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July 2006 was particularly warm in Europe. The consistency of this kind of anomaly with large-scale circulation conditions or local processes is a key issue for regional climate evolution. Using observations from space and ground-based observatory, together with simulations from regional model, shows that two concomitant but disconnected drivers explain this heatwave. The first driver corresponds to large-scale conditions (specific atmospheric condition with advection of continental air favoring clear sky). The second condition relates to local processes (dry soil, amplifying surface temperature in heatwave for first 5 days, and making this event warm enough to induce a monthly mean anomaly). This large-scale event is studied at a site in northern France, where comprehensive observation data carefully reanalyzed are available. A regional model is able to produce the amplitude of the event, for both temperature and cloud large-scale anomalies. Coupling model and observations allow discriminating the surface contribution to the temperature anomaly.

[1] A new objective method for the determination of the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) depth using routine vertically pointing aerosol lidar measurements is presented. A geophysical process-based analysis is introduced to improve the attribution of the lidar-derived aerosol gradients, which is so far the most challenging part in any gradient-based technique. Using micrometeorological measurements of Obukhov length scale, both early morning and evening transition periods are determined which help separate the turbulence regimes during well-mixed convective ABL and nocturnal/stable ABL. The lidar-derived aerosol backscatter signal intensity is used to determine the hourly-averaged vertical profiles of variance of the fluctuations of particle backscatter signal providing the location of maximum turbulent mixing within the ABL; thus, obtained mean ABL depth guides the attribution by searching for the appropriate minimum of the gradients. An empirical classification of the ABL stratification patterns into three different types is proposed by determining the changes in the near-surface stability scenarios. First results using the lidar observations obtained between March and July in 2011 at SIRTA atmospheric observatory near Palaiseau (Paris suburb) in France demonstrate that the new attribution technique makes the lidar estimations of ABL depth more physically reliable under a wide spectrum of meteorological conditions. While comparing lidar and nearby radiosonde measurements of ABL depths, an excellent concordance was found with a correlation coefficient of 0.968 and 0.927 for daytime and nighttime measurements, respectively. A brief climatology of the characteristics of the ABL depth, its diurnal cycle, a detailed discussion of the morning and evening transitions are presented.

International audience; The atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) depth, zi, is a fundamental variable of ABL and a climatologically important quantity. The exchange of energy between the Earth's surface and the atmosphere is governed by turbulent mixing processes in the daytime ABL, and thus, zi is important for scaling turbulence and diffusion in both meteorological and air quality models. A long-term data set of zi was derived at the Site Instrumental de Recherche par Télédétection Atmosphérique (SIRTA) observatory near Paris, using measurements obtained from a ground-based vertically pointing aerosol lidar and an autonomous algorithm STRAT+. Using multiparameter observational data sets covering a 5 year period (October 2008 to September 2013), this study aims to explore two interconnected ABL research topics: brief climatology involving multiscale temporal zi variability (diurnal, seasonal, annual, and interannual) and the relationship between zi and near-surface thermodynamic parameters to determine meteorological processes governing zi variability. Both the zi and the growth rate over SIRTA showed large seasonal variability with higher mean values in spring (1633 m and 225 m h-1) and summer (1947 m and 247 m h-1) than in autumn (1439 m and 196 m h-1) and winter (1033 m and 149 m h-1). Seasonal variability of daytime maximum zi is found to be strongly and linearly correlated with downwelling solar radiation at the surface (r = 0.92), while the dependence between daytime maximum zi and sensible heat flux (SHF) at seasonal scales is not fully linear, in particular, for summer months. Interannual variability is studied using deseasonalized monthly-mean anomalies of each variable. Conditional sampling and linear regression analyses between the anomalies of deseasonalized SHF and daytime maximum zi, show (1) stronger correlation between the two parameters for the soil conditions compared to the wet soil conditions, (2) that zi anomalies were more dependent on SHF anomalies for negative than for positive boundary layer wind speed anomalies, and (3) in the summer season, zi anomalies varied more consistently with SHF anomalies for conditions with negative cloud cover anomalies than in conditions with positive cloud cover anomalies.

