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TROPOSPHERIC OZONE LIDAR NETWORK

The Tropospheric Ozone Lidar Network (TOLNet) is a unique network of lidar systems that provide high-resolution ozone profiles from the planetary boundary layer (PBL) to the top of the troposphere at multiple locations for satellite validation, model evaluation, and scientific research (Newchurch et al., 2016; http://www-air.larc.nasa.gov/missions/TOLNet/). Particularly, these ozone measurements can serve to validate the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) (Veefkind et al., 2012) which was recently launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA's first Earth Venture Instrument mission, Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring Pollution (TEMPO) (Zoogman et al., 2017), planned to launch in 2019. The TOLNet project also provides an opportunity to identify a brassboard ozone lidar instrument that would be suitable to populate a network to address an increasing need for ozone profiles.

TOLNet currently consists of six ozone lidars across the North America: the Table Mountain tropospheric ozone differential absorption lidar (DIAL) at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (McDermid et al., 2002), the Tunable Optical Profiler for Aerosol and oZone (TOPAZ) lidar at NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) (Alvarez et al., 2011), the Rocket-city Ozone (O3) Quality Evaluation in the Troposphere (RO3QET) lidar at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) (Kuang et al., 2013), the TROPospheric OZone (TROPOZ) DIAL at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Space Center (GSFC) (Sullivan et al., 2015), the Langley Mobile Ozone Lidar (LMOL) at NASA's Langley Research Center (LaRC) (De Young et al., 2017), and the Autonomous Mobile Ozone Lidar Instrument for Tropospheric Experiments (AMOLITE) at Environment and Climate Change Canada. The NASA/LaRC data group maintains the lidar data archiving and website update for public data sharing and distribution. The NASA/ARC modeling group facilitate the application of lidar observations including the satellite validation and model evaluation (Johnson et al, 2016).

The science Investigations addressed by the network are:

1. Provide high spatio-temporal observations of PBL and free-tropospheric (FT) ozone for use by the GEO-CAPE science team to study the character of the atmospheric structure that GEO-CAPE will observe and assess the fidelity with which a geo instrument can measure that structure.

2. Discover new structures and processes at the PBL/FT boundary, especially in the diurnal variation of that interface.

3. Foster use of these high-resolution ozone observations to improve the processes in air-quality forecast and diagnostic models.

4. Exploit synergy with DISCOVER-AQ, thermodynamic profilers, MOZAIC/IAGOS, regulatory surface monitors, and other networks.

5. Improve our understanding of the relationship between ozone and aerosols aloft and surface ozone and PM values.

6. Advance our understanding of processes controlling regional background atmospheric composition (including STE and long range transport) and their effect on surface air quality to prepare for the GEO-CAPE era.

The TOLNet has matured into a credible scientific group of six ozone lidars that are capable of accurate, high-spatio-temporal-resolution measurement of tropospheric ozone structures and morphology. These lidars have demonstrated their 10% accuracy in several intercomparison campaigns (Wang et al., 2017) and have participated in several scientific investigations both in small and large instrumentation groups (Kuang et al., 2017; Langford et al., 2018; Sullivan et al., 2016). They have investigated many scientific phenomena including stratosphere-to-troposphere exchange, boundary-layer development, the interaction between the boundary layer and the free troposphere, Front range ozone morphology, urban outflow, land/sea interactions, etc. These processes determine the ozone distribution affecting large portions of the population. Through scientific cooperation with other ground-based profiling instrumentation, the TOLNet will address more difficult scientific issues in the next few years, especially the ozone production potential and distribution from wildfires and prescribed burns.

REFERENCES

Alvarez, R. J., Senff, C. J., Langford, A. O., Weickmann, A. M., Law, D. C., Machol, J. L., ... & Hardesty, R. M. (2011). Development and application of a compact, tunable, solid-state airborne ozone lidar system for boundary layer profiling. Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, 28(10), 1258-1272.

De Young, R., Carrion, W., Ganoe, R., Pliutau, D., Gronoff, G., Berkoff, T., & Kuang, S. (2017). Langley mobile ozone lidar: ozone and aerosol atmospheric profiling for air quality research. Applied Optics, 56(3), 721-730.

Johnson, M. S., Kuang, S., Wang, L., & Newchurch, M. J. (2016). Evaluating summer-time ozone enhancement events in the southeast United States. Atmosphere, 7(8), 108.

Kuang, S., Newchurch, M. J., Burris, J., & Liu, X. (2013). Ground-based lidar for atmospheric boundary layer ozone measurements. Applied optics, 52(15), 3557-3566.

Kuang, S., Newchurch, M. J., Johnson, M. S., Wang, L., Burris, J., Pierce, R. B., ... & Warneke, C. (2017). Summertime tropospheric ozone enhancement associated with a cold front passage due to stratosphere-to-troposphere transport and biomass burning: Simultaneous ground-based lidar and airborne measurements. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 122(2), 1293-1311.

Langford, A. O., Alvarez II, R. J., Brioude, J., Evan, S., Iraci, L. T., Kirgis, G., ... & Senff, C. J. (2018). Coordinated profiling of stratospheric intrusions and transported pollution by the Tropospheric Ozone Lidar Network (TOLNet) and NASA Alpha Jet experiment (AJAX): Observations and comparison to HYSPLIT, RAQMS, and FLEXPART. Atmospheric Environment, 174, 1-14.

McDermid, I. S., Beyerle, G., Haner, D. A., & Leblanc, T. (2002). Redesign and improved performance of the tropospheric ozone lidar at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Table Mountain Facility. Applied optics, 41(36), 7550-7555.

Newchurch, M. J., Kuang, S., Leblanc, T., Alvarez, R. J., Langford, A. O., Senff, C. J., Burris, J. F., McGee, T. J., Sullivan, J. T., DeYoung, R. J., and Al-Saadi, J.: TOLNET - A Tropospheric Ozone Lidar Profiling Network for Satellite Continuity and Process Studies, The 27th International Laser Radar Conference (ILRC 27), 2016.

Sullivan, J. T., McGee, T. J., Leblanc, T., Sumnicht, G. K., & Twigg, L. W. (2015). Optimization of the GSFC TROPOZ DIAL retrieval using synthetic lidar returns and ozonesondes-Part 1: Algorithm validation. Atmospheric Measurement Techniques, 8(10), 4133.

Sullivan, J. T., McGee, T. J., Langford, A. O., Alvarez, R. J., Senff, C. J., Reddy, P. J., ... & Weinheimer, A. (2016). Quantifying the contribution of thermally driven recirculation to a high-ozone event along the Colorado Front Range using lidar. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 121(17).

Veefkind, J. P., Aben, I., McMullan, K., Förster, H., De Vries, J., Otter, G., ... & Van Weele, M. (2012). TROPOMI on the ESA Sentinel-5 Precursor: A GMES mission for global observations of the atmospheric composition for climate, air quality and ozone layer applications. Remote Sensing of Environment, 120, 70-83.

Wang, L., Newchurch, M. J., Alvarez II, R. J., Berkoff, T. A., Brown, S. S., Carrion, W., ... & Kirgis, G. (2017). Quantifying TOLNet ozone lidar accuracy during the 2014 DISCOVER-AQ and FRAPPÉ campaigns. Atmospheric Measurement Techniques, 10(10), 3865.

Zoogman, P., Liu, X., Suleiman, R. M., Pennington, W. F., Flittner, D. E., Al-Saadi, J. A., ... & Janz, S. J. (2017). Tropospheric emissions: Monitoring of pollution (TEMPO). Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer, 186, 17-39.

 


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