Simultaneous profiling of dust aerosol mass concentration and optical properties with polarized high-spectral-resolution lidar

Da Xiao; Nanchao Wang; Sijie Chen; Lingyun Wu; Detlef Müller; Igor Veselovskii; Chengcai Li; Eduardo Landulfo; Venkataraman Sivakumar; Jing Li; Huizheng Che; Jing Fang; Kai Zhang; Binyu Wang; Feitong Chen; Xianzhe Hu; Xiaotao Li; Weize Li; Yicheng Tong; Ju Ke; Lan Wu; Chong Liu; Dong Liu

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.162091

Simultaneous profiling of dust aerosol mass concentration and optical properties with polarized high-spectral-resolution lidar

Sci Total Environ. 2023 May 10:872:162091. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.162091. Epub 2023 Feb 8.

Authors

Da Xiao¹, Nanchao Wang², Sijie Chen², Lingyun Wu², Detlef Müller³, Igor Veselovskii⁴, Chengcai Li⁵, Eduardo Landulfo⁶, Venkataraman Sivakumar⁷, Jing Li⁵, Huizheng Che⁸, Jing Fang², Kai Zhang², Binyu Wang², Feitong Chen², Xianzhe Hu², Xiaotao Li², Weize Li², Yicheng Tong², Ju Ke², Lan Wu², Chong Liu⁹, Dong Liu¹⁰

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Modern Optical Instrumentation, College of Optical Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China; ZJU-Hangzhou Global Scientific and Technological Innovation Center, Hangzhou 311200, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Modern Optical Instrumentation, College of Optical Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China.
³ School of Remote Sensing and Information Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China.
⁴ Prokhorov General Physics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia.
⁵ Department of Atmosphere and Oceanic Sciences, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
⁶ Instituto de Pesquisas Energeticas e Nucleares (IPEN), 2242 Lineu Prestes Av., Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil.
⁷ School of Chemistry and Physics, Discipline of Physics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 4000, South Africa.
⁸ State Key Laboratory of Severe Weather (LASW), Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, CMA, Beijing 100081, China; State Key Laboratory of Atmospheric Chemistry (LAC), Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, CMA, Beijing 100081, China.
⁹ State Key Laboratory of Modern Optical Instrumentation, College of Optical Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China; ZJU-Hangzhou Global Scientific and Technological Innovation Center, Hangzhou 311200, China; Intelligent Optics & Photonics Research Center, Jiaxing Research Institute Zhejiang University, Jiaxing 314000, China; Jiaxing Key Laboratory of Photonic Sensing & Intelligent Imaging, Jiaxing 314000, China.
¹⁰ State Key Laboratory of Modern Optical Instrumentation, College of Optical Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China; ZJU-Hangzhou Global Scientific and Technological Innovation Center, Hangzhou 311200, China; Intelligent Optics & Photonics Research Center, Jiaxing Research Institute Zhejiang University, Jiaxing 314000, China; Jiaxing Key Laboratory of Photonic Sensing & Intelligent Imaging, Jiaxing 314000, China. Electronic address: liudongopt@zju.edu.cn.

PMID: 36758704
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.162091

Abstract

Dust particles originating from arid desert regions can be transported over long distances, presenting severe risks to climate, environment, social economics, and human health at the source and downwind regions. However, there has been a dearth of continuous diurnal observations of vertically resolved mass concentration and optical properties of dust aerosols, which hinders our understanding of aerosol mixing, stratification, aerosol-cloud interactions, and their impacts on the environment. To fill the gap of the insufficient observations, to the best of our knowledge, this work presents the first high-spectral-resolution lidar (HSRL) observation providing days of continuous profiles of the mass concentration, along with particle linear depolarization ratio (PLDR), backscattering coefficient, extinction coefficient and lidar ratio (LR), simultaneously. We present the results of two strong dust events observed by HSRL over Beijing in 2021. The maximum particle mass concentrations reached (1.52 ± 3.5) x10³ μg/m³ and (19.48 ± 0.36) x10³ μg/m³ for the two dust events, respectively. The retrieved particle mass concentrations and aerosol optical depth (AOD) agree well with the observation from the surface PM₁₀ concentrations and sun photometer with correlation coefficients of 0.90 and 0.95, respectively. The intensive properties of PLDR and LR of the dust aerosols are 0.31 ± 0.02 and 39 ± 7 sr at 532 nm, respectively, which are generally close to those obtained from observations in the downwind areas. Moreover, inspired by the observations from HSRL, a universal analytical relationship is discovered to evaluate the proportion of dust aerosol backscattering, extinction, AOD, and mass concentration using PLDR. The universal analytical relationship reveals that PLDR can directly quantify dust aerosol contribution, which is expected to further expand the application of polarization technology in dust detection. These valuable observations and findings further our understanding of the contribution of dust aerosol to the environment and help supplement dust aerosol databases.

Keywords: Dust aerosol; Dust proportion; High-spectral-resolution lidar; Optical properties; Particle mass concentration.