POLarimeter-Lidar dUst eXperiment

Project: Other

Project Details

Description

This is a ACTRIS-2 Trans-National Access (TNA) proposal submitted to ACTRIS-2, the Horizon 2020 project, to request funding for time to be spent at one of the ACTRIS facilities to carry out experiments by both the PI and a colleague, Helen Smith. This is in fact a retrospective application as the proposal has already been accepted.

POLLUX aims at using the ACTRIS FKL Research Infrastructure in order to test a novel polarimeter instrument (Mark II Solar Polarimeter) that can be used for measuring the Stokes vector of dust particles. The scientific aim is that we use polarimeter data in combination with data from co-located lidar observations (and in future also sun photometer) in order to explore to what extent this data combination can be used for an improved, vertically-resolved characterizaton of dust microphysical properties, i.e. particle size distributions and complex refractive index (particularly dust light-absorption). For this purpose, we will use our established inversion algorithm (DEMO) which has recently been upgraded with the option that it can process combined data of lidar and polarimeter. Validation of our simulation studies with synthetic data require field data (dust and mixtures of dust with anthropogenic pollution) in order to decide to what extent polarimeter data can help solving the ongoing problem that there exists no trustworthy retrievals of dust microphysical properties due to the lack of a robust light-scattering model that allows us to describe optical properties of non-spherical particles (e.g. dust, volcanic ash) at 180 degree (backscatter direction). POLLUX will benefit from the project DUSTSONDE (TNA by Tesche) as DUSTSONDE will provide POLLUX with such validation data. POLLUX will also benefit from the concurrent A-LIFE campaign in Cyprus as the German Aerospace Center's Falcon aircraft will fly over the ACTRIS FKL during dust outbreaks, and measure dust optical and microphysical properties with a world-wide unrivalled suite of instruments.
AcronymPOLLUX
StatusFinished
Effective start/end date1/04/1720/04/17

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