A Decade of CALIPSO Observations of Asian and Saharan Dust Properties near Source and Transport Regions

NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA 23681, USA

^* Corresponding author: Ali.H.Omar@nasa.gov

Abstract

The lidar on the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) mission, makes robust measurements of dust and has generated a length of record that is significant both seasonally and inter-annually. We exploit this record to determine a multi-year climatology of the properties of Asian and Saharan dust, in particular seasonal optical depths, layer frequencies, and layer heights of dust gridded in accordance with the Level 3 data products protocol between 2006 and 2016. The data are screened using standard CALIPSO quality assurance flags, cloud aerosol discrimination (CAD) scores, overlying features and layer properties. To evaluate the effects of transport on small-scale phenomena such as morphology, vertical extent and size of the dust layers, we compare probability distribution functions of the layer integrated volume depolarization ratios, geometric depths and integrated attenuated color ratios near the source to the same distributions in the far field or transport region. To evaluate the uncertainty in the lidar ratios, we compare the values computed from dust layers overlying opaque water clouds, considered accurate, with the constant lidar ratio value used in the CALIOP algorithms for dust