ATom: Aerosol Measurements from SOAP, 2018

(a) Aerosol extinction on the left in a graph primary displayed in blue and (b) calculated aerosol absorption on the graph to the right

Figure 1. (a) Aerosol extinction calculated using Mie theory from composition-resolved size distributions plotted as a function of measured extinction from the SOAP cavity ring-down spectrometer during the ATom-4 campaign, showing representative error bars. (b) Calculated aerosol absorption and measured absorption from the SOAP photoacoustic spectrometer for cases when absorption >2 *10-6 m-1 (2x the detection limit).

The ORNL DAAC recently released the following Atmospheric Tomography Mission (ATom) dataset by Wagner, N.L., et al. (2021):

ATom: Aerosol Extinction and Absorption Measurements from SOAP Instrument, 2018

This dataset contains one-second aerosol extinction and absorption measurements from the Spectrometers for Optical Aerosol Properties (SOAP) instrument aboard the NASA DC-8 aircraft during the ATom-4 campaign that occurred in 2018. Aerosol extinction is measured by cavity ringdown spectroscopy and aerosol absorption by photoacoustic spectroscopy. Extinction is measured with sufficient precision and accuracy for the remote atmosphere. The absorption and extinction of visible light by aerosol particles is a major component of the earth's radiation budget, strongly affecting climate. Highly absorbing particles directly heat the atmosphere, while particles that scatter light tend to cool the atmosphere. These aerosol-radiation interactions also alter air temperature and the rates of photochemical reactions.

The Atmospheric Tomography Mission (ATom) is a NASA Earth Venture Suborbital-2 mission to study the impact of human-produced air pollution on greenhouse gases and on chemically reactive gases in the atmosphere. ATom deployed an extensive gas and aerosol payload on the NASA DC-8 aircraft for systematic, global-scale sampling of the atmosphere, profiling continuously from 0.2 to 12 km altitude. Around-the-world flights were conducted in each of four seasons between 2016 and 2018.

Additional data from ATom and other relevant links can be found on the ORNL DAAC's ATom Project Page.

Citation: Wagner, N.L., C.A. Brock, C.J. Williamson, A. Kupc, K.D. Froyd, and D.M. Murphy. 2021. ATom: Aerosol Extinction and Absorption Measurements from SOAP Instrument, 2018. ORNL DAAC, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA. https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/1898