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Average aerosol extinction and water vapor profiles over the Southern Great Plains
Author(s) -
Turner D. D.,
Ferrare R. A.,
Brasseur L. A.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2001gl013691
Subject(s) - aerosol , environmental science , atmospheric sciences , water vapor , extinction (optical mineralogy) , sun photometer , precipitable water , lidar , climatology , meteorology , remote sensing , geology , geography , mineralogy
An operational Raman lidar deployed at the DOE Atmospheric Radiation Measurement site in Oklahoma has collected more than 7500 h of aerosol and water vapor data between April 1998 and January 2000. These data, which span a wide variety of atmospheric conditions, have been analyzed as a function of season, integrated amount, and time of day. The scale height of the mean aerosol profiles varies considerably as both a function of season and aerosol optical thickness, with the mean scale height increasing from less than 1 km in the winter to over 2 km during turbid summer days. The mean scale height of the water vapor remained very close to 2 km, regardless of season or precipitable water vapor. Furthermore, the distribution of aerosol optical thickness shows a slight shift to smaller values at night compared to day, and the mean aerosol profiles show little diurnal dependence except at the top of the boundary layer.