Comparisons of radiance measurements from overlapping independent Earth and cloud radiation budget (ERB) missions are an important contribution to the validation process of these missions and are essential to the construction of a consistent long-term record of ERB observations. Measurements from two scanning radiometers of different design and calibration, the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) and the Scanner for Radiation Budget (ScaRaB), are compared during simultaneous operation in January and March 1999. The instruments are found to be consistent to within 0.5% and 1.5% in the longwave and shortwave spectral domains, respectively.

Active remote sensors such as lidars or radars can be used with other data to quantify the cloud properties at regional scale and at global scale. Relative to radar, lidar remote sensing is sensitive to very thin and high clouds but has a significant limitation due to signal attenuation in the ability to precisely quantify the properties of clouds with a cloud optical thickness larger than 3. The cloud properties for all levels of clouds are derived and distributions of cloud base height (CBH), top height (CTH), physical cloud thickness (CT), and optical thickness (COT) from local statistics are compared. The goal of this study is (1) to establish a climatology of macrophysical and optical properties for all levels of clouds observed over the ARM SGP site and (2) to estimate the discrepancies between the two remote sensing systems (pulse energy, sampling, resolution, etc.). Our first results tend to show that the MPL, which are the primary ARM lidars, have a distinctly limited range within which all of these cloud properties are detectable, especially cloud top and cloud thickness, but this can include cloud base particularly during summer daytime period. According to the comparisons between RL and MPL, almost 50% of situations show a signal to noise ratio too low (smaller than 3) for the MPL in order to detect clouds higher than 7km during daytime period in summer. Consequently, the MPL-derived annual cycle of cirrus cloud base (top) altitude is biased low, especially for daylight periods, compared with those derived from the RL data, which detects cloud base ranging from 7.5 km in winter to 9.5 km in summer (and tops ranging from 8.6 to 10.5 km). The optically thickest cirrus clouds (COT > 0.3) reach 50% of the total population for the Raman lidar and only 20% for the Micropulse lidar due to the difference of pulse energy and the effect of solar irradiance contamination. A complementary study using the cloud fraction derived from the Micropulse lidar for clouds below 5 km and from the Raman lidar for cloud above 5 km allows for better estimation of the total cloud fraction between the ground and the top of the atmosphere. This study presents the diurnal cycle of cloud fraction for each season in comparisons with Long et al.'s (2006) cloud fraction calculation derived from radiative flux analysis. Copyright © 2011 by the American Geophysical Union.

International audience; The relationship between cloud thermodynamic phase and temperature in some aircraft measurements conducted in midlatitude frontal clouds suggests that significant liquid does not exist at temperatures colder than 258 K. This data set is often used to verify parameterizations of cloud phase in general circulation models. However, other aircraft campaigns and different instruments suggest a different relationship. Here we examine the temperature-phase relationship for midlatitude optically thin winter clouds. Cloud phase and temperature profiles derived from 5 years of ground-based lidar depolarization and radiosonde measurements are analyzed for two midlatitude locations: the U. S. Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program Southern Great Plains site and the Site Instrumental de Recherche par Télédétection Atmosphérique in France. Because lidars are attenuated in optically thick clouds, the data set only includes clouds with optical thickness of

