Identification

Title

Aerosol characteristics observed in southeast Queensland and implications for cloud microphysics

Abstract

Regular cloud base aerosol measurements were collected by a research aircraft over a 4 month period during the wet season in southeast Queensland, near Brisbane, Australia. In situ cloud microphysical measurements were also collected in many of these clouds. Brisbane is situated on the east coast of Australia and, depending on the synoptic weather conditions, can experience influences from inland or from the adjacent ocean. In situ aerosol measurements were used to compile a climatology of the aerosol conditions in the region and a back trajectory model was run for 120 h from each measurement to determine the possible air mass influences on each measurement. The most influential factor on the measured aerosol concentrations was the time the trajectory spent over land beneath 2 km (a proxy for the boundary layer). Using this criterion, the measurements were divided into two regimes: maritime for those with minimal time histories over land and continental for the remainder. Other influential factors on the aerosol concentration were also diagnosed and quantified with a regression model, including the proximity of the trajectory to the city of Brisbane and the number of fires along the trajectory. Thermodynamic, aerosol, and cloud microphysical characteristics are presented for each regime. The maritime regime tended to have more coarse mode (larger) aerosol particles and a tail of larger drops in the cloud base droplet spectra, which could be due to nucleation on the larger aerosol particles. The city influence on maritime regime trajectories yielded enhanced nucleation (fine) particle concentrations.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7bp058s

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2013-04-04T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact