for Occultation RAdiometer) during the period August 1992–May 1993. Starting from the UV-visible wavelength dependence of extinction coefficient profiles, an algorithm is developed that allows to retrieve the three parameters of an equivalent log-normal distribution and that makes use of vertical regularization. Comparison of retrieved mode radius and particle number density with existing data is found to be satisfactory. The evolution of the stratospheric aerosols is clearly influenced by sedimentation and coagulation as expected but also by vertical circulation. In a simple 1-D model, we derive the vertical wind profile and we interpret the temporal evolution of the particle mode radius.

Remote sensing of the Earth’s atmosphere by the spaceborne Occultation Radiometer, ORA: final inversion algorithm

We describe the final inversion algorithm developed to process solar occultation data measured in 1992-1993 by the Occultation Radiometer (ORA) spaceborne experiment. First we develop a new method to improve the ORA total extinction altitude profiles retrieved with the previously described Natural Orthogonal Polynomial Expansion (NOPE) method. Using these improved profiles, we perform spectral inversion and obtain altitude density profiles for O(3) and NO(2) and extinction profiles for the aerosols. Validation of number density profiles between the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment II (SAGE II) and the ORA shows satisfactory agreement.

A global OClO stratospheric layer discovered in GOMOS stellar occultation measurements

The stratospheric ozone depletion observed in polar regions is caused by several catalytic cycles induced by reactive chlorine and bromine species. By reacting with BrO, ClO causes the formation of OClO which is considered as a proxy of the halogen activation. We present the first global determination of the stratospheric OClO distribution measured during the year 2003 by the stellar occultation spectrometer GOMOS. Besides its expected polar abundance, we discovered the presence of a worldwide OClO layer in the upper stratosphere. At lower altitudes, OClO seems also to be present beyond the limit of the polar vortices, an unreported feature.

Tomography of the Earth's atmosphere by the spaceborne occultation radiometer ORA: Spatial inversion algorithm

The occultation radiometer ORA was designed to perform measurements of O 3 , NO 2 , H 2 O, number density, and aerosol extinction altitude profiles in the Earths atmosphere through the occultation method viewing the full solar disk. The experiment was mounted on the EURECA satellite and measured the relative transmission of light during about 7000 orbital sunsets and sunrises from August 11, 1992, to May 13, 1993. The spatial inversion algorithm developed to retrieve the total extinction altitude profiles from these data is described here. It is shown that the signal measured by an instrument having a large field of view can be successfully processed to give a much better altitude resolution than the one related to the angular size of the Sun. The main difficulties concern the inclusion of all refractive effects, the application of a new inversion scheme and its associated mapping strategy to refine the aerosol layer detection. The algorithm applies to fully nonlinear occultation experiments requiring global and nonheuristic inversion schemes.