Effect of Volcanic and Wildfire Stratospheric Perturbations on Aerosol Effective Radius - Insight

Host: Naomi Farren (naomi.farren@york.ac.uk)

Abstract: Within the NOAA Earth’s Radiative Budget Initiative, the Baseline Balloon Stratospheric Aerosol Profiles (B2SAP) project aims to characterize the global stratospheric aerosol number and size distribution using a latitudinally distributed network of balloon sonde sites.

At present there are four regular B2SAP launch sites: i) Boulder, CO, USA, (40°N), ii) Lauder, NZ, (45°S), iii) Hilo, HI, USA, (20°N), and iv) Reunion Island, FR, (20°S). The B2SAP network will continue to be expanded to include additional latitude bands in the future.

B2SAP products include vertical profiles from the surface to 28 km of meteorological data, ozone and water vapour as well as size distribution and number concentration. The effective radius of aerosol is also derived, easing comparison with models and other sensors, such as SAGE-III/ISS. Certain events, such as volcanic activity or large biomass burning can perturb the size distribution of stratospheric aerosol.

Here, B2SAP data is used to investigate the impacts various past events have had on the effective radius of the stratospheric aerosol layer.

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