TY - JOUR
T1 - An overview of the ORACLES (ObseRvations of aerosols above CLouds and their intEractionS) project
T2 - Aerosol-cloud-radiation interactions in the southeast Atlantic basin
AU - Redemann, Jens
AU - Wood, Robert
AU - Zuidema, Paquita
AU - Doherty, Sarah J.
AU - Luna, Bernadette
AU - LeBlanc, Samuel E.
AU - Diamond, Michael S.
AU - Shinozuka, Yohei
AU - Chang, Ian Y.
AU - Ueyama, Rei
AU - Pfister, Leonhard
AU - Ryoo, Ju Mee
AU - Dobracki, Amie N.
AU - da Silva, Arlindo M.
AU - Longo, Karla M.
AU - Kacenelenbogen, Meloë S.
AU - Flynn, Connor J.
AU - Pistone, Kristina
AU - Knox, Nichola M.
AU - Piketh, Stuart J.
AU - Haywood, James M.
AU - Formenti, Paola
AU - Mallet, Marc
AU - Stier, Philip
AU - Ackerman, Andrew S.
AU - Bauer, Susanne E.
AU - Fridlind, Ann M.
AU - Carmichael, Gregory R.
AU - Saide, Pablo E.
AU - Ferrada, Gonzalo A.
AU - Howell, Steven G.
AU - Freitag, Steffen
AU - Cairns, Brian
AU - Holben, Brent N.
AU - Knobelspiesse, Kirk D.
AU - Tanelli, Simone
AU - L'Ecuyer, Tristan S.
AU - Dzambo, Andrew M.
AU - Sy, Ousmane O.
AU - McFarquhar, Greg M.
AU - Poellot, Michael R.
AU - Gupta, Siddhant
AU - O'Brien, Joseph R.
AU - Nenes, Athanasios
AU - Kacarab, Mary
AU - Wong, Jenny P.S.
AU - Small-Griswold, Jennifer D.
AU - Thornhill, Kenneth L.
AU - Noone, David
AU - Podolske, James R.
AU - Sebastian Schmidt, K.
AU - Pilewskie, Peter
AU - Chen, Hong
AU - Cochrane, Sabrina P.
AU - Sedlacek, Arthur J.
AU - Lang, Timothy J.
AU - Stith, Eric
AU - Segal-Rozenhaimer, Michal
AU - Ferrare, Richard A.
AU - Burton, Sharon P.
AU - Hostetler, Chris A.
AU - Diner, David J.
AU - Seidel, Felix C.
AU - Platnick, Steven E.
AU - Myers, Jeffrey S.
AU - Meyer, Kerry G.
AU - Spangenberg, Douglas A.
AU - Maring, Hal
AU - Gao, Lan
N1 - Funding Information:
University of Miami NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Columbia University Bay Area Environmental Research Institute NASA Langley Research Center NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Science Systems and Applications, Inc. UK Met Office NASA Langley Research Center NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Columbia University AMA Inc National Suborbital Research Center Aerospace Corporation, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center NASA Ames Research Center NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Jet Propulsion Laboratory Bay Area Environmental Research Institute NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Columbia University Jet Propulsion Laboratory University of Hawai‘i at Ma¯noa NASA Goddard Space Flight Center NASA Langley Research Center California State University, Monterey Bay NASA Goddard Space Flight Center National Suborbital Research Center University of North Dakota Jet Propulsion Laboratory University of California, Santa Cruz University of Colorado, Boulder NASA Ames Research Center NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center, USRA Jet Propulsion Laboratory NASA Goddard Space Flight Center University of California, Santa Cruz University of North Dakota NASA Langley Research Center, Science Systems and Applications, Inc. Bay Area Environmental Research Institute NASA Ames Research Center, Universities Space Research Association Jet Propulsion Laboratory Council for Scientific and Industrial Research NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Columbia University NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Science Systems and Applications, Inc. NASA Ames Research Center, University of California, Santa Cruz NASA Goddard Space Flight Center University of Alabama in Huntsville NASA Langley Research Center University of Hawai‘i at Ma¯noa Oregon State University Universities Space Research Association University of California, Los Angeles SpecTIR LLC NASA Marshall Space Flight Center NASA Ames Research Center NASA Ames Research Center
Funding Information:
The planning for the 2016 field deployment in Namibia started in early 2015, with multiple site visits to the Walvis Bay airport, logistics and hotel providers, Namibian science partners, and representatives of various Namibian government organizations. This planning started early because the unexpected change to deploy both ORACLES aircraft in 2016 brought along a significant set of challenges due to the large contingency of scientific and aircraft support equipment needed, with this being the first of the three ORACLES deployments. The ORACLES team gratefully acknowledges the help provided by the Honorable Thomas F. Daughton, US Ambassador to Namibia from 2014 to 2017, and the support by the US embassy staff led by John Kowalski. The US embassy proved instrumental in receiving flight permissions and in arranging the student program in August 2016. The ORACLES team also received invaluable feedback and support from the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST), led by its rector, Tjama Tjivikua, and Dean Lameck Mwewa. In addition to NUST, the Gobabeb Training and Research Center led by Gillian Maggs-Kolling, the University of Namibia represented by Martin Hipondoka and Michael Backes as well as North-West University (South Africa) represented by Stuart Piketh provided information and logistics support throughout the 2016 campaign. As we describe in Sect. 3.5 below, these contacts were the spring-board for the outreach efforts that led to the deployment of seven graduate students in the 2016 field campaign, including five students from NUST and the University of Namibia. In their totality, we hope that the efforts expended by the Namibian government and the Namibian and South African science community, as well as the reciprocating efforts by the ORACLES science team, can be considered a transformational effort in the context of science diplomacy (Annegarn and Swap, 2012), at least in so far as the experience for the individual students that participated in the outreach efforts are concerned.