International audience; Data collected at the SIRTA Observatory, 20 km south of Paris, are analyzed to determine the instantaneous surface cloud radiative effect (CRE) induced by cirrus clouds. CRE is here defined as the difference between overcast-sky and clear-sky surface radiative fluxes obtained by ground-based measurement of broadband fluxes and clear-sky parametric models, respectively. Clear-sky periods detected by a double threshold based on lidar and radiative fluxes analysis show a root mean square error for clear-sky models smaller than 6.5 W m-2 for shortwave flux and 4 W m-2 for longwave flux. Over 100 h in 2003-2006 characterized by homogeneous overcast cirrus clouds are analyzed. Fifty percent of this cirrus population is subvisible and semitransparent, that is, with optical thickness less than 0.3. The mean surface shortwave cirrus cloud radiative effect (CRESW) is found near -50 W m-2. We establish the relationship between CRESW and cirrus optical thickness (COT) to be about -90 W m-2 per unit of COT. This SW sensitivity ranges from -80 W m-2 COT-1 to -100 W m-2 COT-1 for turbid to pristine atmospheres, respectively. We also establish the relationship between surface longwave cloud radiative effect (CRELW) and the irradiance emitted by the cirrus cloud derived from cloud infrared emissivity and cloud temperature. The average surface CRELW is about +5 W m-2. CRELW is found to be about 10% of the cloud irradiance. This LW effect ranges from 5 to 15% of the cirrus irradiance depending on atmospheric humidity for the wet and dry atmosphere, respectively.

[1] Identifying cloud-free periods is important as they are used as common references in cloud and aerosol radiative forcing studies. Their identification requires precise methods to distinguish condensed water from other aerosols (e.g. mineral or moist hydrophilic aerosols). In this study we combine analyses of wide field of view shortwave (SW) and longwave (LW) irradiances and Lidar backscatter measurements to explore situations that are considered neither completely clear nor cloudy. We find that situations classified as cloud-free by analysis of SW (LW) measurements are also classified as cloud free by the Lidar in more than 60% (50%) of situations. The remaining 40% (50%) situations are classified as cloudy by the Lidar, and are hence considered as hazy. These hazy situations are predominantly composed of high-altitude cirrus clouds, partitioned equally between subvisible and semi-transparent optical thickness classes. We find that, in hazy situations, the average cloud radiative forcing on surface SW irradiances ranges between −5 and −15 Wm−2.

International audience; Clouds represent the largest uncertainty in future climate projections. As a result, unbiased long-term vertically-resolved cloud observations must be collected and analyzed in order to produce regional cloud climatologies. In the present study, we use model outputs to evaluate the impact of conditional temporal sampling and instrumental effects on the 2-year statistics of frequency of cloud occurrence and cloud fraction. We then quantify the radiative significance of the ice clouds undetected by cloud radars. We find that in order to evaluate the representation of all types of clouds in operational models both a cloud radar and a lidar must be used. The cloud radar alone can do a reasonable job at describing cloud properties up to 8–9 km, however the lidar is mandatory to detect most of the high-altitude clouds above 9 km. The sampling should be regular but not necessarily continuous, and should not be driven by meteorological conditions. This result applies to all sites having a lidar without a radome. It is finally suggested that a cloud radar of around ?60 dBZ sensitivity at 1 km range would be required to detect almost all radiatively-significant ice clouds.

[1] The first intensive observation period (IOP) to simultaneously measure diffuse horizontal shortwave irradiance (scattered solar radiation that falls on a horizontal surface) with a wide array of shaded pyranometers suggested that a consensus might be reached that would permit the establishment of a standard with a smaller uncertainty than previously achieved. A second IOP has been held to refine the first IOP measurements using a uniform calibration protocol, offset corrections for all instruments and validation of those corrections, improvements in some of the instruments, and better data acquisition. The venue for both IOPs was the Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement central facility in northern Oklahoma. The 9 days of measurements in October 2003 included a better mixture of clear and overcast conditions than during the first IOP and revealed considerable differences among the instruments' responses for different cloud conditions. Four of the 15 instruments were eliminated as candidates to be included in the standard because of noisy signals, inadequate offset correction, or instability with respect to the majority of the measurements. Eight pyranometers agreed to within ±2% for clear-sky conditions. Three others have a high bias on clear days relative to these eight, but all 11 agree within ±2% on overcast days. The differences and causes of this behavior under clear and cloudy skies are examined.

The ability of the aerosol chemistry transport model CHIMERE to simulate the vertical aerosol concentration profiles at a site near the city of Paris is evaluated using routine elastic backscatter lidar and Sun photometer measurements. The comparisons of model aerosols with measurements are carried out over a full year time period between October 2002 and September 2003. The methodology we propose here is new : from the model concentration outputs (optical properties varying with chemical composition and mass vertical distribution) we simulate the lidar backscattering profiles and compare them with the observed ones. The comparisons demonstrate the ability of the model to reproduce correctly the aerosol vertical distributions and their temporal variability. However, the aerosol load within the boundary layer is generally underestimated by the model, in particular during the afternoon hours and the summertime period. Several sensitivity tests indicate that this underestimation may have two origins: the lack of secondary organic and, to a lesser extent, mineral aerosols inside the model. The second deficiency is due to the absence of erosion/resuspension of soil material in the primary aerosol sources considered here; the first deficiency is probably due to incomplete knowledge about the formation of organic species in a photochemically active atmosphere. The results also show that the particles ranging from 0.08 to 1.25 mum in radius represent more than 89 % of the volume backscattering at 532 nm, while the coarse particles are not efficient in terms of optical properties. The missing aerosol mass must therefore be found within the accumulation mode.

[1] One year of back-scattering lidar cloud boundaries and optical depth were analysed for coincident inter-comparison with the latest processed versions of the NASA-TERRA MISR stereo and MODIS CO2-slicing operational cloud top heights. Optically thin clouds were found to be accurately characterised by the MISR cloud top height product as long as no other cloud was present at lower altitude. MODIS cloud top heights were generally found within the cloud extent retrieved by lidar; agreement improved as cloud optical depth increased and when CO2-slicing was the only technique used for the retrieval. The difference between Lidar and MISR cloud top heights was found to lie between −0.1 and 0.4 km for low clouds and between 0.1 and 3.1 km for high clouds. The difference between Lidar and MODIS cloud top heights was found to lie between −1.2 and 1.5 km for low clouds and between −1.4 and 2.7 km for high clouds.

[1] The first intensive observation period (IOP) dedicated exclusively to the measurement of diffuse horizontal shortwave irradiance was held in the Fall 2001 at the central facility of the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Southern Great Plains (SGP) site with the cooperation of the Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN) community. The purpose of the study was to compare diffuse irradiance measurements among most commercial pyranometers and a few prototypes calibrated independently using current practices. The hope was to achieve a consensus for this measurement with the goal of improving the uncertainty of shortwave diffuse irradiance measurements. All diffuse broadband measurements were made using the same type of two-axis tracker with the direct beam blocked by shading balls. Tracking was excellent during the IOP with no lost data associated with tracker problems. Fourteen simultaneous measurements were obtained over a two-week period under mostly clear skies with low to moderate aerosol loading. Totally overcast data were obtained during the morning of one day. Five of the measurements are reproducible to about 2 W/m2 at the 95% confidence level. Three more agree with the mean of these five to about 4 W/m2 at the 95% confidence level after correction for thermal offsets.

[1] The second ARM (Atmospheric Radiation Measurement) Enhanced Shortwave Experiment (ARESE II) used a single aircraft flying above the north central Oklahoma Southern Great Plains ARM central facility to measure the atmospheric absorption in the column of air between the surface and the Twin Otter altitude ceiling around 7 km on both clear and overcast days. For this experiment, three types of broadband radiometers were used to measure upwelling and downwelling shortwave flux on the aircraft at 7 km. This provided redundancy that was lacking in the first ARESE. Further, all instruments used on the ground and on the aircraft were calibrated on the ground against the same radiation standard. Preflight and postflight comparisons of the broadband instruments used on the aircraft during the flight series with the standard, and comparisons of the ground instruments with the standard during the flights, suggest agreement much better than the target uncertainty of 20 W/m2 at the 95% confidence level. Comparisons of the standard and the aircraft instruments for low-altitude passes on clear days indicate more uncertainty as expected for a nonstationary platform. The estimated uncertainty in the measured column absorption based on the difference in measured net irradiances at the surface and near 7 km at the 95% confidence level is 20 W/m2.