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Special Issue "Understanding the Roles of Aerosols and Clouds in Environment, Meteorology and Climate with Advanced Lidar Remote Sensing Techniques"

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A special issue of Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292). This special issue belongs to the section "Atmospheric Remote Sensing".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 November 2023 | Viewed by 3888

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Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Xuan Wang

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Guest Editor

School of Remote Sensing and Information Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
Interests: lidar techniques; lidar retrievals; aerosol and cloud properties

Dr. Longlong Wang

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Guest Editor

School of Remote Sensing and Information Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
Interests: lidar techniques; aerosol properties; air pollution; atmospheric turbulence

Dr. Yun He

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Guest Editor

School of Electronic Information, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
Interests: lidar remote sensing of aerosols and clouds; aerosol-cloud interaction

Dr. Zhenping Yin

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Guest Editor

School of Remote Sensing and Information Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
Interests: atmospheric lidar techniques; lidar retrievals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

There has been an increasing interest in atmospheric aerosols and clouds given their confirmed impact on meteorology, climate change and air quality, and how there is a large amount of uncertainty brought on by the variability in spatial and temporal distributions of aerosols, as well as aerosol–cloud and aerosol–planetary boundary layer (PBL) interactions. Advanced Lidar remote sensing techniques with different platforms, data quality control schemes and novel retrieval algorithms allow for the yielding of the vertical profiles of aerosol properties with a high temporal resolution at the regional and global scale. These observations have also been employed to further increase the current knowledge of aerosols, clouds or the PBL, as well as their natural and human-driven processes. This Special Issue entitled, “Understanding the Roles of Aerosols and Clouds in Environment, Meteorology and Climate with Advanced Lidar Remote Sensing Techniques”, aims to report any new Lidar technique developments, new retrieval algorithms alongside their applications, featured observations for aerosols, clouds and their processes, and findings on aerosol-cloud and aerosol-planetary boundary layer interactions. Both comprehensive reviews and research articles on aerosol and cloud observations are welcome to be submitted that include, but are not limited to, the following topics:

Novel instruments;
Measurement methods and algorithms;
Vertical profiles of aerosol optical and microphysical properties;
Aerosol emissions, transport and removal;
Cloud macro- and micro-physical properties and cloud processes;
Aerosol–cloud and aerosol–planetary boundary layer (PBL) interactions;
Spaceborne, airborne, shipborne and ground-based lidar observations for featured areas;
Measurement campaigns of wildfire;
Volcanic eruptions;
Dust storms and extreme air pollution.

Prof. Dr. Xuan Wang
Dr. Longlong Wang
Dr. Yun He
Dr. Zhenping Yin
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Remote Sensing is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

aerosols
clouds
vertical profiles
lidar
aerosol-cloud interactions

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

Open AccessCommunication

Performance of Wide Dynamic Photomultiplier Applied in a Low Blind Zone Lidar

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Remote Sens. 2023, 15(18), 4404; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs15184404 - 07 Sep 2023

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Abstract

Aerosol lidars play a vital role in the investigations of atmospheric pollution formation and meteorological processes. The intensity of lidar return signals in the near range changes much faster compared with the one in the far range, so extremely wide dynamic outputs from the photomultiplier tube (PMT) are needed to avoid saturation in the near range. Usually, to obtain the wide dynamic range, simultaneously, a transient digitizer (Licel) is applied to provide an analog detection chain for strong signals and a photon counting (PC) detection chain for weak signals. However, the near-range signals are still often saturated due to the very high aerosol loading. In this paper, we proposed to use a new PMT module with eight orders of magnitude for a low blind zone lidar, which can achieve both analog and PC separately. A comprehensive evaluation of this potential PMT, which could perform better in near-range detection, compared with the ordinary PMT was tested, but similar features are maintained in the far-range. The photon count rate and signal-to-noise ratio were tested for both the new PMT module and the ordinary PMT module. The results showed that the new PMT module is useful to extend the dynamic range of lidar detection. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Understanding the Roles of Aerosols and Clouds in Environment, Meteorology and Climate with Advanced Lidar Remote Sensing Techniques)

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Open AccessArticle

Analysis of Aerosol Optical Depth and Forward Scattering in an Ultraviolet Band Based on Sky Radiometer Measurements

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Remote Sens. 2023, 15(17), 4342; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs15174342 - 03 Sep 2023

Viewed by 411

Abstract

The sky-radiometer/sun-photometer is the most widely used instrument for obtaining aerosol optical depth (AOD) or aerosol optical properties worldwide. Due to the existence of field of view (FOV, 1°), the radiation received by the sky-radiometer includes the forward scattering in addition to direct solar irradiance. This leads to more diffuse light errors of retrieved AODs, especially for shorter wavelength and heavily polluted weather conditions. Using simulation data of three typical aerosol particles (dust, soot, water-soluble), we first verified the accuracy of the Monte Carlo method for calculating the forward scattering effect. Based on the sky-radiometer data collected in Xi’an (2015–2020) where heavy pollution weather is common, the relative errors and correction factors of the AOD were obtained under different conditions, including various short wavelengths (≤400 nm), solar zenith angles (SZAs) and AODs. Our analysis indicates the close dependence of AOD correction factors on wavelength, SZA, AOD and the optical properties of aerosol particles. The mean relative error in Xi’an increases with the decrease of wavelength (~16.1% at 315 nm) and decreases first and then increases with the increase of the SZA. The relative errors caused by forward scattering can exceed 10% when the AOD is greater than 1 and 25% when the AOD is larger than 2 in the ultraviolet (UV) band. The errors with a wavelength greater than 400 nm and an AOD below 1.0 can be within 5%, which can be ignored. The correlation coefficients of AODs before and after a correction from 315 nm to 400 nm are greater than 0.96, which basically increase with the increase of the wavelength. This indicates that the significance of the forward scattering effect in the Xi’an area with heavy pollution cannot be ignored for short wavelengths. However, such effect is negligible at the longer wavelengths and lower AODs (<1.0) of a sky-radiometer. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Understanding the Roles of Aerosols and Clouds in Environment, Meteorology and Climate with Advanced Lidar Remote Sensing Techniques)

