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Status: Not confirmed |
Open to sharing: Yes |
Confidential: No |
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Transnational Access: No |
Open to training: No |
Grounded / Maintenance: No |
Aircraft name: BAe146 - FAAM
Airport: Walvis Bay, Namibia
Project theme: Airborne, surface-based and satellite measurements of clouds, aerosols, and their radiative impacts.
Project abstract: 1) improve our knowledge of the direct, semi-direct and indirect radiative effect of absorbing biomass burning aerosols; 2) improve our knowledge of the processes determining stratocumulus cloud microphysical and radiative properties; 3) challenge and improve satellite retrievals of cloud and aerosol and their radiative impacts; 4) improve numerical models of cloud and aerosol and their impacts on radiation, weather and climate.
Science context: CLARIFY is a major consortium programme consisting of 5 principal UK universities with project partners from the UK Met Office, European universities and research institutes. This work is being planned in conjunction with parallel activities from the NASA (ObseRvations of Aerosols above CLouds and their interactions, ORACLES) and the USA’s NSF (ObservatioNs of Fireʼs Impact on the southeast atlantic REgion, ONFIRE) programmes and is supported by many European and international partners making CLARIFY a truly international, high profile, high impact project. CLARIFY-2016 will improve the representation of biomass burning aerosols and clouds over the SE Atlantic in models of a range of scales, increase the fidelity of aerosol-radiation and aerosol-cloud interaction processes and cloud representation, and their impacts on local, regional and global weather and climate. Key objectives of CLARIFY-2016 are: KO1: Assess the physical, optical and radiative properties of BBAs (WP2) KO2: Assess and improve the representation of BBA radiation interactions when clouds are absent/present (WP2, 3) KO3: Assess and improve the representation of stratocumulus cloud when BBA is absent/present (WP2, 4) KO4: Assess the impacts of clouds-aerosol-radiation and their interactions at local, regional, and global scales (WP2, 3, 4, 5) These objectives will be achieved by conducting an intensive airborne field campaign with supporting surface based, and satellite measurements. The measurements will be used to challenge, and develop models at different spatial scales that couple aerosols, clouds and radiation. Enabling objectives are:- EO1: To characterise chemical, microphysical, optical and radiative properties of BBA over the SE Atlantic region, focussing on black carbon, absorption and single scattering albedo (WP2, WP4). EO2: To investigate the geographic and vertical profile of BBA over the region (WP2, WP3, WP4). EO3: To characterise the vertical thermodynamic structure of the MBL, residual continental polluted layer, and free troposphere and diurnal and synoptic scale variations (WP2, WP4). EO4: To characterise broad-band and spectral reflectance of the ocean surface and stratocumulus clouds when overlying BBA is present/absent from the atmospheric column (WP2, WP3). EO5: To characterise key cloud processes and parameters such as entrainment, cloud-base updraft velocities, CCN, CDNC, cloud droplet effective radius, cloud liquid water path and optical depth (WP2, WP4). EO6: Use CLARIFY campaign data with representative statistical sampling as well as high-resolution models to establish robust relationships between sub-grid scale variables and large-scale model parameters suitable for constraining aerosol-cloud interactions. EO7: To use synergistic observations/model simulations to investigate impacts on NWP and climate model performance, feedback mechanisms and teleconnections (WP2, WP3, WP4, WP5).
Instruments: None
Name: None