Long-Term Ground-Based Measurements of Aerosol Optical Depth over Kuwait City

We analyze ten years (2008–2017) of ground-based observations of the Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) in the atmosphere of Kuwait City, in Middle East. The measurements were conducted with a CIMEL sun-sky photometer, at various wavelengths. The daily average AOD at 500 nm (AOD500) is 0.45, while the mean Ångström coefficient (AE), calculated from the pair of wavelengths 440 and 870 nm, is 0.61. The observed high AOD500 values (0.75–2.91), are due to regional sand and dust storm events, which are affecting Kuwait with a mean annual frequency of almost 20 days/year. The long-term record analysis of AOD500 and AE, shows a downward and upward tendency respectively, something which could be attributed to the continuous expansion and industrialization of the main city of Kuwait, in combination with the simultaneous increase of soil moisture over the area. By utilizing back trajectories of air masses for up to 4 days, we assessed the influence of various regions to the aerosol load over Kuwait. The high aerosol loads during spring, are attributed to the dominance of coarse particles from Saudi Arabia (AOD500 0.56–0.74), a source area that contributes the 56% to the mean annual AOD500. Other dust sources affecting significantly Kuwait originated from the regions of Iraq and Iran with contribution of 21%.

New approach for aerosol profiling with a lidar onboard an ultralight aircraft: application to the African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis

A new airborne instrumental payload has been designed for an ultralight aircraft to determine the vertical profile of aerosol optical properties. It is based on Lidar Aérosols UltraViolet Aéroporté (LAUVA), a compact backscattering lidar system emitting at the wavelength of 355 nm. We operated this airborne configuration in the Sahel from the city of Niamey (Niger) during the first campaign of the African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis (AMMA) in January-February 2006, when aerosols from both soil dust and savannah fires cause large visibility reductions. We take advantage of the lidar capability of pointing in different directions for retrieving the vertical profile of the aerosol backscatter to extinction ratio (BER). A synergy with a scatterometer (880 nm) and a ground-based sunphotometer allows us to further determine the vertical profile of Angström exponent (a). We identify three types of aerosol layers up to about 5 km below the free troposphere, dominated by biomass burning (BB) particles, mineral dust (D) particles, and a mixing between BB and D particles, respectively, associated with BER (a) values close to 0.008 sr(-1) (1.5), 0.025 sr(-1) (0), and 0.015 sr(-1) (0.4-1).