资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

In September 2020, extremely strong wildfires in the western United States of America (i.e., mainly in California) produced large amounts of smoke, which was lifted into the free troposphere. These biomass‐burning‐aerosol (BBA) layers were transported from the US west coast towards central Europe within 3‐4 days turning the sky milky and receiving high media attention. The present study characterises this pronounced smoke plume above Leipzig, Germany, using a ground‐based multiwavelength‐Raman‐polarization lidar and the aerosol/cloud product of ESA’s wind lidar mission Aeolus. An exceptional high smoke‐AOT > 0.4 was measured, yielding to a mean mass concentration of 8 μg m⁻³. The 355 nm lidar ratio was moderate at around 40–50 sr. The Aeolus‐derived backscatter, extinction and lidar ratio profiles agree well with the observations of the ground‐based lidar PollyXT considering the fact that Aeolus’ aerosol and cloud products are still preliminary and subject to ongoing algorithm improvements.

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