Journal Article
Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, vol. 74, iss. 5, pp. 1431-1443, 2017
Authors
E. Kassianov, M. Pekour, C. Flynn, L. K. Berg, J. Beranek, A. Zelenyuk, C. Zhao, L. R. Leung, P. L. Ma, L. Riihimaki, J. D. Fast, J. Barnard, A. G. Hallar, I. B. McCubbin, E. W. Eloranta, A. McComiskey, P. J. Rasch
Abstract
Abstract
This work is motivated by previous studies of transatlantic transport of Saharan dust and the observed quasi-static nature of coarse mode aerosol with a volume median diameter (VMD) of approximately 3.5 μm. The authors examine coarse mode contributions from transpacific transport of dust to North American aerosol properties using a dataset collected at the high-elevation Storm Peak Laboratory (SPL) and the nearby Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Mobile Facility. Collected ground-based data are complemented by quasi-global model simulations and satellite and ground-based observations. The authors identify a major dust event associated mostly with a transpacific plume (about 65% of near-surface aerosol mass) in which the coarse mode with moderate (~3 μm) VMD is distinct and contributes substantially to total aerosol volume (up to 70%) and scattering (up to 40%). The results demonstrate that the identified plume at the SPL site has a considerable fraction of supermicron particles (VMD ~3 μm) and, thus, suggest that these particles have a fairly invariant behavior despite transpacific transport. If confirmed in additional studies, this invariant behavior may simplify considerably parameterizations for size-dependent processes associated with dust transport and removal.