Funding Information:
NERC project CLARIFY (NE/L013479/1) and the European Research Council (ERC) project RECAP under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program with grant agreement 724602. Part of this work was performed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D0004).
Publisher Copyright:
© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
PY - 2021/2/4
Y1 - 2021/2/4
N2 - Southern Africa produces almost a third of the Earth's biomass burning (BB) aerosol particles, yet the fate of these particles and their influence on regional and global climate is poorly understood. ORACLES (ObseRvations of Aerosols above CLouds and their intEractionS) is a 5-year NASA EVS-2 (Earth Venture Suborbital-2) investigation with three intensive observation periods designed to study key atmospheric processes that determine the climate impacts of these aerosols. During the Southern Hemisphere winter and spring (June-October), aerosol particles reaching 3-5 km in altitude are transported westward over the southeast Atlantic, where they interact with one of the largest subtropical stratocumulus (Sc) cloud decks in the world. The representation of these interactions in climate models remains highly uncertain in part due to a scarcity of observational constraints on aerosol and cloud properties, as well as due to the parameterized treatment of physical processes. Three ORACLES deployments by the NASA P-3 aircraft in September 2016, August 2017, and October 2018 (totaling ∼ 350 science flight hours), augmented by the deployment of the NASA ER-2 aircraft for remote sensing in September 2016 (totaling ∼ 100 science flight hours), were intended to help fill this observational gap. ORACLES focuses on three fundamental science themes centered on the climate effects of African BB aerosols: (a) direct aerosol radiative effects, (b) effects of aerosol absorption on atmospheric circulation and clouds, and (c) aerosol-cloud microphysical interactions. This paper summarizes the ORACLES science objectives, describes the project implementation, provides an overview of the flights and measurements in each deployment, and highlights the integrative modeling efforts from cloud to global scales to address science objectives. Significant new findings on the vertical structure of BB aerosol physical and chemical properties, chemical aging, cloud condensation nuclei, rain and precipitation statistics, and aerosol indirect effects are emphasized, but their detailed descriptions are the subject of separate publications. The main purpose of this paper is to familiarize the broader scientific community with the ORACLES project and the dataset it produced.
AB - Southern Africa produces almost a third of the Earth's biomass burning (BB) aerosol particles, yet the fate of these particles and their influence on regional and global climate is poorly understood. ORACLES (ObseRvations of Aerosols above CLouds and their intEractionS) is a 5-year NASA EVS-2 (Earth Venture Suborbital-2) investigation with three intensive observation periods designed to study key atmospheric processes that determine the climate impacts of these aerosols. During the Southern Hemisphere winter and spring (June-October), aerosol particles reaching 3-5 km in altitude are transported westward over the southeast Atlantic, where they interact with one of the largest subtropical stratocumulus (Sc) cloud decks in the world. The representation of these interactions in climate models remains highly uncertain in part due to a scarcity of observational constraints on aerosol and cloud properties, as well as due to the parameterized treatment of physical processes. Three ORACLES deployments by the NASA P-3 aircraft in September 2016, August 2017, and October 2018 (totaling ∼ 350 science flight hours), augmented by the deployment of the NASA ER-2 aircraft for remote sensing in September 2016 (totaling ∼ 100 science flight hours), were intended to help fill this observational gap. ORACLES focuses on three fundamental science themes centered on the climate effects of African BB aerosols: (a) direct aerosol radiative effects, (b) effects of aerosol absorption on atmospheric circulation and clouds, and (c) aerosol-cloud microphysical interactions. This paper summarizes the ORACLES science objectives, describes the project implementation, provides an overview of the flights and measurements in each deployment, and highlights the integrative modeling efforts from cloud to global scales to address science objectives. Significant new findings on the vertical structure of BB aerosol physical and chemical properties, chemical aging, cloud condensation nuclei, rain and precipitation statistics, and aerosol indirect effects are emphasized, but their detailed descriptions are the subject of separate publications. The main purpose of this paper is to familiarize the broader scientific community with the ORACLES project and the dataset it produced.
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U2 - 10.5194/acp-21-1507-2021
DO - 10.5194/acp-21-1507-2021
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:85100527293
VL - 21
SP - 1507
EP - 1563
JO - Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
JF - Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
SN - 1680-7316
IS - 3
M1 - 21-1507-2021
ER -