Droplet Measurement Technologies (DMT) articles

To address the need for better information about volcanic ash events, the Toulouse Volcanic Ash Advisory Center (VAAC) asked Météo-France (MF), the French national meteorological service, to focus on the ash issue. MF set out to determine the best method of providing accurate information about the size and concentration of volcanic particles from the ground up to a minimum of 12 km altitude.

The subsequent research efforts included the following activities:

Abstract. Aerosols and clouds affect atmospheric radiative processes and climate in many complex ways and still pose the largest uncertainty in current estimates of the Earth’s changing energy budget. Airborne in situ sensors such as the Cloud, Aerosol, and Precipitation Spectrometer (CAPS) or other optical spectrometers and optical array probes provide detailed information about the horizontal and vertical distribution of aerosol and cloud properties. However, flow distortions occurrin

Weeks before the athletes took to the ice and snow at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, Dr. Duncan Axisa was in the mountains around PyeongChang, studying ice-forming particles. Later in the year, Axisa traveled to India to study monsoon clouds, and to France to participate in a trans-national ice-nucleation experiment. Axisa and his team travel around the globe to help scientists better predict the weather—specifically precipitation. Precipitation prediction is a difficult scien

Cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) can affect cloud properties and therefore Earth’s radiative balance1–3. New particle formation (NPF) from condensable vapours in the free troposphere has been suggested to contribute to CCN, especially in remote, pristine atmospheric regions4, but direct evidence is sparse, and the magnitude of this contribution is uncertain5–7 . Here we use insitu aircraft measurements of vertical profiles of aerosol size distributions to present a globalscal

Atmospheric transport models benefit from real-time localized data inputs.

Deteriorating air quality in urban areas is causing growing concern about public health and climate change. To gain a better understanding of air pollution and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, some cities and states are attempting to establish a baseline and collect data over time to track changing conditions. By comparing the performance of models to real-life data, researchers hope to isolate problem areas and

Abstract

Detection of bioaerosols, or primary biological aerosol particles (PBAPs), has become increasingly important for a wide variety of research communities and scientific questions. In particular, real-time (RT) techniques for autonomous, online detection and characterization of PBAP properties in both outdoor and indoor environments are becoming more commonplace and have opened avenues of research. With advances in technology, however, come challenges to standar

A Micro Pulse LiDAR (MPL) system at South Florida’s Cloud-Aerosol-Rain Observatory (CAROb) collected data to further research on the effects of low clouds and dust on the climate.

Changes in the climate are created by complex interactions between temperature, clouds, aerosols, wind, moisture and a host of other factors. To get a better understanding of the specific impact of numerous low thin clouds on climate, a study at the Cloud-Aerosol-Rain Observatory (CAROb), based on Virg

Abstract. The influence of aerosols, both natural and anthropogenic, remains a major area of uncertainty when predicting the properties and behaviour of clouds and their influence on climate. In an attempt to understand better the microphysical properties of cloud droplets, the aerosol-cloud interactions, and the corresponding climate effect during cloud life cycles in the North China Plain, an intensive observation took place from 17 June to 30 July 2018 at the summit of Mt. Tai. Cloud micro

Abstract. Cirrus clouds and their potential formation regions, so-called ice-supersaturated regions (ISSRs) occur frequently in the tropopause region. It is assumed that ISSRs and cirrus clouds can change the tropopause structure by diabatic processes, driven by latent heating due to phase transition and interaction with radiation. For many research questions a threedimensional picture including a sufficient temporal resolution of the water vapour fields in the tropopause region is required.<

Robert Rissland, Director, Int’l Sales for Micro Pulse LiDAR, explains the advantages of the polarized, single-photon detecting Mini Micro Pulse Lidar (MiniMPL) over Doppler Wind Lidar systems.

For wide-area aerosol detection, differentiation and concentration mapping, the best tools for the job must offer autonomous continuous operations in varying weather conditions and collect reliable data to support accurate analysis. When considering the critical performance differences be