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Aerosol Optical Depth Best Estimate Production Data Available for 2 ARM Sites

 
Published: 23 May 2024
Time series of the combined aerosol optical depths (AODs) from 2016 to 2020 at ARM’s Eastern North Atlantic atmospheric observatory do not show seasonal patterns. Gaps in the time series are associated with data quality issues or instrument repair or replacement.
These time series of the combined aerosol optical depths (AODs) from 2016 to 2020 at ARM’s Eastern North Atlantic atmospheric observatory do not show seasonal patterns. Gaps in the time series are associated with data quality issues or instrument repair or replacement. Image is courtesy of Gabriel Gibler, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. 

Aerosol Optical Depth Best Estimate 5-Channel (AODBE5CH) production data are now available for the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility’s Eastern North Atlantic (ENA) and Southern Great Plains (SGP) atmospheric observatories.

Scientists can use the AODBE5CH value-added product (VAP) to analyze the variability of aerosol loading over multiple time scales and to demonstrate the importance of this variability in forcing climate change. AODBE5CH merges individual AODs from co-located ARM instruments to produce a high-quality, nearly continuous record of AOD best estimates (also known as combined AODs) at five wavelengths: 415, 500, 615, 673, and 870 nanometers. In addition, AODBE5CH provides wavelength-dependent uncertainty assessments of the combined AODs.

For a four-year period (2016–2020) at the ENA, AODBE5CH generated combined AODs from individual spectrally resolved AODs provided by two instruments: the multifilter rotating shadowband radiometer and Cimel sunphotometer.

The SGP AODBE5CH data cover a 24-year period (1997–2021), combining individual spectrally resolved AODs from four instruments: two multifilter rotating shadowband radiometers, a Cimel sunphotometer, and a normal incidence multifilter radiometer.

For both observatories, generating the combined AODs involves spectral and temporal matching of the individual AODs from each instrument.

The output data are in netCDF format with 1-minute temporal resolution.

Additional information about the AODBE5CH VAP is available on the AODBE web page.

AODBE5CH data are now available for the ENA from January 1, 2016, through January 24, 2020, and the SGP from January 16, 1997, through April 30, 2021. Access these data in the ARM Data Center. (To download the data, first create an ARM account.)

If you have feedback or questions about the data, please email lead developer Gabriel Gibler or VAP contact Evgueni Kassianov.

The AODBE5CH data can be referenced as doi:10.5439/1885158.

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ARM is a DOE Office of Science user facility operated by nine DOE national laboratories.