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Open AccessCommunication

Novel Method for Determining the Height of the Stable Boundary Layer under Low-Level Jet by Judging the Shape of the Wind Velocity Variance Profile

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Remote Sens. 2023, 15(14), 3638; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs15143638 - 21 Jul 2023

Viewed by 291

Abstract

The height of the stable boundary layer is a key parameter in atmospheric transmission and diffusion, air quality, emergency response, wind energy, and numerical weather prediction models. Existing methods mainly determine the stable boundary layer height via a threshold or minimum value of the wind speed variance under a low-level jet. Based on multi-meteorological element data from a meteorological gradient observation tower, this paper revealed the limitations of existing methods from the perspective of dynamic and thermal effects. In this paper, it is demonstrated that there were four types of shapes of the wind speed variance profile under the low-level jet and a method for using the shape of the variance profile to retrieve the height of the stable boundary layer was proposed. This method distinguished different types of wind speed variance profiles and solved the problems of the misjudgment and omissions (about 34%) present in existing methods. Our experiment showed that the average absolute error of the proposed method was less than 18 m and the average relative error was less than 9%. The results showed that the proposed inversion method was extended to all kinds of wind field detection equipment for inversion of the stable boundary layer height and has very high universality. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Understanding the Roles of Aerosols and Clouds in Environment, Meteorology and Climate with Advanced Lidar Remote Sensing Techniques)

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Open AccessArticle

Derived Profiles of CCN and INP Number Concentrations in the Taklimakan Desert via Combined Polarization Lidar, Sun-Photometer, and Radiosonde Observations

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Remote Sens. 2023, 15(5), 1216; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs15051216 - 22 Feb 2023

Viewed by 782

Abstract

Understanding the vertical structures of cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) and ice-nucleating particle (INP) number concentrations in desert source regions is crucial for examining dust-cloud interactions and other related impacts. To explore the vertical profiles of the CCN and INP number concentrations and their possible atmospheric–dynamic influence factors at the center of the Taklimakan Desert, intensive observations were conducted by employing a ground-based polarization Raman lidar, sounding balloons, and a sun photometer in Tazhong (83.39° E, 38.58° N, 1103 m above sea level) during the summer of 2019. Based on the GRASP algorithm, the extinction-to-volume conversion factor of dust aerosols was 0.85 × 10⁻¹² Mmm³ m⁻³, and the extinction-to-number conversion factor was predicted to be 0.20 Mm cm⁻³ on the basis of the sun photometer observations. Thus, the vertical CCN and INP number concentration profiles obtained with different parameterization schemes in the presence of various pollution levels were calculated by combining dust extinction coefficients retrieved by lidar and meteorological data observed by sounding balloon observations. The achieved results indicated that the CCN number concentration varied from 10⁻² to 10² cm⁻³ and decreased from ground level to 12 km with an average value of 36.57 cm⁻³ at the 10–12 km height range, while the INP number concentration based on parameterization schemes D10 and D15 mainly varied from 10⁻¹ to 10² L⁻¹ and from 1 L⁻¹ to 10³ L⁻¹, with average values of 3.50 L⁻¹ and 7.80 L⁻¹, respectively. Moreover, we observed a strong relationship between the INP number concentration of scheme D10 and the wind speed, with an R² value of 0.72, but a weak relationship between the CCN number concentration and the relative humidity in the boundary layer, with a Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient R² value of 0.38. The present study provides original and valuable information regarding the CCN and INP number concentrations and their related influencing factors at the center of the Taklimakan Desert and can improve our understanding of the vertical distributions of dust–cloud–atmosphere dynamic interactions, as well as of the roles of dust aerosols in the desert hydrological cycle. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Understanding the Roles of Aerosols and Clouds in Environment, Meteorology and Climate with Advanced Lidar Remote Sensing Techniques)

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Open AccessArticle

Seasonal Variation of Dust Aerosol Vertical Distribution in Arctic Based on Polarized Micropulse Lidar Measurement

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Remote Sens. 2022, 14(21), 5581; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14215581 - 04 Nov 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1296

Abstract

This study investigates the seasonal variation of dust aerosol vertical distribution using polarized Micropulse lidar (MPL) measurements at the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) North Slope of Alaska (NSA) observatory from January 2013 to September 2017. For the first time, multi-year aerosol backscatter coefficients are retrieved at the ARM NSA site from MPL measurements and are consistent with co-located high spectral resolution lidar (HSRL) measurements. The high-quality aerosol backscatter coefficient retrievals are used to derive the particle depolarization ratio (PDR) at the wavelength of 532 nm, which is used to identify the presence of dust aerosols. The annual cycles of the vertical distributions of dust backscatter coefficient and PDR and dust aerosol optical depth (DAOD) show that aerosol loading has a maximum in late winter and early spring but a minimum in late summer and early autumn. Vertically, dust aerosol occurs in the entire troposphere in spring and winter and in the low and middle troposphere in summer and autumn. Because dust aerosols are effective ice nuclei, the seasonality of dust aerosol vertical distribution has important implications for the Arctic climate through aerosol–cloud–radiation interactions, primarily through impacting mixed-phase cloud processes. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Understanding the Roles of Aerosols and Clouds in Environment, Meteorology and Climate with Advanced Lidar Remote Sensing Techniques)

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